User:JoshuaJSlone/My History

In 2006 I imported the DS game ''Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan''. My favorite stage was the second, featuring a cover of Koi no Dance Site. However, at the time I didn't really try to look up any more music from the groups featured in the game.

Years later I got and enjoyed Rhythm Heaven for DS and Rhythm Heaven Fever for Wii. The music in them was quite catchy, so a few times a year I'd get a kick to return to the game a bit. In summer 2012 while on one of these kicks I went to YouTube, wondering if anybody had done interesting covers of the music in there, or done their own versions of the vocal songs. I wasn't expecting to find such a professional result--this video of and THE Possible doing a live performance of their in-game songs from the Japanese version, including one with audience interaction mimicking the stage in the game.

I specifically remember thinking to myself that night, "This is something I could probably get really into... but would probably be pretty strange for an adult man. Is this a hole I want to fall down?" Well, I figured, what the hell. Come to find out I'm not so unique, though I hope I don't sound like the people whose 2ch comments I read translated!

At that point I had really no knowledge in this area, so my YouTube wandering went in quite a few directions before I found the next thing to really grab me: the music video for Minimoni. Telephone! Rin Rin Rin. Ridiculous appeals to me, so Minimoni was a pretty obvious fit. From there I started checking out things like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNrvB4KCjeA segments from Hello! Morning] and Utaban appearances, and seeing the appeal of following these groups outside of the music.



However, being 2012, Minimoni was a thing in the far past. I wondered who was worth paying attention to that was still active. Again I bopped around a bit, but I think by way of Shin Minimoni I soon found myself checking out S/mileage. I liked the video for Otona ni Narutte Muzukashii!!!, so I downloaded an illegit copy of Warugaki 1 to check them out some more. Most of the songs were good, but Asu wa Date na no ni, Ima Sugu Koe ga Kikitai kind of blew me away and I've been a S/mileage man since. Though a bit less specifically since coming to realize it was the same guy behind most of their, Minimoni's, Rhythm Heaven's, and a bunch of other groups' music.

In these early days by way of Google I often ended up at either Wikipedia pages or here at Hello! Project Wiki--though often enough the content of the pages was largely the same. I started to gravitate more toward H!P Wiki since being a more specific site it got more into details, and with things like the comments, blogs, and even color choices felt like a more friendly place for this topic than plain old Wikipedia--not that I still don't use Wikipedia a hundred times a day. However, at the time I did not have much to add, and made very few anonymous comments like this one.

I was using Amazon MP3 for my digital music and preferred not to have a split library, but once I realized iTunes made a lot of Hello! Project stuff available in the US legitimately and there was no sign of it coming to Amazon soon, I jumped on. Actual purchasing brought on some confusion, though, trying to keep track of which songs were available on which editions of which singles and/or albums, to try and neither miss a song nor end up double-buying something. THIS, I thought, was something I might be able to do to share back to the community, something not already found on H!P Wiki. So I started making a table of S/mileage songs and which releases/editions they could be found on. Then I started adding things like lyrics/composer/arranger info, title translations... and it became quite a mess of a table. I've got some experience working on databases, and I realized this would be something database-appropriate, allowing for all this data to be accessible, but not necessarily all shown in one giant confusing lump. I also realized it could lead to something much bigger and more interesting than one S/mileage table. And that is how my site DohBell (anagram for Hello DB) started.

I gathered information and images for DohBell from several sites including H!P Wiki. While doing so I started to notice errors to fix or little gaps to fill, so I started fixing and filling them. As I became more familiar with the norms of the site I followed the example of more experienced users in spreading certain changes, and saw where I could make more improvements of my own without stepping on too many toes. This continued on for about half a year until a landslide of more than one vote swept me into adminhood.