Triangle -- Triangle Love Letter（トライアングルラブレター）

 

Wildly popular 70s aidoru trio Candies（キャンディーズ）announced their retirement together in 1977 (with the breakup becoming official the following year in April) which was probably a body blow to all of their fans. However, their supervising production company, Watanabe Productions, wasn't willing to give up the ghost quite yet. They gathered together another trio of young aidoru wannabes and perceiving them to be the proteges of Candies, the new group was initially called Candies Jr. This new group consisted of Mitsuko "Micchi" Mori（森光子）, Mayumi "Mami" Ueno（上野真由美）, and Akie "Aki" Kato（加藤明恵）.

The most ardent and dedicated Candies fans weren't impressed with the moniker of Candies Jr, and probably made it very well known to Watanabe Productions, and so the trio's name was switched over to the safer Triangle（トライアングル）. According to their J-Wiki bio, Triangle had actually appeared alongside Candies in the brief overlap time before the latter finally did break up on variety shows such as "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（8時だョ!全員集合...It's 8 O'Clock! Everybody Assemble）, and it was duly noted about how much Triangle resembled their sempai; again not sure how Candies fans took that.

The trio released their debut single "Triangle Love Letter" in April 1978, and judging from the cover of the record, yep, it looks like the next generation were made to resemble Candies right down to their hairstyles. "Triangle Love Letter", which was written by Takemi Shima（島武実）and composed/arranged by Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄介）, even sounds like a Candies tune with the delivery and the shaki-shaki melody.

Even though I couldn't find out where exactly "Triangle Love Letter" ended up on Oricon, the J-Wiki article noted that it was the lone hit of theirs that got into the Top 30. There were six more singles and two original albums released up to 1980, but it was basically a slow fadeout for the trio until the official breakup came in 1981.

One of the members of the trio rang a bell for me. Mitsuko Mori, who was a namesake of the legendary actress, has already gotten her own article on KKP after changing her name to Michiko Komori（小森みちこ）. Under that name, she released one single and one album, and then went into the movie industry. Meanwhile Akie Kato took on the stage name of Aki Fujimoto（藤本あき）and ended up as a featured player on the aforementioned "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo" until its final episode in 1985; she would then marry film director Ryoichi Kimizuka（君塚良一）, one of whose projects was "Odoru Dai Sosasen ~ The Movie"（踊る大捜査線 THE MOVIE） in 1998. Finally, Mayumi Ueno soon became a radio personality in her native Aichi Prefecture.