Why do you knuckleheads have to turn every single thread on this site into a debate?

This is why we can't have anything nice.

reread the 1st post dude.

IceCream Wrote:And it's not just Western people who think like this... i found this video:

3 million views, overwhelmingly Japanese men aged 25-54, 2:1 dislikes to likes, and plenty of comments in Japanese about why.

That's their sister group SDN which is targeted at adults specifically.. You need to be 18+ to get into their shows, or at least you did at one point.

Tzadeck Wrote:Marketing^^

We live in a capitalist country, if you can make a lot of money legally, its a pretty bad idea not to.

I happened to be wandering past an SKE48 meet event in Sakae a couple of weeks ago. Waaay less creepy crowd than AKB48. Average age was probably younger than me, or at least there were way fewer guys with grey hair.

Gingerninja Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:And it's not just Western people who think like this... i found this video:

3 million views, overwhelmingly Japanese men aged 25-54, 2:1 dislikes to likes, and plenty of comments in Japanese about why.

That's their sister group SDN which is targeted at adults specifically.. You need to be 18+ to get into their shows, or at least you did at one point.

oh, is it? hahah, shows how much i know about them

Gingerninja Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:Marketing^^

We live in a capitalist country, if you can make a lot of money legally, its a pretty bad idea not to.

Sorry, it's just not the case that any way of making money is equally fine. I'm sure if you thought about it for, say, 2 minutes, you could come up with plenty of examples where things that are legal are not so good.

Just because something isn't covered by law doesn't make it right to do it. Choosing not to exploit people for money may not make you much money, but it's not a bad idea, either.

i found this linked from the AKB lesbian kissing post that Vix linked to:
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/09/13...dol-otaku/ NSFW!!
japanese version: http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1663235.html

So, @gingerninja or anyone else defending the marketing of AKB, doesn't it strike you as a little hypocritical that on one hand they are clearly marketing AKB to people who are gonna do stuff like this, then turn round and say that they're just little girls when they do do this?

EDIT: done, thanks Vix. hahah it's yet another kind of um, special hypocricy that leads a site full of those kinds of ads to criticise AKB.....

^^ Maybe a lot of people might realize it but some may not. I recommend tagging all Sankaku links as NSFW It was something I hadn't thought about till it was mentioned to me in another thread.

IceCream Wrote:i found this linked from the AKB lesbian kissing post that Vix linked to:
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/09/13...dol-otaku/

So, @gingerninja or anyone else defending the marketing of AKB, doesn't it strike you as a little hypocritical that on one hand they are clearly marketing AKB to people who are gonna do stuff like this, then turn round and say that they're just little girls when they do do this?

There is no accounting for stupidity. You could say football is aimed at the working man/ lowest common denominator, so when people break out in fights because the red team beat the blue one.. you could say, well.. it was bound to happen. Doesn't make it right.

About the marketing thing, it's a moral choice. I could go forever on why DLC for games is immoral, but to some it's good business.
Music and Sex are always linked, regardless of what anyone says. The Jonas brothers.. the righteous "no sex before marriage" group from the ever so holy Disney, sold their image based on their strategic use of sex as an end goal for the young girl fan base. "Maybe if I save myself for marriage, I can have someone as dreamy as then" *eyes fluttering* and all that shit..

It's prevalent in every society. If you look inwards there's as messed up crap in our own. The fact if you don't get blind drunk by 13 in Britain you're considered an outcast by most of your own peers is far more sickening to me, than legal age girls parading around in bikini's.

it's not stupidity... it's direct exploitation.

If the AKB girls are uncomfortable with their fanbase, and in situations like those (and it's understandable that they would be), their marketing director should not be marketing at people like that or putting them in those situations. It's that simple.

Besides which, i don't think anyone is on a crusade to say that AKB are the root of all evil, or that there isn't anything bad going on closer to home, or don't care more about those things that aren't so good that are closer to home. It's just that this is a Japanese forum, so stuff about Japan comes up and gets commented on more often...

how come if someone makes money by using their looks, it's immediately labelled as exploitation?

making money with looks isn't necessarily exploitation. Using someone's looks to market products at groups of people who that person is not comfortable with, or in a way which they're not comfortable with is, though, isn't it?

oh if you're going on all about this sexualization debate why didn't anyone bring up ske48's song kataomoi finally (the MV). what they said to the promote the song was there's many types of love and some other stuff. But I was just like... they're just going for shock factor? But then regarding the girl on girl kissing in the MV, the members were getting intereviewed they were like oh it was fun or it wasn't bad since we're so close to each other anyway. So it didn't seem as what I perceived at first just b.c. of the interview.. The thing that I found the most inappropriate about that MV was the fact that they used matsui jurina... because out of all of them... she's the one that actually seems like she would/could be bi or les. Some japanese person wrote that comment on a YT video and I was like I whole-heartedly agree.

Now I wish there was no language boundaries. There is this song on youtube where lyrics actually matter.

A pun on those lyrics is:
Love does not always mean the same thing,
It's different with daddy, it's different with mommy...

lol
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2012/02/03...-on-akb48/

I think the most interesting thing about the whole AKB matter, and it shows some interesting insight into the culture, is the lack of outrage in the media over how the girls are portrayed. They are older now, but there was a point where many of them were younger and I believe the other stage groups may have considerably younger members. But no one is up in arms about this nor was there much comment about the lingerie in Heavy Rotation. Heavy Rotation is also, unsurprisingly, probably one of AKBs most popular songs. I'm sure there are people out there but they are vocal minority it would seem. I think if there is any media focus on the matter its probably on the creepy guys which follow the group around, but I think most people would just sigh, shrug, and go "オタク, 仕方ないでしょう."

This is why Akimoto is a marketing genius too I think because no one has pointed the light at the fact that really his agency is behind this all. In fact I dare say some WANT to but their media corp won't allow them because it would hurt their chances for interviews and publicity with the AKB. Just take a look at the recent scandal with the one AKB member's mother as proof of this. ZERO mainstream media coverage. The girls, even if there is a certain amount of 'abuse' from the top going on (ex: overworking, pressure to "inspire" the fans, etc), are not going to come out. Even if it turns out to be true, the girl will be blacklisted and no recording label in Japan will touch her with a 10ft pole. Its happened before concerning more mundane issues; different artist though. So Akimoto gets to sit between the obsessive fan base which fuel the machine and the girls who make the money and profit like a boss on merchandising.

Gingerninja had said it before but it only clicked now. Recording labels around the world should be taking note of this type of setup and trying enact it. It may not work in every culture but in some it will, AND it has actually started. There are AKB sister groups popping up in Singapore and China (Korea might have one too). I kind of would like to see someone try and pull off something similar in the US, but for some reason I just don't think it would gain traction in the same way it does in Japan. I don't just mean AKB + creepy fans, I mean large girl groups.

(Last point) I think the reason for this is cultural difference on artists. I once had an anthropology class on asian popular culture. It was heavily focused on Taiwan though since that was the profs. main area of expertise, and he focused heavily on Mandopop in particular. One of the interesting things about this genre and which is prevalent in most of East Asia, Japan included, is that a lot of artists don't write their own music. It may be played off as they having written it but it can often be figured out who wrote the original piece. A lot of listeners realize this (in Taiwan espc.) and they don't mind; the person singing it is all that matters. Kind of like a play writers and the actors. But in the US there is this very strong ideal in the populace that artists should write their own music and if its discovered they aren't then it somehow devalues the artist and turns them into shams. And I think this might be one reason among many, why AKB groups would never take off in the US.

IceCream Wrote:So, @gingerninja or anyone else defending the marketing of AKB, doesn't it strike you as a little hypocritical that on one hand they are clearly marketing AKB to people who are gonna do stuff like this, then turn round and say that they're just little girls when they do do this?

i don't think they're clearly marketing AKB to people who want to jerk off first before shaking their hands. i don't even know how you market something like that and i think some of the fan behavior is seriously messed up.

(i do think the handshake events are a little bit out of control since they were conceived with a small market in mind, so it's a bit of work to scale it to a national market.)

buying a single is actually pretty good deal though. you get a handshake event ticket, a trading card, a DVD with music videos for all the songs on the single + a bonus feature (anything from comedy routines to fashion shows), etc. compared to your typical CD which just has music and costs the same. and there's nothing that says you HAVE to buy multiple CDs, it's just an option.

personally, if i went to one of those events, i would get multiple tickets. i think it's kind of a waste of time and money to go all the way out somewhere to shake some girl's hand for 10 seconds and then go home. might as well maximize it. i'm not sure i would go to these events though, the weirdo fans really kill it for me.

well, perhaps stopping the handshaking events would be a good idea... yeah, i can really see your point about it working better as a small market thing.

there are various ways of directly marketing at people like that, although i don't know if they do all of these things?
One is to encourage obsessive collecting behaviour.
Another is in targeting through magazines, for example, marketing AKB girls through articles, interviews and pictures in magazines aimed at older men and otaku crowds.
Another is doing slightly creepy things like the "make a baby with an AKB girl thing". I mean, i'm sure to some people it's just a bit of fun, but still, it IS slightly creepy fun lol, and likely appeals to that group.

One other marketing tactic that stuck me as a bit off was that thing that (i think it was you?) brought up in another thread about the Heavy Rotation video. The director of that video was saying that it's about girls having fun, but the video very clearly uses well known sexual imagery.
I don't have a problem with people making softcore videos like that in general, but if they're selling it to the AKB girls as one thing, while selling it to male audiences as another, that strikes me as a bit off. Releasing a statement saying that the video means something totally different doesn't change the fact that they know that's not what the vast majority of the audience will take from the video.
It's the same with the feeding each other thing or girls kissing, just because someone *says* it's about accepting all kinds of different love or girls having fun together, it doesn't mean that those same marketing guys don't know damn well who their target audience for that really is. It's just a way of covering their backs and trying to make sure that that kind of imagery doesn't offend one section of their fanbase, (or the girls involved) while trying to appeal to another.

i dunno, it just seems that if the girls were aware enough of what image they're sending out when they do stuff like that, they wouldn't be so surprised about the overtly sexual comments they end up getting...

EDIT: for groups like SDN(?) it's a little different, because they are directly supposed to be a sexual thing, right? So you'd imagine that the girls in those kind of groups go into that because they like it. But it seems (from the small amount i've read about AKB) that they are into it because they like looking pretty or cute, singing and dancing and being famous in general... so it's a little different, right?

There has been talk about changes to the handshake events, because of stuff like this. I don't really think anyone took into account people rubbing cum on the girls.. i mean what kind of a deranged person does that? No wonder they're all alone with their posters.. freaks. Maybe if they'd realise lots of girls are into AKB too... they'd tidy their act up and then maybe they could get a girlfriend, I mean they have some common ground there to start with. "Hey want to go to karaoke and sing some akb songs?" yeah great.. Japan's problem of everyone being single solved.. mite help the birthrate too if they all try to procreate their own little idols, I mean if they keep growing AKB will eventually encompass 95% of the high school girls in Japan anyway...

Their strength is also a weakness, because there are so many, they are all marketed in different ways, the sexy type, the little sister type, the whatever. That allows a lot more fans to connect with them. You might not like member A because they act slutty, but you like member B because she's funny for example. So that allows a large catchment area of fans. Taken at face value, yes I can see the message that gets delivered can be a bit muddled.

The only people I ever discussed it with at Uni in Japan was girls, the guys have their favourite girl they found cute or whatever, but it seemed to me the girls were bigger fans in general. (in that age group) Just your typical, girls want to be them, guys want to sleep with them, like every other pop act.

I really think the handshake events do more good than bad though, even though there's an adjusting period. Obviously the jerk fans get a lot of attention, but really, it's a nice event.
The smaller groups like SKE and NMB have cellphone picture events where you can ask them to do a pose and take a picture on your cellphone. I think that stuff is really cool.

On your link to sankaku, they quoted member Akimoto Sayaka, who was saying that fans should observe manners. I think that was blog in response to what happened to her earlier; I think a fan was making fun of her during the handshake and flicked her off, and she got majorly pissed and stopped her line, got the fan's friend to bring him back and apologize in front of her.
But she's one of the more thick-skinned girls. Maybe because she's half Filipino.

Anyway, regarding those marketing tactics... I'm not sure how much they contribute. There's nothing wrong with inherently collecting, and their magazine exposure is par for the course for idols--they're mostly in manga collections and fashion magazines. The "make a baby" thing was pretty stupid even by fans' standards. Even considering all that, I don't think they're directly or indirectly causing bad behavior. It's kinda like the argument that "Girls dress like sluts in clubs, it's like they're asking to be raped."

What I don't get is why they don't just ban these fans or turn them in or something. You get banned for standing next to the theater in Akiba for too long, why don't you get banned for this near criminal behavior?
If I rubbed semen on my hands and then shook hands with Girl Scouts selling me cookies and telling them "I masturbated before coming to see you," I'd be sued, arrested, and put in that sexual offender database that is practically social murder. It doesn't even have to be a Girl Scout, it could be anybody. I don't understand how they don't prosecute this stuff in Japan.

On Heavy Rotation:
There are a couple reasons why this song is so popular among AKB fans. One of the biggest reasons is because the person who was considered the #2, Oshima Yuko, actually beat out the #1, Maeda Atsuko in the fan election for the new single, so she became the center. Second is that it IS the fan election single; the members that appear in the video are the members that were voted in to represent the group. Third is that the song is incredibly catchy. It maintained a high ranking in karaoke which I think is for several reasons; it's catchy, it's fun and kinda hype, and it's easy to sing.

The video, when released, was controversial even among AKB fans who thought it was too much. So no, it wasn't "ho hum, no one really cared." There was definitely a lot of talk.
There wasn't an official statement released, but rather, an interview was granted with the director, Ninagawa Mika, who had full creative control over the entire video. She's an award winning photographer.
If you go to her website, http://www.ninamika.com/ja/index.asp, it's pretty easy to draw parallels between her use of color in her photos and in the Heavy Rotation video. I have yet to watch her movie, Sakuran, but it seems like there she also believes in strong feminity, casting the controversial Tsuchiya Anna for her lead and Ringo Shiina to compose the music.
Because it parallels her earlier works, I don't think it's just your average slutty softcore video.

Maybe I'm missing some of the issues involved, but if you really want to stop fans from committing deranged acts, then get some extra security for awhile. Whenever a fan gives a, ahh, sticky handshake... have security take them aside, take down all their information and mug-shot them, and bar them from all future AKB48 events (and any other events the company has control over.) Notify their household and employer of this fact, but to avoid any trouble with whatever the Japanese equivalent of defamation laws are, phrase it as a letter asking for their cooperation and refraining from buying the offender any event tickets under another name.
(Best case, hand them over to the police, but I don't know if any Japanese law was violated. I think handing them over to the police is what would happen in the U.S., but we have a lot of sex crime laws.)

Do this three or four times and the extreme behavior should be solved, although if you do this for lewd comments you're walking into a trap with "where's the line" especially with double-entendre, and offending fans in general (especially when it turns into a he-said she-said situation if the fan's words weren't recorded clearly). But being strict with fans that are crossing the line into physical misbehavior should, I think, be met with general approval.

I don't know why some such measure hasn't been taken. Or maybe some measure has been taken and it's just subtle and being kept out of the media to avoid creating unpleasant coverage?

Gingerninja Wrote:There has been talk about changes to the handshake events, because of stuff like this. I don't really think anyone took into account people rubbing cum on the girls.. i mean what kind of a deranged person does that?

Presumably it's the same kind of perverted guy who gropes random girls on trains, i.e. a significant percentage of the Japanese male population.

vix86 Wrote:I think the most interesting thing about the whole AKB matter, and it shows some interesting insight into the culture, is the lack of outrage in the media over how the girls are portrayed.

Yeah, I saw a story about reporters affiliated with media companies being reluctant to criticize the business. And there have been allegations by former members (one male) of sexual abuse. So I guess freelance reporters are the only ones willing to do stories like that? I imagine many Japanese would find aspects of this business disturbing. The generalization that Japanese tend to turn a blind eye to issues not directly affect them might have something to do with it, though.

Quote:Recording labels around the world should be taking note of this type of setup and trying enact it. It may not work in every culture but in some it will, AND it has actually started. There are AKB sister groups popping up in Singapore and China (Korea might have one too). I kind of would like to see someone try and pull off something similar in the US, but for some reason I just don't think it would gain traction in the same way it does in Japan. I don't just mean AKB + creepy fans, I mean large girl groups.

I think the Japanese promoters were copying something that already existed in the West. They just made a creepier version based on younger girls and disturbing meet & greet events. It's even more blatantly commercial in the sense that the members are constantly changing and it's franchised.

Spice girls would be an example of a female group created and marketed to appeal to young girls. They were all about promotion, merchandizing and the personalities of the members. Some other girl groups on wikipedia.

Those precursor female groups aren't as large as AKB48, but the idea of putting large groups of scantily clad dancers/singers on stage is hardly original. It's goes at least as far back as Folies Bergere from the 1880s or the later American Ziegfried Girls or Radio City Rockettes.

(Seeing that picture of the "exotic" Josephine Baker performing with pretty much nothing on but a skirt of bananas in the 20's reminds how much things have changed. To think that a hockey spectator was recently charged with some kind of hate crime for throwing a banana on the ice to trip a black hockey player.)

Quote:I think the reason for this is cultural difference on artists. [...]But in the US there is this very strong ideal in the populace that artists should write their own music and if its discovered they aren't then it somehow devalues the artist and turns them into shams. And I think this might be one reason among many, why AKB groups would never take off in the US.

Creating groups to perform music written by others isn't anything new in America. But I agree that artists who can actually write songs or play an instrument garner more respect. Spice Girls type groups are criticized for being just fake commercial products masterminded by promoters.

Media companies are happy if they can create a mass market for poor quality stuff - it's easier and often cheaper to reproduce. If only that enormously powerful marketing machine would get behind more amazing artists out there who struggle to get heard. (Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just putting your music on the web.)

Hobbies are often about more than the actual activity. It's personal identity, sense of belonging, socializing with like-minded individuals, status (if there's some kind of knowledge or collecting hierarchy), etc. And Japanese have a reputation for being rather extreme enthusiasts. Marketing and cults are all about psychological manipulation - particularly identity. I just don't get why so many people buy into it.

As for age...

in one of the links above, the AKB mgmt says that most of their members are junior and senior high school with no social experience. The fact that "minders" are needed to hold the shoulders of each hand-shaking fan really doesn't seem like an adequate solution to a problem mgmt created. There are apparently girls and boys even younger in "training" to become performers in the various groups. So what's up with the parents? A version of Hollywood stage mommies who just want their kids to become famous ... or money making machines...no matter what?

My friend's mom joined a touring company, Ballets Russes, at age 14. She had affairs with much older men from age 15. She's now a philanthropist who created and funds an organization to support dancers. She's pleased that today's society would no longer allow that sort of thing to occur...

kainzero Wrote:Even considering all that, I don't think they're directly or indirectly causing bad behavior. It's kinda like the argument that "Girls dress like sluts in clubs, it's like they're asking to be raped."

Ah, i'm sorry, i definately didn't mean it to come off like that!!! It's not the girls' fault, they're just doing their jobs and hopefully having some fun at the same time. You can't fault people if they're a little naive, or not thick skinned enough... and if some of them are genuinely disturbed by toy cockroaches and stuff, it sounds like they might be.

However, the management is a different story. They're the ones who should be looking out for them and making sure they aren't put in awkward situations or doing things to encourage those types of fans.

Of course, the weirdo fans are responsible for their own bad behaviour, but the management and marketing teams also play a part in shaping that to a greater or lesser degree.

Ultimately, you can't stop weirdos from being fans, and i'm sure almost every famous person has some weirdo / stalker fans, but it seems like AKB has rather more than their fair share. Do they really only appear in girl's manga and fashion mags? Only, I wonder how they end up with a substantial following of middle aged men if they aren't being marketed at that group?? Usually some form of social validation is needed for stuff like that, i would have thought.

About the collecting... sure, there's nothing inherantly wrong with collecting stuff, and there's plenty of people who collect stuff who aren't weirdos and would never dream of doing anything weird to the girls. But there IS a link between otaku culture and hentai stuff, so it might be better to avoid marketing AKB at that group at all.

The Ninagawa Mika thing is interesting... i had a look at the site, and i can see similar use of colours and other visual stuff. But the content of the works is really quite different... much more interesting and subtle, i actually like quite a few of them. so i think it's a bit of a shame that she employed quite overused and overstereotyped imagery in the video, because she obviously has the talent to do something much more interesting. I wonder why she didn't? But yeah, the song is catchy

Thora Wrote:Yeah, I saw a story about reporters affiliated with media companies being reluctant to criticize the business. And there have been allegations by former members (one male) of sexual abuse. So I guess freelance reporters are the only ones willing to do stories like that? I imagine many Japanese would find aspects of this business disturbing. The generalization that Japanese tend to turn a blind eye to issues not directly affect them might have something to do with it, though.

Are you talking about the JE stuff and the sexual abuse from Johnny Kitagawa?
Unfortunately, entertainment companies are too powerful in Japan, and press companies are too weak. If you write a negative article about JE or AKB or whatever, you'll be banned from the press clubs and they won't make their members available to your magazine/newspaper for interviews. That's the reason why the reporters are freelancers.

IceCream Wrote:However, the management is a different story. They're the ones who should be looking out for them and making sure they aren't put in awkward situations or doing things to encourage those types of fans.

I definitely agree. Again, you can be banned for standing outside the theater next to the bus that they leave in, I don't see why they take more active steps to cut out the trashier fans.
I'd also take Sankaku with a grain of salt though. It wasn't until late 2010 that they really experienced this giant boom and hitting a million sales with their song Beginner. Heavy Rotation came out before that and had half the sales of Beginner. Handshake events have been going on forever. It's only with this boom that they're probably learning how to adjust security and what not.

IceCream Wrote:Do they really only appear in girl's manga and fashion mags?

Oh, not girl's manga. Manga magazines in general, which are often filled with idols and models and the like. And maybe not just fashion mags but entertainment mags in general. Here's a couple magazine covers I pulled from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0070...d_i=489986
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0077...d_i=489986
http://www.amazon.co.jp/BOMB-%E3%83%9C%E...f=pd_ybh_4

There is a small distinction between otaku（オタク） and wota（ヲタ）, the former being the hardcore anime fans, the latter being the hardcore idol fans. They're known to make fun of each other a lot for some reason, even though I think they're both bottom-of-the-barrel in the social ladder, lol.

kainzero Wrote:Are you talking about the JE stuff and the sexual abuse from Johnny Kitagawa?

Probably - unless there were other similar cases. I only remember that it was a system involving boy idols and younger trainees. While the business is similar, I should have been more clear that it wasn't AKB's mgmt.

Quote:In 1999, weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun ran a series of articles on Kitagawa's supposed sexual exploitation of the boys in the agency. They also wrote that some underage members were allegedly forced to drink and smoke. The agency filed a damages lawsuit against the publisher.

In 2002, the Tokyo District Court ordered the publisher to pay ¥8.8 million in damages to the agency. However, the Tokyo High Court in 2003 reduced the amount of compensation to ¥1.2 million, ruling that the article on sexual harassment was based on fact, while other parts, including the drinking and smoking, were defamatory, according to news reports.
(http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20090414i1.html)

If based on fact, I wonder why no one was charged?