Jonathan Carrera is doing it wrong

“What a disgrace.”
“I can’t believe we sent our national idols to America to make this piece of shit video.”
“This looks completely stupid.”
“Ignorant Westerners just don’t understand what Japanese idols are about.”

(Miichan as a snow leopard.)

So goes the BAAAAAWWWWWWWWW of certain stupid ass wotas who saw Jonathan Carrera’s “USA version” of RIVARRRRR and immediately had their sensibilities violated. And who can blame them? The PV is daring, defiant, and flies completely in the face of idol orthodoxy. Kinda like the song itself, really.

Who the hell is this guy?

Me and Miichan and New York: A Love Story (part 5)

The thing about having a celebrity crush is that it’s supposed to be exactly that: a celebrity crush. You’re supposed to admire them from afar, swoon over their pictures, fantasize about the day you meet them—but the distance remains. Growing up, I resigned myself to the fact that I would never have a close encounter with the likes of Kirsten Dunst, or Natalie Portman, or Jennifer Love Hewitt (y’know, back in their hawt loli days), because I was HERE and America was over THERE. And then when I finally moved IN AMERICA, I was so disappointed to find out that Hollywood is only one place out of bajillions and that the average American person you meet on the street is not Kirsten Dunst, what the hell.

And then, irony of ironies, I got interested in Japanese celebs, which just made it worse because now I was IN AMERICA and Japan was over THERE.

The solution? Bring Japan over HERE.

A Modest Proposal

lulz

I suppose if you want to know how my Interview of Destiny went you can always read the hyperventilating report that I typed up in the heat of the moment. For the record, I’d like to say that I don’t consider myself a “lucky bastard.” I do consider myself a bastard, but that wasn’t luck. That was years of hard work, immersing myself in Japan’s entertainment world, participating in the English-speaking community both as a fan and as a writer, and finally coming together in a moment where I achieved a young man’s dream. Pierce the heavens, who the hell do you think I am, etc. etc.

But the one thing I forgot to write about. The NYAF mini-live (which, at the time, I thought was pretty inconsequential). In the grand scheme of things, however, I now realize that it marks the very moment that I saw MY WIFE, in person, for the first time EVAR. Finding the AKB48/teamA/gachapin/ directory on Sion. Scrolling through her pictures even during the 18 months of silence. Tuning in to AKBingo! just to see her face. Watching Men*dol and questioning my sexuality. Flipping through the pages of South. It all came rushing forward to that point—at about 3 pm Eastern Time—when she ran onto the stage, ringlets of hair bouncing off her shoulders, belting an old, familiar tune that signified something NEW, something FRESH, something AMAZING:

Me and Miichan and New York: A Love Story (part 4)

In TEH future, OVER 9000 years from now, historians of popular music will look at the Summer of Idols and mark Morning Musume’s debut concert IN AMERICA as the starting point. Or, for the Eurocentric, AKB48’s second-stringers performing in Le France. (By the way, whatever happened to SweetBene? I miss her megane.)

What music historians may not know, however, is what happened behind the scenes … OVER 9000 years ago.

All the major tabloids are reporting it, so it must be true

It was July 4, 2009. Independence Day seemed like a pointless formality compared to the sheer magnitude of having seen Morning Musume in concert for the first time in my life the day before. But I still had the rest of my life before me, so I hauled my ass out of my uncomfortably soft hotel bed and cracked my laptop open. My roommate woke up and did the same a few minutes later.

MY WIFE in France.

So we’re sitting there tapping away, and I, being mildly aware of other world events, decided to check out how AKB48 had fared in Le France that same weekend. Since it was so recent, I figured the best way would be to go through Google’s blog search, or something. But instead of hearing about Le France, a totally different keyword struck my eye.

“AKB48″ and “New York” in the same sentence.

It seemed too awesome to be true. I googled a few other places to figure out what the hell was going on. It was just like back in February when a certain colleague “leaked” to me that Momusu would be performing at AX, and I was like, “Are you joking with me,” and I almost thought he was trolling until a week and a half later when Anime Expo made the official announcement.

And then, I shit you not, about ten minutes after I had silently made this discovery, my roommate turned to me and said, “Hey, did you hear about this thing that AKB48 is going to perform in New York?”

Me and Miichan and New York: A Love Story (part 3)

The Autumn of Miichan

Before the Summer of Idols, there was the Autumn of Miichan, and it went something like this.

Rumors of Hello! Project’s death on Japanese television had not been all that exaggerated. It had been a long, slow demise, beginning with the truncation of Hello! Morning to 30-minute episodes, to ever-tighter budget constraints on Haromoni@, to finally being relegated to 5 minutes every weeknight in a timeslot that had to be shared with Berryz and °C-ute. Which got canceled. It was like watching a beloved relative slowly die of cancer, and the cancer was the fickle tastes of the Japanese public.

Aitakatta!

By October 2008, I srsly needed some new idol programming in my life. That’s when a certain stupid ass wota torrent tracker said to me (and really, if torrent trackers start talking to you, seek professional help), “Hey, why don’t you try this new show called AKBingo!, which isn’t really new but is just a reboot of AKB48’s variety show?” And being in a particularly receptive mood, I was like, “Sure! Can’t be any worse than Yorosen.” (Uncle Hitler … lmfao.)

It certainly wasn’t worse than Yorosen. In fact, it was almost as good as classic Hello! Morning. It actually reminded me of my n00b-ish days when I started watching H!M, and all I saw was random cute Japanese girls playing stupid games and making fools of themselves, while incomprehensible strings of text flashed on the screen. Except that this time, the strings of text weren’t totally incomprehensible. You see, in the past few years, I had mastered EVERY SINGLE KANJI by the power of James Heisig, which means I can kinda-sorta read Japanese even if I don’t know all the pronunciations.*

*Yes, this also means I read UTB for the articles. Wahaha!

Me and Miichan and New York: A Love Story (part 2)

Truth is, I almost didn’t become an AKBtard. In one way, I am one of the true old-sk00l fans, but in another way, I am still a n00b who discovered them just last week. And it’s really hard to explain how that happened without going back and telling another really long-ass story. It’s still a love story, albeit one with separation and heartbreak in the middle. You’ll see.

Too Ugly to Get Into Hello! Project

The time was 2006. The place was some stupid ass wota forum for Hello! Project fans. Being stupid ass wotas, of course there was also a passing interest in other idol groups, and everyone raised a curious (if doubtful) eyebrow when this thing called AKB48 made their debut. “That’s a lot of girls.” “Sounds like a wannabe Hello! Project.” “Sounds like a lot of girls who were too ugly to get into Hello! Project.” And believe me, if you’d seen them at the time, that last statement would have been true, because this was back when the group was still a low-budget after-school club that met up in Akihabara for shits and giggles and the girls probably had to do their own hair and makeup. And you can forget about plastic surgery!

ohgawdlol.

I can confirm—and I have the burned MP3-CD to prove it—that I got in on the ground floor and liked “Sakura no Hanabiratachi” when it first came out. I even saw a copy of the CD single at Book-Off in summer of that year and told myself, “I’ll come back for it later,” and when I finally did come back (er …. in October), the damn thing was GONE.

So the moral of this story is, if there’s something you’re thinking of buying at Book-Off, don’t wait 2 months to pick it up.