Idol Challenge 10 - Darn Kids

Day #10 - The Idol You Used To Hate and Now Like (Or Vice Versa).

The H!P Kids. All of them. Even Momo. I disliked them purely for the fact that they were kids. This was also one of the reasons I disliked Koharu when I first got into Morning Musume.

It's not that I didn't listen to them. I listened to a few of their songs (and was there for C-ute's first indies single) and even thought some of it was catchy. But for the most part, I stayed away.

I felt a little uncomfortable about them. When I got into Morning Musume, most of the girls were around my age. In fact, four of the ten were older than me and all but one of the ten members could have gone to high school with me at one point. The graduated members (with the exception of Aibon) were older than me. Morning Musume did not feel so strange for me to be a fan of (I already liked happy music, so no problem there.)

But the Kids were around the ages of my younger siblings. That was pretty uncool. So I was a fan of H!P (actually, Morning Musume and groups with its current and former members) for two years before I decided to take a deeper plunge into idols and watched every H!P music video I could find (with help from Wiki.ThePPN's discography entries.) Finally I learned the names of the Kids, picked favorites, and for the next couple years, liked Buono! and Berryz Koubou more than Morning Musume.

What opened me up to finally listening to them? How can a twelve year old and two thirteen year olds make my current top ten favorite idols list?

First was Aika Mitsui. I liked her best of the Morning Musume 8th generation finalists and rooted her on and she was only thirteen at the time. I just couldn't be a hypocrite anymore.

Then later, I also realized I really love idols. The music, the system, the funny personalities. But in the system, idols tend to range from age twelve to twenty-four, and I'm only going to get older. Someday the last 5th and 6th generation members of Morning Musume will leave and I'll no longer have any members close to my age to follow. I had to give the new kids a chance.

And finally, I enjoyed watching videos of older members from their earlier days. Like Aibon and Nono at age thirteen. I was still enjoying the antics of young idols even if Aibon and Nono are currently my age. Why should I wait for an idol to turn sixteen or eighteen before I go back and watch the silly stuff she did when she was younger? It's fun to follow them currently! It's hard to imagine that about four years ago I would have ran away from the Morning Musume of today!