PSA: Sexy Zone only has 3 members

[faded_lace]

Seriously, Johnny's?!I've tried to write this off as marketing, tried to tell myself similar things have happened to older groups like V6 and Arashi, tried to believe it will pass, but seriously, enough is enough. We get it, Johnny's. The other two are young. They can't do as much. They have early curfews. They're not as mature. But does that

Comments

[nakayama_haruna]

seriously?

ah, I like the the group they are numbered 5 person -__-

gomenasai fr my bad English :3

[faded_lace]

Me too. There are five members, so Johnny's needs to stop ignoring two of them.

[nakayama_haruna]

I agree with you >//

[yomimashou]

Ugh Johnny's why >____< I just really hope Marius and Sou aren't too sad ;;; Poor babies ;____;

[faded_lace]

I just really don't understand. There's pushing your frontmen to a point, but this is utterly ridiculous. I don't like to compare, but even Kisumai really isn't this bad.

[yomimashou]

Yeah, this doesn't even feel like pushing frontmen anymore, to be honest. I keep telling myself that we're still really early on in Sexy Zone's time as a group...but I don't want to watch things keep getting worse before they get better :(

[faded_lace]

Yeah, I agree. It's like the opposite of pushing members forward... it's pushing the other members backward. But yeah... seeing how things worked for Arashi, I really don't want to see it get worse before it gets better.

[teukie_koji07]

i like the group with 5 members.
marius and sou doesn't look like a kid.
marius is taller than shori >///<.

[faded_lace]

I don't know how much it is to do with "looking" like kids and more to do with legalities and Johnny's rules and their school schedules. Sou lives in Shizuoka, which is at least an hour away by shinkansen, possible more, and Marius is only thirteen. Sixteen seems to be Johnny's cutoff for being allowed to work past 7 pm, and legally, children must be 18 years old to work past 9 pm. Still, there are things where this should make a difference (live performances on TV shows that are late at night) and things that it shouldn't impact (recording and photoshoots for CDs that could happen at any time of day). I don't understand why it's become such a big marketing strategy to cut the other two out.

MariSou

[teukie_koji07]

I agree!!!
For body, marius doesn't like a 13 yo. But marius is too youung :( bu i really like marius.. Maybe good for he to be normaly boy, too young for MariSou to sing badboys: :(

Re: MariSou

[faded_lace]

If Johnny's didn't want to songs that were appropriate for a 13-year old, they shouldn't have debuted a group with one member so young. He chose to debut Marius, so it seems really unfair to me to not let him work or even be called a member of Sexy Zone, then. It's one thing to leave him out of one or two B-sides or something like that, but having covers of only half the members of the groups on a lot of their singles is really messed up in my opinion. It's pretty clear that Sou and Marius are treated worse than the rest (why do Fuma, Kento, and Shori get solos and not Marius and Sou? Certainly that has nothing to do with age-appropriateness).

Also, just to be clear, Sou and Shori are only a year and a month apart in age. In fact, Sou and Shori are closer in age than Shori and Fuma. Meanwhile, Sou is more than 2 years older than Marius. So it's a little ridiculous to say it's okay for Shori to do Bad Boys and not Sou, in my opinion.

[rorychan]

I seriously don't get it. I mean...weirdly enough, both Marius and Sou look older than Shori now. And Soun is only 1 year younger than Shori so I really don't think that is the reason they are doing this. It's just a typical split with probably not much of a reason behind it.

But in November, Sou has the same curfew as the older three members so maybe he will get to show up more at least.

[faded_lace]

Yeah, one of the things that really gets me is that Sou is closer in age to Shori than he is to Marius. And they both have a lot of fans if my students and the people I see at concerts are any indication, so I really just don't get it. I know if must be a marketing strategy, but it seems a little extreme to me, even for Johnny's. At the handshake event in January, they went so far as to introduce Kento, Fuma, and Shori as "Sexy Zone" and Marius and Sou were introduced separately as "Sexy Boyz" equal to Jinguji, Genki, Amu, and Reia (who were the Sexy Boyz-of-the-day back then). Like, they didn't introduce them as members of both. They didn't even introduce them differently than the juniors. Marius and Sou might as well not have been debuted according to that announcement.

I'm curious but also worried. I don't know if it's likely that they'll single one member out. 3:2 with the 3 as the frontmen is always a weird breakdown, and 4:1 seems almost unthinkable as a measure that will have to continue for three whole years until

[rorychan]

I really don't think there is anything too serious to worry over. It's just something that is gunna piss a lot of people off for a while. It's not like they are going to remove the two from the group. They would tank the group if that happened and they know it. There really must be a simple reason behind it that we just don't know about. With Sou, I definitely think it's because he live a few hours train ride from the company so for sure that is something that keeps him away from a lot, including the whole 4 times he's been on the SZ radio show.

Marius though...I have no idea. I am not tor worried about him either, as he is getting a butt load of acting experience. He's starring in his 2nd movie already! :O

[faded_lace]

I'm not really worried about them getting kicked out so much as the mental/emotional effect on the guys. It's not easy to be in the limelight for such young kids, and then additionally to be shoved to the back and told you're not good enough to be in the front can't help. In an absolute worst case scenario, I don't want anything bad to happen to them before they become of-age... we all know what happened with Ryutaro.

[phantomthief94]

it's not only you who feel that way. I think many of JE fans esp. Sexy Zone fans too. i'm really disappointed to Johnny-san for forming this group :'(

[faded_lace]

Well, it's not like I want Sexy Zone to go away forever?? I'm still their fan. I'm just upset at the way they're treating Marius and Sou.

[phantomthief94]

haha.. i just thought, we already knew that bi shadow & japanesehi! aren't close. just, sexy zone members are centers of bi shadow & japanesehi!. i wonder why johnny-san debuted sexy zone instead of bi shadow :(

[faded_lace]

Well, it seems like volleyball groups are always this way. JUMP was a mix of young and older members too. As to B.I.Shadow now debuting, I'm pretty sure that it was set from the beginning that they would never debut. As I discussed in this post, volleyball groups always break up 4-member junior units, and 4-member junior units never debut. That's just how Johnny's seems to work. It was the same with Ya-ya-yah, 4tops, and MAIN. It's sad, but it seems like that's how Johnny wants it. :(