Japan’s massive boner for Korea went limp on Thursday night as a bunch of loli upstarts nabbed the Best New Artist / Best Newcomer award at the 2010 Japan Record Awards on TBS.
The Hello! Project foursome known as S/mileage—consisting of members Ayaka Wada (16), Yuuka Maeda (16), Kanon Fukuda (15) and Saki Ogawa (14)—took home the prize, triumphing over heavily-favored media darlings Shoujo Jidai (Girl’s Generation) ((SNSD)) (((geez us you girls need to pick a name and just stick with it))).
The presents have been opened, the dinners have been consumed, and the awkward family moments have been experienced. But on this pathetic excuse for a blog, it’s never a full proper Christmas without cute Japanese idols in slutty Santa outfits! So here in all its twenty-page glory is Young Gangan‘s “Christmas Gift” photobooklet with some of the finest faces (and bodies) to grace the covers of men’s interest magazines in Japan throughout the past year.
This should have happened about 4 years ago, then I'd REALLY be into it.
Sakura-con of Seattle, Washington, which famously hosted IshiYoshi Lesbian Duo Hangry and Angry’s debut appearance IN AMERICA, has now announced that they will be bringing over Former Loli Unit Berryz Kobo in 2011 as a musical Guest of Honor. [Do you know how weird it is to see that juvenile, ungrammatical name for a girl group where 5 of the 7 members are now over the age of 18? Yeah. Anyway.]
This, to me, spells out two things:
(1) American anime convention organizers are finally starting to GET IT, or have GOTTEN IT, with respect to idol-pop as a legitimate sub-niche of Weeaboo Fandom.
(2) With the first true “sister group” of a blockbuster idol act (i.e., Berryz as an offshoot of the Morning Musume / Hello! Project family) now putting on a performance in the U.S.*, this opens the doors for a lot of second-tier idol groups that aren’t necessarily iconic names in the Japanese entertainment industry.
(2½) I must really enjoy eating my words.
Who the hell are these idiots?
“Ai ni ikeru idol” [The idols you can meet] = “Ai-dol” in Akihabara. A new movement takes root?!
It was five years ago today
Aki-P taught the girls to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile
So let me introduce to you
The act you’ve known for all these years
Aki-P’s Loli Hearts Club Band!
We’re Aki-P’s Loli Hearts Club Band, we hope that you enjoy the show~
I do not know what kind of group will surpass AKB48, but I do know how they will be surpassed.
What the hell ever happened to THIS, huh? I ASK YOU.
It is not an answer I could have figured out without watching another once-legendary idol group plunge into irrelevance. Over the last few years, surely everyone has asked themselves at least once, “What the hell ever happened to Morning Musume?” and of course many stupid ass opinions have been thrown about in an attempt to answer that question. “Because so-and-so graduated!” “Because the new leader has no personality!” “Because the arrangements suck!” “Because TSUNKU.” And all of these may have had some whiff of correctness to them, a reflection of the prevailing attitudes at the time, but none ever truly cut to the core of the issue.
Here's the Earth. And you say, DAMN, that is a sweet Earth.
We are like ancient astronomers staring at the sky, believing that the sun and the planets all revolve around the earth, until something weird happens and we have to make an excuse for why Mercury went backwards, so we start making up weird celestial maps with tons of interlocking circles and crap to make up for all the orbital irregularities we keep seeing, until Nicolas Copernicus is like, “HAY GUYS what if maybe the EARTH goes around TEH SUN?”
And everyone’s like, “WHY U TROLLIN”
Because you would have to be CRAAAAAZAY to think that the Earth is not the center of the universe, I mean LOLOLOLOLWAT next are you going to tell me that we get sick from breathing in tiny little creatures floating around in the air?
Anyway the point is, after watching Morning Musume, not to mention most of the rest of Hello! Project, sink like a shapely, slender-limbed Titanic (culminating in their last-blaze-of-glory appearance IN AMERICA), I finally saw, out of everywhere and nowhere at once, the answer. The heliocentric view of the idol universe. And it is this:
