There is a drama hardly known outside of Japan behind Morning Musume's "Renai Hunter" dance video.

As this title says, there is a drama behind the promotion of Mormosu's "Renai Hunter" (and "One Two Three"). Apparently their office wanted their audience to dance to them! Did you realize it? There are even dance shot versions.

I believe there is a significant "strategy" hidden behind it.

Let's go back to March this year.

What's ニコラジ? ニコラジ (Nico Raji) is short for Nico Nico Radio. It's an official Nico Nama (internet broadcasting service). It's hosted by professional raidio personalities （やまだひさし and others）. It usually invites famous Nico Nico users, such as 八王子P (Vocaloid P), 事務員G (versatile musician), and ダルビッシュP (Vocaloid P).

The first job as a solo personality for Suzuki Kanon （鈴木香音） of Morning Musume was appearing back in March as a video message in the Nico Raji.

She was there about 3 minutes. She was promoting Morning Musume's new single "恋愛ハンター". In the program, she directed her message to one of her fans, who is a famous Nico Nico dancer and has his own community of about 10K members. His name is 白服 (Shirofuku, or "white shirt").


You can view her message in this video. This is a screen capture of Nico Raji where 白服 makes an appearance as a radio personality. He is sitting on the left.



In there, Zukki (the nickname of Suzuki Kanon) says the dance video by 白服 was 素敵 (wonderful) and she enjoyed it, and that she thanks him for dancing Mormusu's song.

She wrorte an autograph for him, in there she wrote "please dance to Renai Hunter". In the program, Shiro-fuku falls into sobs to see the video message by an aidoru whom he so admires.

In response to Kanon's heart-warming message, Shirofuku pledged to dance to Renai Hunter and upload it. He kept her promise, and uploaded it on NND (Nico Nico Douga).




In there, eleven men are dancing, which include Kimagure Prince （気まぐれプリンス）. Kimagure Prince is known to dance mainly to H!P songs.

Great video indeed!

In the program, most of the comments are nice to Shirofuku.

But on 2ch (the biggest text-based message board in Japan) there's a category dedicated to Morning Musume called モ娘（狼） .
There some of the comments reflected the envies by other Wotas.

If you'd like to read it, Google with 鈴木香音　白服.

You'll notice this word used a lot in the thread: 私信. This means "personal message".

Zukki posted that video message onto Morning Musume's official Youtube channel.

In aidoru business, using their official media as a means of sending messages of personal nature is generally frowned upon.

This is a controversial issue. On one hand you need to do some fan service. On the other showing fondness to particular persons causes their fans' jealousy.

I believe as far as this video message, her office allowed her to do a little fan service like that. She also did her decent job of promoting Mormusu's activities.

In this video, she's promoting Mormusu's new single "One Two Three" and asking her audience to dance to it and upload it.



As far as the latter, I've never heard of aidoru asking such a favor to her audience! This is unprecedented, as far as my knowledge.

I don't know who first contacted, Nico Nico admins or Upfront Agency. This is for certain, it's beneficial to both of them!

A member of an Aidoru group asking for Nico Nico and Youtube users to upload Odottemita （踊ってみた） dance covers. I have never heard such a thing!

I have a feeling that this little incident may be a symbolizing little event for the general commitement of aidoru to internet broadcasting.

For conventional aidoru, TV mostly mattered. Of course they had to promote their records (later CD, DVD) all over Japan, doing concert, appearing in magazines and on radio and such. But their most effective medium was through TV.

Maybe, she or her office might have known the immensely successful advertisement by Lotte Fit's.

You know, Morning Musume has been trailing much behind AKB48 in Japan. They are working toward coming back on top.

This is my wild guess, but I suspect they set their eyes on Nico Nico's (and Youtube's) odottemita culture.

Or what if all of this is a scheme by NND's admins （運営）?

Anyway, I find the tie-up (though not official in nature) between Morning Musume and Odottemita culture exciting!

I tried to help promote the collaboration of MMD culture of NND with J-POP dancing on Youtube, but it was far from successful.

That's all the more reason I find this incident exciting!

#Morning-Musume #鈴木香音 #Zukki #Suzuki-Kanon #Hello-Project