was a one-off

Hello! Project is a Japanese musical collective consisting of all female recording artists and groups under Up-Front Promotion, a subsidiary of Up-Front Group. The name was initially used as Michiyo Heike and Morning Musume's fan club name in 1999, but has s ...

unit formed in 2004. The members were

Maki Goto is a Japanese singer, lyricist, and former actress. Born and raised in Edogawa, Tokyo, Goto began her musical career in 1999 when she joined Morning Musume as the only third generation member. Her first single with the group, " Love Machine", t ...

Aya Matsuura is a Japanese actress and pop singer, from Himeji, Hyogo, Japan. Career 2000–2009: Hello! Project Aya auditioned in 2000 for the fourth Morning Musume & Heike Michiyo Protegee Audition and was selected along with Sheki-Dol to become a part o ...

and

Natsumi Abe is a Japanese singer and actress, a former member of Morning Musume, and currently a member of Dream Morning Musume. Biography Career She was born in Muroran, Hokkaidō, Japan. On August 13, 2003, she released her first single, "22 Sai no Wat ...

. The group was composed of soloists, similar to Gomattou, and released their only single, , on October 6, 2004. It reached 4th place on TBS's Top 100 weekly countdown show Count Down TV. Like Gomattou, the name of the group is a portmanteau of the members' names: , an alternate reading of the first character in Maki Goto's surname (後藤), , the last character in Aya Matsuura's surname (松浦), and , Abe's first name. The trio was scheduled to perform together on NHK's 55th

Kōhaku Uta Gassen , more commonly known simply as ''Kōhaku'', is an annual New Year's Eve television special produced by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. It is broadcast live simultaneously on television and radio, nationally and internationally by the NHK net ...

, but Abe was suspended from Hello! Project for plagiarism in December 2004, so Goto and Matsuura had to perform without her. The trio reunited for the "Triangle Energy" concert tour in spring 2005. Both the song itself and in particular the music video for "Ren'ai Sentai Shitsuranger" pay homage to the Japanese

Super Sentai is a Japanese superhero team metaseries and media franchise consisting of television series and films produced by Toei Company, and Bandai, and aired by TV Asahi ("Sentai" is the Japanese word for "task force" or "fighting squadron"). The sho ...

franchise. All three members later participated in the similarly themed group

Def.Diva Def.Diva (often stylized as DEF.DIVA) was a "special group" formed in 2005 from the Hello! Project idol umbrella, and consisted of Aya Matsuura, Maki Goto, Natsumi Abe and Rika Ishikawa. The band's name is an abbreviation of the phrase "Definite ...

Discography

DVDs

References

External links

Official Hello! Project profile

{{Authority control Japanese musical trios Japanese idol groups Japanese girl groups Japanese pop music groups Hello! Project groups Musical groups from Tokyo