Wota Want To Be Kanna, Or: Possibly TMI Fun In Relation To Kid Idols

Times like these that I wonder why I get so involved in… I don’t know, like, the lives, the well-being of the girls in Hello! Project. I’m telling you, it’s difficult! It is really, really hard. You know, all of my favorite idols usually end up being terribly handicapped in some way, or they have some awful problem, or just… whatever. I always pick the lamest ones.

Just for comparison’s sake, let’s look at what might be considered the more “perfect” girls in Hello! Project. Here’s an easy one… Sugaya Risako. Sure, she can’t sing, she’s got attitude problems like nobody’s business, but these things are all very easily overlooked because she’s fourteen years old and she’s jailbait city. I mean, right? She’s a lead. No problems there. Um, how about another one? Kago Ai, golden girl from the very beginning. Sure, you say you feel so horribly betrayed by her when she smokes or gets it on with old men, but then she comes back and you’re right back at her feet again. Don’t lie.

Now let’s look at my favorites. In her history, Michishige Sayumi has accidentally thrown a microphone, leaving her with no choice but to mime her way through the rest of a live television performance. Ishimura Maiha could not dance for shit. While she is not related to Hello! Project at all, Matsushima Hatsune is the kind of girl you’d laugh at and trip in the halls if she didn’t have some pretty amazing knockers to her name. I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to say. All I can tell you is the truth.

This has created a pretty bad habit of… I guess you’d call it “mothering from afar.” And a majority of these girls are either older than me or nearly my age, but I just can’t help it. They need help. To my credit? This is usually, for the most part, a joke. I feel the “aww” reaction, but I do not act upon it… because I’m in the fucking United States.

However. (And this is the first of many times that I’ll say it, but this is the hardest thing…) This is the first time that I have, for real, felt that mothering instinct in full force. Like, “Bitches, get out of my way! Move, motherfucker! My baby needs me!” It is seriously hard.

Oh, Kanna. You’re breaking my heart.

I think — well, I assume — that most people have at least heard of the Whoa, Kanna Is A Lesbian! rumor? Months ago, I caught wind of it, but as they were just the words of some random person referencing it offhand, I was pretty much like “Yeah, okay” and then I went back to writing my Yajima Maimi/Umeda Erika fanfiction. (…That one wasn’t so much of a joke, by the way. I can seriously link you if you want it.) Without the evidence or a source to back it up, I wasn’t really interested.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago. If you’ve ever been near YouTube, you know that one video leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another, until you have no idea what you were even looking at to begin with. Yeah, that’s how I found this. Suddenly, it all came rushing back: “Oh, right, I remember that!” Finally, I had the original source of it all to come to my own conclusions about it. And wow, what a controversial clip it is.

First of all, the reactions in the video’s comments are not at all favorable, as is to be expected. “Such a pretty girl, why choose gay” is far and away my favorite of the bunch. But there’s also, more than anything, in fact, a whole lot of denial. “She can’t mean that,” they say. “She has to be meaning something else. This isn’t true.”

I’m not even going to try to say something like, “Well, is it?! We’ll find out when I put my rudimentary Japanese skills to the test!!” I think, when you try to force what you think are the facts out of an inconsequential, fifty-second radio show clip like that, you miss the point entirely. Point? Sure, she may or may not be into girls, but isn’t it… kind of cruel to say things that indicate that you’d pretty much drop her ass like a hot potato if she were? No matter what the outcome, that shines right through.

Then again, ℃-ute themselves aren’t much support, either. All those cries of “Eeeeeeehhh?!” would put me right off of just casually being like, “No, I’m seriously into pussy.” God, what a situation.

If I’m hearing correctly in the video, someone whose voice I can’t quite place mentions a Fujimoto, but I could be wrong… In any case, that bit of name-dropping comes in when they’re elaborating on why Kanna could feel the way that she does: “Perhaps you prefer being around your female friends as opposed to boys?” Miki had an almost identical moment on a radio show, as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was brought into the conversation as an example. Thing is, Miki was at least twenty at the time, and Kanna’s, what, fourteen?

So, as you see, we’re coming back to where I started now. Poor thing is so young, and to boot, she’s an only child! Sheesh, Sayu’s had too many lesbian moments to count, but at least she could call up her beloved older sister for advice. “Oneechan, lately I’ve been groping my friends in concerts. Do you think I like girls?” It’s almost tragically hopeless.

And I know, at the source of it all, that I can trace it back to my similar experiences in childhood. Sigh. Kanna’s almost an exact replica of me as a kid, which makes it all the more painful to watch. The only person I had to talk to about the situation was my mother, who, after I finally got up the courage to bring it up to her, brushed it off and wouldn’t discuss it with me further without rolling her eyes and generally giving off the impression that she thought me immature. I was maybe thirteen at the time, and now I’m going on seventeen. Amazing! My feelings haven’t changed. Understandably, I want nothing more than to give her a hug and assure her that a kind gaijin is there for her should she need to talk! Sure, maybe that’s creepy, but I have the best of intentions!

Eh, but Kanna’s also young, and for Christ’s sake, she’s surrounded by like forty chicks in a world where she’s strictly prohibited from dating guys. That must be hard for a maturing girl, huh? Sometimes I wonder if Hello! Project is really the greatest thing to be a part of… The Kids, especially, I wish could grow up normally. Anyway, altogether, this ends up kind of inconclusive and maybe a waste of some thirteen hundred words, but hey, who said I was ever looking for a conclusion, anyway? Mostly I just wanted to find a way to express my thoughts on the weird sort of phobia that the Hello! Project fandom has towards these things. Ever gradually, I come closer to that ideal of actually relating to the shit I write about on my blog…

Whatever her situation, I really wish Kanna the best, along with all the time and understanding in the world to sort out her feelings. She’s inspired me — that’s got to count for something, anyway. And as far as I’m concerned? The wota are just jealous because she’s getting more delicious Airi goodness than they’ll ever even be anywhere close to. Just gotta brush off the haters, ROFL.