Ironically, my interest in the 48 empire has been waning (not intentionally) during this time period.
Sasshi landing center can only have happened in this very specific situation:
1. Only in Jpop: the J-ent industry places so much more premium on failure. Whereas people did find Sunhwa's white paper schtick on IY funny, others lost respect for her because they didn't want to celebrate stupidity in a culture that prized achievement so highly. Kpop idols are continually lauded for their talents, whereas an idiot gimmick implies a lack of it. Meanwhile, in Jpop, the truly smart entertainers use their cleverness to come up with the most outrageously wrong answers to academic questions, which is why Test Specials, in which right answers are a surefire way to lose screentime, are pretty much legendary. (Many an idol's amazing engrish in test specials has been their breakout moment) It is not simply how much you're willing to humiliate yourself, which was attributed to Sunny as competence, (in which case Yuko would be the oshi of choice) actual failure being valued. Acchan becomes endearing when she says that she doesn't have any hobbies, and the talk show hosts egg her on, saying that she should take it further and say she has no interest in hobbies. Beloved "general manager" Takamina is the suberi ("fail") queen. And so only in Jpop can a "loser" character become the most popular.
2. Only in AKB48: as much as idolling supposedly promotes the "girl next door" image, with talentless girls being the draw, you'll still inevitably find that within groups, the prettiest girl with the performance charisma will become the frontgirl and the face, and in most groups, the two faces get all of the lines while the others essentially become backdancers. Fans of the back row girls will do their darndest to make their oshi feel supported, which means supporting the group as well, which means that the management have incentive to continue to string them along, so that they continue to throw money in the hopes that it will send a message. Even within AKB this happens, as in most singles, the prettiest and most charismatic girls are promoted to the front, and popular underdogs are continually neglected, but not too neglected as to rank with the unnamed unknowns. But they're also in the back of the formation. However, AKB changed the rules of the game by doing the elections and handshakes. Whereas anytime else, management broadly interprets what the fans want, and for the sake of continued group survival the fans have to support it, during the elections and handshakes the fans can directly show exactly what they want and who they're specifically supporting, ignoring those they don't care about. Without the election, management could claim that there's no true way to tell if Sashihara has surpassed Yuko in popularity, (and given that Yuko has more mainstream exposure due to her acting gigs, as well as the previous gigantic gap in votes, no one thought so before the election) only the election provides the spot for cold hard cash to provide cold hard numbers to tell the real story, independent of management's intent. The obvious parallel here is, of course, that in general people don't give a shit about the purity system, and the industry's attempts to say that careers would be destroyed, so they need dating bans, are akin to their choices of which girls to treat as the most popular. (Of course, this only applies when a group has mainstream success and mainstream fans, whereas most groups that are solely reliant on hardcore otaku do actually have to heed archaic purity systems.)
3. Only in AKB48 pt. 2: Yuko joked that with Sasshi as center, they would be seen as not a group of idols, but as a group of comedians. This joke was actually pretty true to begin with, even before Sasshi's ascent. In the same way that SMEnt acts tend to have the advantage because they are trained and chosen to be variety savvy, and so more easily gain TV gigs, AKB aggressively went after TV screentime with how ruthlessly they learned to be the most entertaining fools a show could ask for. The core frontgirls that took AKB to the top all have ridiculously strong personalities, honed by gleefully throwing away their dignities on their own shows that inflicted additional humiliation on them. Producer Akimoto scolded Yuko for initially not being more of a chaotic "destructive" character, and Yuko herself didn't like having a bland goody-goody "honors student" image. The girls that went the furthest in their shenanigans were the ones that gained name recognition out of the horde in the fight for popularity. Due to the size of the roster, AKB is basically Funny or Die as an idol system, and so unlike a group like, say, Berryz, the value given to comedic talent can outweigh traditional aesthetic values in the end. (Sister group NMB48 is managed by Yoshimoto, an agency usually in charge of comedians. NMB has thus quickly become group of some really aggressive personalities as well, and quickly gained many more TV groups than SKE48, who is managed by performance-oriented Avex, and has much less variety-savvy members. My perception is that SKE has more die-hard fans, though, because they have the type of members that attract traditional otaku, which is also why SKE has not had any true dating scandals yet, and their fans do tend to somewhat support the purity system.)
I do remember some 'lol their poor english' corners on Korean variety/talk shows w idols as well but they didn't put their hearts into it in quite the same way. They were more successful with stuff like Invincible Youth - Hyomin and Sunhwas as clueless goofs on the countryside - although both, especially Hyomin, have moved on to more sophisticated images for various reasons (although I was briefly almost interested in the improv sit com of Sunhwa and Kanghee as dumbo newlyweds). Of course that's comedy and it's not so easy to think of examples where as you say they are more real failures, not talented, don't really do the work by the rule book. As we talked about earlier the AKB girls seem pretty good at roleplaying village idiots as well when it's called for to gain some recognition (re: faked wrong, funny answers on tests). But the focus on lacking, loveable losers is definitely unique. The more e xtreme forms of humiliation they go through in JP variety is probably part of that.
Re: 3- reading some AKB fan discussions the narrative these days seems to be that NMB is struggling a bit - sales are down for records, events, members acknowledge it and have said stuff like "look at SKE fans, that's enthusiasm" etc (may tie in to your claims that theirs are less hardcore). I'll be honest and say I haven't seen much reason to get to know NMB yet but then of course I don't know them at all. Only the two most popular names have stuck for me. May be biased because I prefer the other groups singles (and SKE's 'performance' gimmick).
The whole system is a smoothly run factory for various talents, tv personalities, actors, models yeah. Various agencies getting their piece of the cake is too smart. The whole "I joined this group to become an actress" schpiel would probably receive netizen hate coming from a Korean idol.
I was looking at the two first eps Sashihara new show "The Rebellion of Sashihara" and reading some summaries (not understanding jack) . The concept is she gets challenges and the first is a photo book project. The first two consist basically just of Sashi talking to the director and an editor about the business of this work- here's a stage48 user summary:
"If Sashiko no Kuseni was a training camp to Sasshi become a (variety) idol, Sashihara no Ran can be seem as a training camp to her become a producer. .In Sashiran, her mentor is a TV/Movie director and the guests will all be publishers, photographers, editors, i.e., people that support from the shadows the entertainment business.
Reading some reactions here and there, some interesting words appears: gesui and namanamashii, meaning, in general, that the show presents a raw reality, without make-ups, of the business. Among other reasons, there are a lot of talk about budget, payment, percentage, salary, i.e., MONEY mainly."
Sasshi landing center can only have happened in this very specific situation:
1. Only in Jpop: the J-ent industry places so much more premium on failure. Whereas people did find Sunhwa's white paper schtick on IY funny, others lost respect for her because they didn't want to celebrate stupidity in a culture that prized achievement so highly. Kpop idols are continually lauded for their talents, whereas an idiot gimmick implies a lack of it. Meanwhile, in Jpop, the truly smart entertainers use their cleverness to come up with the most outrageously wrong answers to academic questions, which is why Test Specials, in which right answers are a surefire way to lose screentime, are pretty much legendary. (Many an idol's amazing engrish in test specials has been their breakout moment) It is not simply how much you're willing to humiliate yourself, which was attributed to Sunny as competence, (in which case Yuko would be the oshi of choice) actual failure being valued. Acchan becomes endearing when she says that she doesn't have any hobbies, and the talk show hosts egg her on, saying that she should take it further and say she has no interest in hobbies. Beloved "general manager" Takamina is the suberi ("fail") queen. And so only in Jpop can a "loser" character become the most popular.
2. Only in AKB48: as much as idolling supposedly promotes the "girl next door" image, with talentless girls being the draw, you'll still inevitably find that within groups, the prettiest girl with the performance charisma will become the frontgirl and the face, and in most groups, the two faces get all of the lines while the others essentially become backdancers. Fans of the back row girls will do their darndest to make their oshi feel supported, which means supporting the group as well, which means that the management have incentive to continue to string them along, so that they continue to throw money in the hopes that it will send a message. Even within AKB this happens, as in most singles, the prettiest and most charismatic girls are promoted to the front, and popular underdogs are continually neglected, but not too neglected as to rank with the unnamed unknowns. But they're also in the back of the formation.
However, AKB changed the rules of the game by doing the elections and handshakes. Whereas anytime else, management broadly interprets what the fans want, and for the sake of continued group survival the fans have to support it, during the elections and handshakes the fans can directly show exactly what they want and who they're specifically supporting, ignoring those they don't care about. Without the election, management could claim that there's no true way to tell if Sashihara has surpassed Yuko in popularity, (and given that Yuko has more mainstream exposure due to her acting gigs, as well as the previous gigantic gap in votes, no one thought so before the election) only the election provides the spot for cold hard cash to provide cold hard numbers to tell the real story, independent of management's intent.
The obvious parallel here is, of course, that in general people don't give a shit about the purity system, and the industry's attempts to say that careers would be destroyed, so they need dating bans, are akin to their choices of which girls to treat as the most popular. (Of course, this only applies when a group has mainstream success and mainstream fans, whereas most groups that are solely reliant on hardcore otaku do actually have to heed archaic purity systems.)
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Re: 3- reading some AKB fan discussions the narrative these days seems to be that NMB is struggling a bit - sales are down for records, events, members acknowledge it and have said stuff like "look at SKE fans, that's enthusiasm" etc (may tie in to your claims that theirs are less hardcore). I'll be honest and say I haven't seen much reason to get to know NMB yet but then of course I don't know them at all. Only the two most popular names have stuck for me. May be biased because I prefer the other groups singles (and SKE's 'performance' gimmick).
The whole system is a smoothly run factory for various talents, tv personalities, actors, models yeah. Various agencies getting their piece of the cake is too smart. The whole "I joined this group to become an actress" schpiel would probably receive netizen hate coming from a Korean idol.
I was looking at the two first eps Sashihara new show "The Rebellion of Sashihara" and reading some summaries (not understanding jack) . The concept is she gets challenges and the first is a photo book project. The first two consist basically just of Sashi talking to the director and an editor about the business of this work- here's a stage48 user summary:
"If Sashiko no Kuseni was a training camp to Sasshi become a (variety) idol, Sashihara no Ran can be seem as a training camp to her become a producer.
.In Sashiran, her mentor is a TV/Movie director and the guests will all be publishers, photographers, editors, i.e., people that support from the shadows the entertainment business.
Reading some reactions here and there, some interesting words appears: gesui and namanamashii, meaning, in general, that the show presents a raw reality, without make-ups, of the business. Among other reasons, there are a lot of talk about budget, payment, percentage, salary, i.e., MONEY mainly."
Reply
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