L’interview est disponible en français en première page !
MeseMoa., formerly known as Morning Musumen, is a J-Pop group composed of 9 members: Shirofuku, Kimagure prince, Tomitake, Nokkuso, Aoi, Nozakibento, Nibansenji, Nichan and Forgeru. The name “Morning Musumen” is stem from “Morning Musume” with a simple “n” added at the end; this way, the members show that they are men and not women, unlike the group they took inspiration from. This name was chosen considering that before debuting they made covers of the songs of Morning Musume, that they published on Nico Nico.
They debuted in 2013 with their first single “War Cry~Idol Kidori de Nani ga Warui~” which was followed by multiple singles. The first album was released in 2014 and was called “Wonder Dream“, followed by “2222” in April 2015, and “Thanks!” in April 2016.
They became a true phenomenon in a very short amount of time, counting 50 million vues on their music videos. MeseMoa has now its place in the Japanese music industry and wants to do more! It is in this state of mind that they came to France, Japan Expo, to thanks and conquer the French fans.
Were you among the fans that had the chance to see them?
We offer you to know more of MeseMoa, in the interview we had with them down below!
Hello, could you introduce yourselves individually, as well as the whole group?
Tomitake: I am Tomitake.
Nichan: I am Nichan.
Kimagure prince: My name is Kimagure prince.
Nibansenji: I am Nibansenji.
Shirofuku: My name is Shirofuku.
Nozakibento: I am Nozakibento.
Aoi: Hi, I am Aoi.
Nokkuso: My name is Nokkuso.
Forgeru: My name is Forgeru.
MeseMoa. formed thanks to the video sharing website. Could you say a little bit more about the creation of the group?
Shirofuku: We, originally, were friends or friends of friends. We all made cover dances, when one day, one of us had the idea of sharing a video where we were a few friends together. This video was a cover of ‘Ren’ai Hunter’ from Morning Musume and it was at that time that we started gathering and forming the group, with this video on Nico Nico.
At first, we only gathered for the video and we did not intend to form a group, but the video went viral and we thought that we could continue to make videos together and to become a group.
Did you imagine playing your own songs one day while you started with doing covers?
Tomitake: We only did covers of idols’ songs, and with time we started thinking that being idols ourselves would be good. We wanted to be idols. It was this motivation that made us do music.
According to you, what were the reasons of your huge success?
Kimagure prince: I think this is our approach that is original. There was only a few youtubers that started in music at that time and the people that watched the videos thought it was original and were interested by us, so it is probably the key to our success.
Since your debut in 2013, what changed the most in your lives?
Kimagure prince: We all had a job before starting in music and we all lived in different prefecture of Japan. We all resigned from our jobs and moved to Tokyo. We left everything behind and it was a very important decision.
Your international popularity took a leap forward last year with the release of “Shadow Kiss”, do you have another engaged project like this one that you would like to make?
Tomitake: In “Shadow Kiss”, you could see two men kissing on the lips. Instead of thinking about the international response, we were worried about how the public was going to react to this atypical video. Foreign fans’ reaction surprised us, because people saw in this song the artistic side of it and not the anecdotal. We were delighted.
How did you get the idea?
Forgeru: Sometimes, we can see music videos were men are kissing, be it Japanese or from elsewhere. But, we were nine people and we all kissed on the lips, we thought that it was something that never happened until now and it was fun to do.
So, do you have other ideas of atypical projects that you would like to do?
Nokkuso: It may be something less atypical, but it is not really concrete, we would like to film music video while travelling abroad.
For example, in the Great Canyon, or Paris at Arc de Triomphe (laugh). Everything is beautiful in France, so wherever it may be, it will always be great.
What would be the next step for your career after the Japan Expo as a group?
Shirofuku: Our dream for Japan is to produce on stage at the Nippon Budokan. It has yet to happen but it is a dream we have right now.
It is also our first coming in France. We were able to meet our French and European public, considering there are people coming from all Europe. We will keep conquering our public in Japan and the whole wide world.
To finish, do you have a message for your French fans?
Shirofuku: We would like to thanks all the French people who are interested in the Japanese culture and who are interested in our music. We were happily surprised to see this strong interest in the Japanese culture in general. On the other hand, we will do our best to answer to the expectations about the Nippon culture while producing new songs. We hope to come back on stage in France.
Thank you to the festival Japan Expo for this interview opportunity
as well as the smiling MeseMoa. for this amazing encounter!
