I Have Seen the Future: The Death of AKB48

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:

Over the last 50 years IN JAPAN, every major pop-idol phenomenon has been accompanied by a major change in entertainment technology.

This is what happened to Morning Musume, and it is going to happen to AKB48, because like every Japanese organization that gets big and successful they eventually become stupid and slow.

Just to double-check this theory, I submit the following timeline of major J-pop idol acts and the technological advancements that propelled them to greatness:

* * *

The Peanuts (60′s)

Color television allows audiences at home to see for the first time the flamboyant outfits and pretty faces that are an essential part of the idol aesthetic.

Pink Lady -> Seiko Matsuda -> Onyanko Club (Late 70′s to mid 80′s)

Videocasette tapes allow audiences NOT ONLY to view idols at home BUT ALSO to view them whenever they want.

Morning Musume / Hello! Project (Late 90′s to early 00′s)

DVDs bring the concert experience closer to life than ever as audiovisual quality makes the dramatic jump from analog to digital.

AKB48 and ___48 family (Late 00′s to early 10′s)

Web 2.0, particularly blogging and social networking, allows idols to occupy their fans’ minds even when offstage.

* * *

And you’ve seen it happen, haven’t you? Why, back in the earliest days of AKB you could even sign up to have your favorite member call you up on your cellphone for shits and giggles. But basically when the Internet crossed that threshold from techie plaything to necessity of everyday life a few years ago, whichever idol group could capitalize on it first would win the war of this current era. And of course, what better victor than the group based out of Tokyo’s electronics and geek-entertainment district?

Kitty looks yummy!

Of course, it was Shoko Nakagawa who arguably paved the way for Japanese celebrity blogging (and to some, a certain Sumire Sato as well, who in her days as “failed Morning Musume auditionee” still won the hearts of the internet-savvy with her “mary-love” blog on Ameblo).* But only in the later half of the decade—when everybody started getting on the internet—did blog outreach become a big fricking deal for entertainers, and basically, AKB got there first. Or if not first, then fastest: by the time Atsuko Maeda got herself a personal web presence in March 2009, the queen was on her throne, the territory had been conquered, and the war was over.

*You know what? I’d pay to see Sumire stuff a cat in her mouth.

Meanwhile, Hello! Project’s parent company Up-Front was sitting there with its thumb in its nose like a distressed grandma trying to find out where the “Any” key is. And by that I mean, Hello! Pro’s attempts to make use of user-networked web technology has always seemed kind of awkward and slow-to-the-punch. I think I need go no further than pointing out that Morning Musume got themselves an official Myspace page in 2009.

IN 2009.

ON MYSPACE.

Yeah, you’re only about 4 years late to the party, ladies.

And while H!P has been tried to be more forward with their younger groups—S/mileage has pretty much left their earmarks on every corner of the web they can grab onto—there is still that aura of awkwardness, like how S/mileage’s Twitter accounts only ever update exactly on the hour and always tweet through the mysterious “UP-FRONT API” client.

(I’m suspecting that the girls actually input a bunch of timed, canned tweets every morning into the client and then the client fires off those messages at 5時 or 12時 or 17時 or whenever they set it to. That’s not how Twitter is supposed to work, you idiots! Although I still keep a couple of them on Follow anyway because you never know when you’re going to be hit by the Kanyon virus. )

OH NOES! Kanyon virus!

* * *

Actually if I had to give out grades for Twitter use among J-idols the report card would look something like this:

A – Kozue Aikawa – you may not know the name, but her dance covers are legend. As a personality who actually “got popular on the internet,” communicating online is as natural as breathing for her, and she even replies back to certain tweets .

B – Haruna Kojima, Mariko Shinoda – although not as 133t as Kozue, they clearly enjoy using their Twitter accounts, mixing in a current of day-to-day reporting and picspam and—best of all—even occasional tweets to each other. The only con is that, like most Famouse People, they don’t follow or reply back to the plebs.

C – Sumire Sato – Obviously knows what she’s doing from yeeeears of online experience but tends to only post pedestrian “I’m hanging out with Myao today” material. Plus it’s an agency-sponsored account so there’s a bit of corporate restraint. (The other Horipro signees would probably rank C- since they don’t even update enough.)

D – Yuuka Maeda and the rest of S/mileage – useful for tracking blog updates and adding a bit of genki-ness to your Follow feed, but that hourly-canned-update thing is just not the way to it. Let the girls tweet straight from their cellphones, Up-Front!

I (incomplete) – Tomomi Kasai – Ironically one of the first AKB members to use Twitter, her account has long since become a scattershot project where she disappears for weeks at a time, and then returns to it just to promote personal publicity events and make it look like she hasn’t abandoned it. What the hell man?

* * *

So there you have it. Technology. Idols. Idols. Technology! Which means I can finally answer the question I said I was going to answer at the beginning: How is AKB48 going to die?

The answer came to me in the dark of an autumn night, from 17 time zones away: a vision that revealed the blueprint for the collapse of the Akihabara Empire.

A chance link-clicking had led me to the wonderful world of PASSPO, a no-name idol group toiling in the shadows of bigger acts but clearly possessed of a passion and rock-styled repertoire that could someday make them stars. They were actually celebrating their one-year anniversary that day, and the commemorative performance was being broadcast live on Ustream to … ANYBODY ON TEH INTERNETTE.

And it was then, by checking the Ustream schedule, that I also found out that MAH BBZ, Tokyo Girls’ Style, were putting on a live Ustream webcast later that week. At 9 pm IN AMERICA time which actually was a reasonable hour for me!!! (Primetime IN JAPAN generally happens during the wee hours IN AMERICA so I’m like ffffffff I’d rather be sleeping.) And apparently TGS has been doing webcasts of their live shows and appearances SINCE MAY, WaT.

APPROVED.

So basically, at about 8:45 pm on a Friday night, while stopping by my familial home on Thanksgiving weekend, I’m tuned into the Tokyo Girls’ Style Ustream channel waiting for the show to start. And they’re showing backstage footage of the girls watching a previous performance (like video review, I guess). And my sister, bless her soul, asks what’s going on, and this is great because I basically use my sister as a barometer of What Normal People Think. If I have to explain Crazy Japanese Shit to my sister and she doesn’t get it, that tells me I have to refine my explanation to make it clearer.

“What are they doing?” she asks.
“Watching video of their previous performance … before they go do their next one,” I say.
“Oh, is it like, a reality show?”
“Oh no, it’s a live webcast. i.e. This is actually happening in Japan right now.”
“Wow…”
“I know, right? TECHNOLOGY!”
“Well what if they have to go to the bathroom?”
“They’re not gonna film them in the bathroom!”
And then Yuri (moeblobface) waves byebye to the camera and we clearly see the live, spontaneous nature of the video.

Let it go! Let it go!

It is during another TGS and Passpo event, this time the EXTRAVE multi-idol music festival, that the vision of AKB48′s death comes to me. You see, another stupid ass wota from TEH NETHERLANDS is watching the show at the same time, and we’re commenting on Tokyo Girls’ Style’s delicious legs, and it dawns upon me that despite being separated by three continents and two oceans, we are practically there experiencing the same event (except in 360p resolution, but eh). And this is totally not the same thing as viewing a concert recording because by the time you get to those, the actual concert attendees have given out the setlist on 2ch/memolist or some text-based forum, and then the pirates and rippers have already seen the footage first, and then your internet friends with faster download speeds saw it already, and by the time YOU get to seeing a concert recording it’s frickin’ OLD NEWS. But with a live streaming video—and one that also comes with a viewers’ chat window—then the show is instantly new for EVERYONE, no matter who or where you are, because you’re watching it as it happens.

And I’m thinking, “Why don’t they do that for AKB48′s shows?”

The answer is obvious: Because they’re big and successful and when you’re big and successful you don’t change what you’re already doing. After all, Yasushi Akimoto is already sitting on money pile going “OHOHOHOHO” and rubbing yen coins together, while users purchase AKB concert recordings through the LOD system and immediately pirate them across the globe. But you’re still viewing recordings.

And OF COURSE they don’t want to livestream AKB48 concerts because that would be practically giving them away, and then the allure and prestige of attending the Akihabara theater in person would be lost because anybody could go watch them off the internet.

OHOHOHO I'M RICH.

But that’s exactly the kind of thinking that sunk Hello! Project. Tsunku (or more correctly, Naoki Yamazaki) is sitting on HIS giant pile of money, thinking “OHOHOHOHO I’M RICH” and that CD, and DVD and photobook sales is ALL they will ever need because how the hell are you gonna make money off of this “BLOGS” crap anyway. So what does the Akimoto army do? The AKB girls all go and get themselves a bunch of “BLOGS” and insinuate themselves into the minds of fans at their every waking, sleeping and eating moment, not JUST at concerts and publicity events, so that ultimately everyone’s got AKB on the brain and next thing you know THEY’RE the ones raking in the money because everyone’s coming to see THEIR shows and buy THEIR products.

Because every new wave of Japanese idols is propelled by an ordinate leap in entertainment technology.

And one day Yasushi Akimoto will be sitting on his piles of money saying, “OHOHOHOHO I don’t need to run live webcasts for AKB48! People line up for hours just for a CHANCE to get a theater ticket! As long as we make live shows ridiculously hard to get into and sell LOD recordings, I will have all I’ll ever need!” while at the same time a bunch of nobodies are going to be broadcasting THEIR idol concerts where anyone IN THE WORLD (with an internet connection) can view it, and fans from far beyond Japan are going to fall in love with new songs and new faces, and this whole freaking planet-sized New Idol Paradigm wave is going to come crashing on Akimoto’s empire because when Japanese companies get big and successful they become slow and stupid (the exception being Nintendo, maybe) and get tripped up by revolutionary movements in the waters.

Then, by the time they realize what needs to be done, it will be too late.

Well, crap.

The Death of AKB48 is coming, and this is how it will look:

????? (late 10′s? – ???)

Live web-based video streaming brings concerts to fans as they happen, ending dependence on scarce tickets and recorded media.

Rest in peace, sweet princesses.

Tags: AKB48, Akihabara, blogging, Copernicus, entertainment, Hello! Project, idols, internet, Morning Musume, Passpo, Shoko Nakagawa, technology, Tokyo Girls' Style, Tsunku, Twitter, Ustream, Web 2.0, webcast, Yasushi Akimoto