I understand UFA not wanting to pick girls that could surpass Sakura vocally for Momusu, but they should have at least picked girls that could sing a little bit good since the beginning like Miki or Chisaki. The group focuses so much on dance the girls probably doesn't even have the time to take extra singing lessons. So I'm not surprised most of the actual members didn't improve that much even after all these years in the group.
Members: Akane Haga, Ayumi Ishida, Chisaki Morito, Erina Ikuta, Homare Okamura, Kaede Kaga, Maria Makino, Mei Yamazaki, Miki Nonaka, Mizuki Fukumura, Reina Yokoyama, Rio Kitagawa, Sakura Oda
The shakuhatchi flutes of "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" were initially a hard sell, though maybe Kaoru Ookubo wasn't all to blame. A different kind of flute, I presume, but they rang close enough in memory for me to the one squeaking in the deranged production behind NCT 127's "Sticker," released about a year prior, for the Morning Musume song to echo some secondhand dissonance. Listening back, Ookubo's arrangement is nowhere as screwball, but on the other hand, it could use some loosening of screws: it remains steely to a fault, sucking away any potential dynamism, and a general stiffness dulls "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" as a whole.
Behind an already-steely production, the idols' unaffected cool begins to sound monotonous than it does stoic. Their performance of cool in itself fits in tune to the narrative that deals with self-confidence and emotional clarity: "It's up to me," they sing in the opening refrain before they think openly about writing their own future. But other than few accents of extra bombast to prep for the chorus, the song hardly offers peaks and valleys, with moments of epiphany framed in the same serious tone as moments of questioning.
And there are genuine moments in "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" that would add some humanity to a perfectionist idol group if only the song highlighted them as such. "We can't look into / 100 years into the future," the idols sing in the chorus. "We build the present / but who should we live for?" This humbling self-reflection arrives, too, after speaking as a role model: "You're going to grow up soon / a border made by someone else / you're already magnificent," they assure after describing a society mired by pressure. The song elevate neither parts, with one bleeding into the other.
To be fair, the ability to sing of both victories and tragedies as one juxtaposed stream of thought has been the magic behind the best Morning Musume songs. "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" also mashes together two seemingly separate conversations with the idols aspiring to rise above society in the first verse and then indulging in vanity in the second, talking about wanting to be a billionaire and pursue on their own infatuation. But the randomness sounds too streamlined for it to stand out as a quirk, their stony cool delivering them all in the same tone. Morning Musume have impressed in the past with their stoic demeanor, but "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" shows stoicness can also be a crutch.