If you haven’t seen the contents, then surely you’ve already seen the arguments over its contents. It’s the same words and logic that are thrown about whenever a young idol shoots her first photobook: Hmm yummy!, I’ve never seen this side of her before, It’s not right for her to do “those kinds” of poses, She entirely has the right to do whatever kinds of poses she likes, Now she’s just a busty sex object, Well maybe YOU should stop treating her like an object, etc. etc. etc. For further reference please open up any Morning Musume discussion forum and prepare to have your brain melted.

Actually, it’s her hotness that is melting my brain.

But the real issue, I think, lies deeper than simply dredging up buzzwords like “Japanese standards” or “the wota audience” or “age appropriateness” or even (puts on Social Justice Defensive Forcefield) “slut shaming.” People love to argue about high-minded talking points like these, to make themselves sound important and look smart. But there is a unifying principle behind all this:

What are idols, and celebrities in general, for?

That is to say, what is their purpose in life? In YOUR life?

What are Japanese pop idols for? Are they fantasy girlfriends for men of a certain age to lust after? (A gross oversimplification and straw man that many puffed-up “culture critics” use to knock the whole genre down.) Are they role models for girls and young women to emulate as standard-bearers of beauty and poise in society? Are they performers of mindless, bubblegummy hit songs, or exemplars of how unceasing effort can overcome even mediocre talent? Do they go on TV shows and appear in magazines just to look pretty? Or are they trying to express an inner creative urge through every entertainment medium possible?

The correct answer, which makes it such a complicated issue, is that they have to be ALL of the above.

Idols have many roles to play, and they have many audiences to cater to, and that becomes a problem when different audiences have different expectations of idols, celebrities, and public figures in general. These differences, if not reconciled, result in stupid internet arguments as seen here. And where do these differences come from? They come from the very beliefs and viewpoints through which people see the world.

Recently I’ve been reading Mark Douglas’s Trading in the Zone, a book that’s sort-of about stock market trading but is really more about re-tooling your thought process to deal with the world better. And part of that process is realizing that one’s personal beliefs are often in conflict with what is going on in the outside world, and that is what leads to emotional pain—or at least a negative feeling. Basically, when the external, objective world around you behaves in a way that goes against your internal beliefs or expectations, then [South Park quote] YOU’RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME.

It sounds so obvious, but that obviousness is why we often miss it.

I think a lot of people go through their entire lives without ever thinking about their beliefs and worldviews, and I don’t mean just saying “Oh I believe in such-and-such” or “I don’t believe that blah-de-blah exists.” I mean, do they ever stop to think where those beliefs come from? I know this definitely describes me; I spent much of MY life being an outspoken asshat whose mouth (or typing fingers) moved faster than his brain, and this got me in trouble quite a few times … until I learned to stop and think about my thoughts, before acting or speaking in a foolish manner.

(Hold on, I’m getting to the point of this…)

So maybe we ask ourselves: what, exactly, is so upsetting about Mizuki Fukumura shooting an idol photobook with the usual idol contents? And I don’t mean the moral-high-ground B.S. that people futz around with. If you have to drag up “talking points” or buzzwords or “~social issues~” in order to discuss this matter, you’re just hiding behind a wall of fluff that masks more serious, deep-seated beliefs. Like I said, people go their entire lives without stopping to confront those beliefs, because digging that deep can shake the very sense of one’s own identity.

Basically, the existence of Mizuki Fukumura’s photobook—and its contents—is in conflict with some people’s beliefs about the role of the entertainer in society. It is not about what she is wearing, or the poses she strikes; it is not about what wotas are doing with that photobook in private; it is not about her age relative to the content of the photos. Those are all just higher-level arguments that stem from the far more basic conflict of expectations vs. reality.

EXPECTATION: Mizuki Fukumura is a virginal angel who is grateful simply to be in Hello! Project and Morning Musume and whose thoughts are made entirely of cotton candy and unicorns.

REALITY: Mizuki Fukumura is a regular human being going through puberty, who is aware of her physical attractiveness and is willing to present those physical qualities to the public.

[Translation: Of COURSE she knows she has big boobs, what 16-year-old WOULDN'T be aware of their developing body by that point, and yes she KNOWS she's being asked to emphasize those traits in front of the camera. It's not like she's been chloroformed and hypnotized for goodness sakes.]

She knows. SHE KNOWS!!

It is unfortunate, then, that the public whose worldview is aligned closer to “EXPECTATION” feel the need to take it out on Mizuki, her employer(s), and her fans. That is to say, H!P/UFA are exploiters for “using” her, and anyone who enjoyed the photobook is a criminal sex offender for even looking, and as for Mizuki herself, well, I don’t even want to repeat some of the words that are used to describe her. (Or worse, her body parts.)

Is this the ACTUAL reality? Or is this just someone’s personal beliefs, opinions, and expectations coming in conflict with reality? Could it be that the detractors have certain expectations, that Mizuki and MM and H!P should be about a certain thing, but as a multi-media form of entertainment, they put out products that consist of another thing, and this contradiction is what makes people so mad?

Personality-wise, fans know that Mizuki is a really sweet girl and that staff even had to tell her to STOP AGGRESSIVELY HANDSHAKING THE FANS because she was being too nice and grateful, and actually they need to keep the line moving. And when this ~sweet girl~ becomes the object of attraction for the less pure-of-mind, well, that’s where the contradiction—and the conflict—happens.

We never stop to think that it may be about our own expectations versus reality that is at fault, because WE expect the world to be exactly the way we see it. Then, when the world is not as we want it to be, we blame it on the WORLD, and not our own misjudging viewpoints. So it’s Mizuki’s fault, it’s her boobs’ fault, it’s H!P’s fault, it’s the wota’s fault, it’s everyone else’s fault—except the person in the mirror.

The really dangerous one we have to be aware of is when people start to use “the age argument,” because that is where concrete facts (i.e. numbers) start getting mixed in with abstract beliefs. Like someone will try to tell you about the “age of consent” in Japan or AMERICA or BRITANNIA or the “age of majority,” not that this has anything to do with anything. Are we supposed to be outraged that Mizuki is 16? What for? The fact that she is 16 simply tells us that she has been living on this planet for 16 years (and a bit).

That is the FACT. Any other ideas, connotations, or judgments that attached to that “fact” is, again, the result of people injecting their personal beliefs into the discussion. We may want to consider that, maybe, it’s society that has conditioned us into thinking this way. It’s the laws and the media, always scaremongering about pedophiles and predators, that have created this sense of uncomfortableness whenever a young entertainer or public figure does something that they should be “too young” to be involved in.

The age argument basically is someone hiding behind concrete laws and numbers to mask their personal beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of “teen modeling.” Because that’s really all it is, isn’t it? She’s 16 years old and either you think it’s acceptable to sell published material of her wearing swimsuits and other suggestive regalia, or you think it’s wrong. The key phrase here is what YOU THINK. There is absolutely no objective, scientific principle saying that a terrible misfortune will befall Mizuki and her fans because she was squeezing her boobs together in that one photo or whatever.

(That would be frightening if it did.)

Ultimately, if Mizuki feels comfortable shooting the shots that she did, and is happy with the results of the photobook, then she has done her job. And the management, the staff, and the publisher have done their jobs by making the product available to the public. The public who enjoys this kind of material will buy it. And those who are not interested, will not buy it. On the outside, in the physical, real world, that is all that happens. Everything else is just people flinging their personal beliefs, viewpoints, and opinions at each other until another idol puts out her debut photobook and we start beating on her as an ideological piñata.

Step right up, Ayumi.

The saviors of humankind???

Newly-minted girl group Juice=Juice has made a dashing first impression, becoming the darlings of J-idol fandom almost as quickly as Stephen Curry has become the darling of NBA basketball. With his pure shooting stroke and legit playmaking skills, Curry has captured the imagination of the hoops nation, not to mention his eyes are prettier than Yuka Miyazaki’s. But I digress. Juice=Juice has all of two singles to their name, both under an indie label (which means no B-side tracks), yet the sheer impact of these songs and the videos accompanying them are inspiring all sorts of buzz among fans. “Better than S/mileage,” some are saying. “The greatest talent Tsunku has ever assembled.” “Hello! Project is finally doing something right.”

After two songs? As in, they don’t even have enough repertoire to fill in between two MC segments at a concert?

While people often say “Don’t be so quick to judge!” in response to something negative, I think the same words of warning apply to positive reactions too.

Look, I think Juice=Juice is great. All the girls are charming, not one of them is overpowering or overshadowed, and Karin’s “demon eyes” look finally went away thanks to the process of puberty. But there is a certain pattern I’ve noticed whenever Hello! Pro groups debut. It all has to do with Tsunku, who even in his advanced years still insists on being primary songwriter and lyricist for all things H!P. Like most normal humans, Tsunku’s creativity is sparked by any brand-new external stimulus, and what could be more stimulating than having a fresh set of voices to write for? That’s why, whenever a new Hello! Project group debuts, their first singles are always unusually good.

For the sake of illustrating this principle, let’s disregard the debut of Morning Musume (since they were more of an experiment when THEY started out, and Hello! Project didn’t actually exist, and modern idol culture as we know it was still very embryonic) and only look at H!P sister groups that are current. Every single one of them had a run of exceptional singles that cemented their position as pop groups with a solid fan following, and basically made it financially feasible to keep the girls performing because some folks would always buy their releases even if the quality dropped further down the line.

Berryz Kobo

First five singles:

• Anata Nashi dewa Ikite Yukenai Freaking amazing. Arguably not just an all-time Berryz hit but an all-time H!P hit. Like Juice=Juice’s debut, has a punchy backbeat and is eminently danceable, plus still gets performed a lot.
• Fighting Pose wa Date Janai! Goes the other end of the scale to something cute and bubbly in tone, yet is another high-energy song with a catchy hook.
• Piriri to Yukou! Another cute-sounding song but with Okinawan flavor added, and by this point if you hadn’t become a Berryz fan it would be like “WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DOES IT TAKE TO PLEASE YOU???”
• Happiness ~Koufuku Kangei!~ Probably the one “eh” song among their first five and it’s STILL PRETTY GOOD. Has a good beat but drags on repetitively.
• Koi no Jubaku Wow we’re still one single away from “Special Generation” but even this one has a catchy, instantly infectious quality to it.

°C-ute

First five singles:

• Massara Blue Jeans Wow just wow if you don’t think of the “Massara Blue JEeeeeeaaans!!” scream as soon as you see the title, you must not have heard this song yet, because it is so good and so catchy that even indie idols and random dudes who do electro remixes know this one. Also: hip-thrusting.
• Soku Dakishimete Like I said, everyone gets one “eh” song in their first five. Forgettable melody and arrangement make it more like album filler.
• Ookina Ai de Motenashite Pushes the limits of bubblegum-cute and does it well—never mind the baby-sweet vocals and tinkly noises, it just gets stuck in your head for DAYS.
• Wakkyanai (Z) ZE!!! Again, a cleverly placed hook-phrase and irresistible beat make this one of their all-time best along with “Massara Blue Jeans.”
• Sakura Chirari The first major-label release, and maybe repeats itself too much, but TOO LATE you’re a °C-ute fan already.

S/mileage

First five singles:

• aMa no Jaku S/mileage’s debut wasn’t that much of an attention-grabber, but the distinctive opening riff and dreamy, feel-good melody made it a very likable (if not spectacular) song.
• Asu wa Date na no ni, Ima Sugu Koe ga Kikitai Arguably THE single that established “the S/mileage sound,” with its cute, catchy tune and arrangement—plus a few harmonic surprises. (G-flat major to E-flat? SURE!!)
• Suki-chan Another definitive S/mileage single, effectively combining “cute” with “rock” and still getting performed regularly as a long-running favorite.
• Otona ni Narutte Muzukashii!!! Probably a step down from the last two (as an anime theme, was it written on a deadline?) but still cute as all hell.
• Yumemiru 15sai A un-S/mileageish departure from form—the first in a minor key, the first with a hard dance beat. And you know what? It’s so catchy, and so distinct, it works.

And so it will go with Juice=Juice. They’ll probably get some really great songs to start out, with maybe one clunker, and it will mostly be because of the fresh waves of inspiration emanating from their producer. Tsunku has new girls to work with! They have no reputation or expectations to live up to! He can make them sing whatever they want! And they will. Badass songs (already got that covered), danceable songs, cute songs, novelty songs, they’ll be trying out many things to find out what works. It will be a great time, an exciting time, but at the same time we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves—it’s too early to declare Juice=Juice the queens of H!P and everyone should just pack up and go home. Besides, I think if you told Masaki Sat0rrrr to pack up and go home, she’d cry, bless her heart.

If you want to hear how good a Hello! Project group really is, don’t judge them by their second single. Judge them by their tenth.

That’s about when Tsunku starts getting bored, it’s been over a year, and everyone’s gotten used to the girls. Will they still be fresh and charming then? Will their songs still be AH-MAH-ZING? Will they still entertain you with their talents and their antics? Will they have an album? Will they have released a group photobook? Who knows?

Humans have a tendency to overrate any event that has happened in the recent past or has had a dramatic effect around them. That’s why, for example, Los Angeles Lakers fans thought Trevor Ariza was such a GREAT GUY after the 2009 NBA Playoffs, because he just happened to make a handful of key plays while the Lakers rolled to a championship. Yet on the average, Trevor Ariza is just a second-rate bench player; he just happened to have a dramatic effect on the Lakers’ fortunes during their playoff run, which made everyone take notice of him. To use a more general example, it’s why, if you go to a restaurant and have bad service, you swear you’ll NEVER go to that restaurant again and you tell everyone else not to go because they’re gonna have a BAD TIME. Yet maybe that was the one night one of the regular servers called in sick, and you got one of the scrubs, or maybe your server was just in a bad mood that day, and on the average it could be that the restaurant is actually really well-run. But you have that one incident that leaves a dramatic impact on you, and it colors your entire judgment of the situation even though you only have one data point amidst a sea of statistics.

So Juice=Juice has had a couple of really good songs to start out with. That’s great for them! But we as fans must not let a small sample size decide the entire worth of this group, not when they have so much still ahead of them and so much still to prove. Could Juice=Juice be Hello! Project’s last hope? That’s silly talk. Hello! Project has plenty of hope. The S/mileage n00blets are coming into their own. (Have you HEARD Meimi’s solo part on that one song off the new album?) °C-ute is going to Le France, for crying out loud. Berryz are fighting back to get their own concert date at the Budokan. And the media has all but fallen in love with the “New” Morning Musume (though it’s not like they were ever GONE; they just had to finish turning over all the legacy members from the 00′s).

And now comes Juice=Juice, not the saviors of the Hello!verse, but simply its protectors, who will keep the tradition going. Maybe someday down the line, Ayano Hamaura and Natsumi Taguchi and Rikako Sasaki will appear on that new horizon too, and THEY will be lauded as the greatest talent ever assembled. But why worry about the future? Juice=Juice has two great singles out. Best to enjoy it now.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – some famous dude

The last year-and-a-bit* has seen Morning Musume shift into the “Electro Musume” [nobody actually uses this nickname] era, with their latest songs being defined by heavy synthesizer riffs, dance-club beats, and more vocal manipulation than the Tuvan throat singers of Siberia. People love it. People hate it. Lasped fans and newcomers are showing up. Longtime fans (definition of LONGTIME: “I remember the beginning of the Platinum era!”) are turning away. Still, the fact that Morning Musume’s new sound is sparking controversy is more important than whether it’s “good” or not. I mean, what is “good” anyway? Everyone has different criteria by which they judge what kind of music they like. But people are talking about it! And talk, positive or negative, is good. Better than being ignored and irrelevant.

A common complaint I see, ever since this new style emerged, is “All their new songs sound the same. D:<" Hence the above quote about insanity, implying that supreme overlord producer Tsunku is a loon who wants to drive Morning Musume into the ground by having the girls perform the same kinds of songs over and over. But here's the thing: I don’t think Tsunku is insane. After all, don’t forget there’s a second part to that quote, and I don’t think Tsunku is expecting different results. He is expecting consistent results, and is sticking with a certain style to accomplish that.

Now, most would point to sales numbers as the most obvious gauge of results (80-100K?) but I have always believed that sales are a shitty way of keeping score. If you go by sales numbers of anything, that means Titanic is the “best” movie of all time and 50 Shades of Gray is the “best” book of 2012. Now I don’t know about you but I can think of many things that are more quality than Titanic or 50 Shades. So, by that token, you can’t really say from “sales numbers” whether Momusu is good or well-liked or what. The real way to gauge an entertainer’s success is whether YOU enjoy their current music. Do you like listening to Morning Musume’s latest single? Great! They have succeeded, on a personal level, with YOU. And shouldn’t what YOU like be more important than whether lots of copies are selling or not?

[[SIDE NOTE: Maybe it's just because I grew up a fan of lots of "unpopular" media (fine arts music, niche TV programming, non-DC/Marvel types of comics) that I just learned to suck it up and not care whether something has "good sales" or not. I always felt watching sales charts was a useless exercise, unless I wanted to be forever depressed about jazz and classical music's overall market share.]]

To that end, as long as Tsunku (and by extension Hello! Project and Up-Front) can expect a certain level of support from the current audience, they will continue doing what they’ve been doing. They don’t need to show increased revenues (sales) month after month. They DO have to make enough to turn a profit, or at the very least, break even. Considering how tacky the videos and concert attire are, and how cheap it is to employ the labor of teenage girls who will do whatever it takes to “get famous,” making enough revenue to offset the costs should be easy.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The definition of Hello! Project is doing the same thing over and over as long as it works.

Now, I have other rebut from a non-financial/logistical perspective about all the new singles sounding the same. There’s a line of reasoning that I like to call the “Mozart Piano Concerto Defense” whenever people use the “all sounds same” rhetoric in putting down any kind of music. And it goes something like:

Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos and THEY all sound the same and I don’t see music critics complaining about THAT.

There’s actually several lines of argument coded into that statement. The first is from an intrinsic musical viewpoint; yes it’s true that if you zoom out far enough and aren’t paying proper attention, then Mozart’s piano concertos ARE all the same. They all use piano + orchestra instrumentation and have a three-movement structure of fast-slow-fast. (In fact this could apply to practically EVERY concerto written until the early 20th century.) By that same token, if you zoom out enough, don’t pay attention and disregard the details, then YES everything in the Electro Musume era is the same damn song. Fat synth riffs, dance-club beats, voice manipulation. That is what they have in common, therefore they must be all the same. But to say that is to miss the subtleties between each, just as a dumb-headed dumbo might say that they can’t tell the difference between the Mozart 21st and 23rd. THE OPENING MELODIES DON’T EVEN SOUND ALIKE HOW CAN YOU NOT NOTICE. So what kind of dumb-headed dumbo would dare say that “One Two Three” is the same thing as “Help me!!”?

This connects to the second sub-argument of the Piano Concerto Defense, which implies, At what level of comparison and do we say that two works are musically “the same” anyway? Again, to take the case of our dumb-headed dumbo, let’s suppose this hypothetical person is so thick-headed that they think all Japanese girlpop music sounds the same. Yes, there exists a level of generalization where you can say EVERY song is in the Japanese language and it’s performed by a girl group whose ages fall somewhere between the mid-teens to mid-twenties. Therefore 48-family = H!P = Momoclo = Tokyo Girls’ Style = Sakura Gakuin = SUPER*GIRLS = Passpo = … and to dislike one must mean disliking ALL of them. You see what I’m getting at here. That kind of thinking, to even the most n00bish fan, must sound absurd. Yet any type of music, if you zoom out to absurd enough levels, to a reasonably ignorant outsider, can be said to “all sound the same.” If we’re not agreed on the level of comparison and classification, then how can we possibly have a reasonable discussion? (Hence the internet shouting matches about “All New Momusu sounds the same >:PPPPP” “Oh yeah, well all Platinum Era sounded the same!!!11 SFGJLF;JKAHh”)

That, in turn, leads to the third part of the Defense: personal perception. Since there are varying levels of detail at which songs or styles of music might be considered the same or different, it stands to reason that each individual listener has his or her own internalized levels of differentiation. It all comes down to what type of music you’re into, and your level of “training” (or perhaps shall we say, “experience”) in listening to different styles. Like, for example, I’m a fuddy-duddy old man who can’t stand metal, and I really couldn’t tell you the difference between death metal and black metal and Christian metal and folk metal and fusion metal unless I was given dictionary definitions and had them pointed out to me. Likewise, the dumbo-head in the paragraph above might not be able to differentiate between a Hello! Pro song and a 48-family song and a TGS song because they’re all random Japanese girls singing high-pitched like, yet You and Me and He and We can ALL tell the difference because we listen to that kind of stuff regularly. So personal opinion is inevitably going to cloud this argument, yet someone will always be completely aghast that not everyone hears things the way they do, failing to realize the subjectivity of the situation.

So, is it really that bad for Morning Musume to be putting out songs in a similar-sounding style? Maybe, if you just hate autotune/vocoder filter and want nothing to do with it. (I suppose there are folks who never listen to jazz because saxophones sound like the devil.) But, as the above line of reasoning suggests, there are people out there who can’t tell Mozart’s piano concertos apart, and dismiss it all as tinkly-winkly concert-hall crap. It’s their loss for missing out on the subtleties that make each piece special. Following from that, there are people who can’t tell the new Electro Musume songs apart, and it’s THEIR loss for missing out on the strange harmonic twists (“Kimi sae Ireba…”, “What’s Up?”), the increased malleability and fluidity of pop-song structure (when the transitions to the chorus are more interesting than the chorus, THAT’s dramatic), motivic development based on a single line of melody (“Brainstorming”—and maybe I’ll explain that in the future), and a brand new soundscape born of the 21st century.

This isn’t insanity. It’s Tsunkunanity.

In the current season of the AKB0048 anime, we get an inside look at one of the intergalactic idol group’s arcane rituals: the selection of a “successor,” when an idol’s power of the Force latent idol-ness kicks into overdrive and she takes on the identity of one of AKB48′s renowned members from the early 21st century. Similarly, just a day or two ago, we got to witness one of the Catholic Church’s arcane rituals: the papal conclave, when the Church’s top leaders elect a new pope and the freshly-appointed pontiff takes on a new name to reflect this great change.

There’s a lot of power in names, especially famous names that are linked to powerful organizations with a rich tradition. Okay, so maybe being able to do the MIX (“Tiger! Fire! Cyber! Fiber!…”) isn’t quite as ~traditional~ as being able to say the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father, who art in heaven…”), but let’s roll with the fictionalized world of AKB0048 and assume that future-AKB probably is as powerful as the Church. And let’s suppose that the mention of historic names like Mariko Shinoda, Minami Takahashi, Mayu Watanabe, and so forth might, someday, be held in the same esteem as that of St. Francis of Assisi. To that end, selecting one’s successor name is a very weighty choice. It’s not like you just walk in one day and say “I’m gonna be Acchan!” and BOOM you get to be Acchan after 3-4 years of training and study. It is a very powerful, personal choice that goes far beyond just what happens on stage and in front of the cameras.

It makes sense, then, that the succession process is presented the way it is in AKB0048. Out of all the other events in the series so far, this one’s an outlier—everything else has been political, or sci-fi/action, or entertainment/musical, or slice-of-life, or comedy, yet what happens to Mimori is downright religious. She is taken off to a secluded area, contemplates herself and her future, and performs a deeply symbolic act (cutting her own hair!) that signifies a great transition to a new stage of life. Not too different from, say, secluding a bunch of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel and then letting out white smoke when the new pope is elected.

I have to admit there were some differences about how I thought succession was going to work. I thought it was going to be more sci-fi (like the rest of the show), as in, the girl gets taken in and they stick a bunch of tubes in her, then her genetic data is modified at the base level so that she takes on some of the looks and mannerisms of the original idol. But I guess the way they presented it, it really was something more spiritual. So maybe when I made that crack about the Force earlier, I wasn’t too far off—becoming an AKB successor is also like becoming a Jedi Knight, where you reach that state not by technological enhancements and physical training, but by intense spiritual focus. It may seem far-fetched and fantastical (modern-day science has yet to prove that Kirara actually exist), but it does have its applications in real life: being a successful idol isn’t just about knowing the songs and dances and being charming to one’s fans and the media, but also carrying that idol spirit in one’s soul.

But when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first-ever Pope Francis, I also wondered what kinds of names are available to 0048 members. Like, everyone wants to be Acchan, but there’s already been thirteen of them and soon they all just start to blur together like all the Pope Johns. Maybe there’ll be an idol who wants to break new ground and be the first successor of a certain name, just as Bergoglio did, or when Cardinal Albino Luciani became the first Pope John Paul. Could there be a Miori Ichikawa II somewhere in AKB0048′s future? Would a successor to Mai Oshima have what it takes to go Center Nova? And if I remember correctly, there was one line of dialogue where they mentioned Jurina, so could candidates be allowed to take names of “double-wielding” members, meaning that there might be a Miyuki Watanabe II somewhere in the ranks?

The parallels are everywhere. Clearly, the succession system of AKB0048 is just as cryptic—and just as fascinating—as the Catholic Church’s method of choosing popes.

To be succinct, the survey was asking which music guests, among Anime Expos of the last few years, were of greatest interest TO ME. So like they wanted to know if you like Kalafina or Hatsune Miku or [hold the punchline] Animetal USA. And if they brought back THAT guest, would you be interested in seeing them again.

YES, we could be once again be graced by Yasushi Akimoto’s shit-eating grin.

Yes, AKB48 was on that list.
No, Morning Musume was not. (Hmm, gotta wonder why. Ask a well-versed Anime Expologist about “the Lattanzio era” sometime and you will learn many enlightening things.)

Of course, when mysterious marketing heads ask me, “Would you be interested in AKB48 coming back to Anime Expo,” my response is, “WOULD I?” Would dogs be interested in greeting their owners when they come home from work? Of course, I understand that everything being discussed is hypothetical, but I stop to wonder.

Is Anime Expo trying to get AKB48 back for another showing?
Is Anime Expo trying to gauge interest in idol acts, period?
Would AKB48 come back to the United States for any engagement, convention or cultural festival or otherwise? Keep in mind that they are now a Big Thing© so their appearance fees would be ridiculous. And this is already in addition to the fact that someone has to pay for the plane tickets to fly a herd of at least 16 girls across the Pacific Ocean.

Even if they DON’T invite AKB48 back as a guest, I could see Anime Expo’s organizers trying to arrange a similar type of performer. Yes I know exactly which words are on my lips right now and I know you’re about to say them too because we all know who the big up-and-coming idol thing is right now.

Momoiro Clover Z.

Fewer girls to deal with, still pretty damn popular, and a definitely an attention-grabbing stage act.

The only HUEG problem is that, in some ways, I think convention organizers still have no fraggin’ clue how to deal with idol fans. They know that these fans, like me, are Insta-Money because they will pay for anything no matter how ridiculous it is (remember when they were about to charge $100 for the AKB Meet-and-Greet tickets). I would put down $50 for a 15ml vial of Shiori Tamai’s sweat. BUT they have no idea how else to serve these fans at conventions, because all they seem to do is stand in line for things and block con walkways, which is a massive pain for all other convention attendees (like Doctor Who cosplayers). Every time a Hello! Project act plays at a U.S. con, and the H!P goods booth sets up shop at the Exhibit Hall, the rest of the convention ends up hating them and their fandom because of the massive crowds that line up just to buy goods that equate to autograph tickets.

Yet also, in another way, I think idol fans also have no idea how to deal with conventions because they only know how to line up for things and attend concerts, and they act as if everyone else who doesn’t “get” their fandom is the enemy. Despite anecdotal evidence, not every con staffer is a power-tripping ignorant twit who wants to ruin other people’s lives. No, those ignorant twits just want to run the con as smoothly as they can, but the disruptive herd behavior that comes from the wota crowd is often a first-time experience for them. It’s your first time attending an event where 90% of people are dressed up as fictional characters? Well, it’s their first time dealing with hundreds of people who want to chant and wave glowsticks at singing dancing teenage girls. We could really come to an understanding here.

It doesn’t help that con staff turnover is MASSIVE so even if it’s a con that gets an idol guest every year, there will always be a ton of new staffers who have never dealt with wota behavior in their lives. (And this is super ironic if they watch stuff like Idolm@ster and Love Live! but have never seen actual 3-D girls performing that kind of music.)

Look! Actual 3-D girls!

So. I think there are many questions that branch out from the simple “Is AKB48 coming back to America?” and “Is Anime Expo going to bring in another idol act in the future?” Would that it were as simple as saying “Hey, can you call up Japan and ask Perfume if they’re available next 4th of July weekend?” and voila you have Perfume coming over to perform. There is the logistics, there is the money, there is the target audience, and figuring out if (1) you’ll get enough people to come (2) if you do, will there be enough space and crowd control to handle them?

And if it is Momoclo, you can damn well bet I’m going to be lining up to buy a vial of Shiori Tamai’s sweat.

Who SHE?

March is, after all, graduation season in Japan, and if I remember my school regulations correctly, whoever turns 18 before April 1st of the current year is graduating from high school. So Ayaka Wada (turned 18 on August 1 of last year) is graduating. Kanon Fukuda (turns 18 on March 12 of this year) is graduating. And Yuuka, who already “graduated” once from S/mileage in the heartbreaking shocker of my lifetime, will also … be graduating from high school.

That’s 3/4ths of original S/mileage. Kind of a surprising reminder of how close in age they are.

Like all graduating high schoolers do, they want to hang out and celebrate and make some lasting memories. Apparently Yuuka’s classmates weren’t too concerned about protecting her identity (and neither was she), seeing as she’s now a former public figure, so a few of their get-together photos leaked out online where some enterprising Internette Detectives found them. Nothing special, really. A couple of photos of the entire class together. A ladies-only pic with Yuuka’s circle of friends. Some candids from the karaoke booth, snapped by a friend on a cellphone and then posted to her blog that nobody reads (guessing by the number of comments).

It feels a bit creepster to be stumbling on these photos, but as long as nobody is actually stalking these kids, no harm no foul. People are always posting pictures of their personal activities and get-togethers online, and if you don’t want your privacy violated then keep your photos private. But eh, kids will be kids, and a picture of a bunch of high schoolers hanging out has about as much overall impact on society as farting while walking down the street. The only difference is that there’s an ex-celebrity among them, but if she’s retired from professional entertainment—if she’s not beholden to Hello! Project, Up-Front, or any agency, and not being watched by the tabloids—then she can do whatever she likes in her spare time, including letting her friends take her photo and post it up publicly.

Of course, some stupid ass wotas have to be jerks about it and be like, “She really let herself go” and “I guess she left just as her looks hit their peak.” Look, I know some 2ch trolls don’t get out much, but obviously Normal Girls© don’t have an army of stylists and make-up artists trailing behind them. So of course idols are going to look better in the media—we all know magazine shoots are photoshopped to within an inch of their lives (or an inch off their waistlines), and video effects can cover up all manner of blemishes. Cell phone snaps and casual point-and-shoot photos will always run the risk of being unflattering. But if I can inject my own opinion, Yuuka is definitely the most photogenic of all the Normal Girls she hangs out with.

And looking at her class photo, I can’t help but wonder which lucky bastard is dating her.

I am SO done with school LOL later guys.

So now begins Yuuka’s path to university, and part of me secretly hopes that she really, truly disappears from the world and nobody ever tracks down a photo of her ever again. Because deep in my heart, and deep in many others’ hearts, I think we all want to remember her in her youth, and that what happens to her in her adult life remains hers, and what happened when she was an idol remains ours. A silent contract, if you will—a decision to respect the boundaries between different periods of her life.

But if a random photo should pop up of her while she’s at college, I wouldn’t be too surprised. And yes, I know we’re all going to look.

Congratulations, Yuuka. Best of luck wherever life takes you.

Running down the full roster in order, we have (starting at upper left):

Hmm yummy!

Akari Uemura (image color/fruit: melon)
Yuka Miyazaki (image color/fruit: peach)
Sayuki Takagi (image color/fruit: FRESH LEMON NI NARITAI …. no. just lemon.)
Karin Miyamoto finally has a damn unit so all her fans can stop complaining now (image color/fruit: grape)
Aina Ohtsuka (image color/fruit: orange)
Tomoko Kanazawa (image color/fruit: apple)

Looking at it now, this has all the earmarks of a H!P group built to last: lots of young brats, a sweet-sounding name (with an ungrammatical flourish), and enough members to back each other up as singers and dancers (and also survive a possible graduation). Tsunku has also left open the possibility that the lineup is subject to change, but that sounds more like he’s just covering his ass in case people get bitter and whiny like when auditions were held for New S/mileage.

Speaking of which, are they doomed to be forever compared to S/mileage? True, they were constructed the same way—several girls handpicked out of the Eggs/Kenshuusei—and the loli lovers are probably going to gravitate to them now that S/mileage is growing up and putting on some mileage (pardon the pun). But I think if you were to find their closest analog in the Hello! Project system, you would have to go several years back … to the debut of Berryz Kobo.

They both have a food name.
Their six-member lineup makes them more of a “midsize” idol group (like Berryz’ eight, and then seven) rather than S/mileage’s original four.
They have pretty significant differences in facial appearance and stature, creating an “uneven” look like Berryz. No crazy growth spurts yet, but watch out.
They have that one member who looks like she is never going to age for the rest of her life. (Karin=Momoko)

Looks a bit uneven on the middle-right. (Source)

Of course, we can’t speak to their repertoire or performing ability yet, since they haven’t even put out a single song. But I’m sure high expectations will be placed upon them. Instead of collecting 10,000 smiles, will they have to sell 10,000 juice boxes? Who knows. Juice=Juice is on the market, so let the taste testing begin.

Over the last day-and-a-bit, international reaction to the video grew to a level where there was a netwide campaign to flag the video and have it taken off YouTube. I don’t know how many flags it takes to set off the alarms in YouTubeland, but if a rageful Tumblr post with several thousand notes says anything, then AKB48′s webguys probably found themselves with a pretty big pile of Notifications in the morning.

Approximate portrayal of international reaction to Minami Minegishi’s apology video. (Source)

HOWEVER, read the translated message carefully. According to Togasaki’s statement, “I have received many requests from the fans saying ‘We have fully understood Miichan’s sincerity, and so we would like for the video on YouTube to be taken down.’” It’s as if he doesn’t even realize how angry people were—including much of the Japanese public, who said “That’s just going too far”—or has blinded himself to it and is responding with a canned, cold statement.

Basically, sorry AKB’s not sorry.

This isn’t “Sorry, we’ll take it down because it was humiliating to her.” It’s not “Sorry, we’ll take it down because a ton of people misunderstood our unusual cultural customs.” It’s simply “We’ll take it down because ‘the fans’ said they’d seen enough.”

The fans? What fans? YOU GOT A SHIT-TON OF FLAGS ON YT BECAUSE THE VIDEO WENT VIRAL AROUND THE WORLD AND FREAKED PEOPLE OUT. That’s why it’s being taken down. The Miichan incident broke in a big enough way to hit the Entertainment News department of major agencies including UK’s The Guardian, Yahoo’s trending topics, and the grand old dame of them all, the BBC. And once you hit the BBC, all side-eyes are on you.

You’ve got the entire English-speaking world going, “Oh God, those inscrutable Orientals,” screaming about misogyny and injustice and basically stopping just short of suggesting we nuke the country again. I guess we can breathe a sigh of relief that no enterprising soul thought to strap a bomb to themselves and take a flying leap at the Japanese Embassy, because we all know what happened IN LIBYA the last time an inflammatory video pissed off a major swath of Earth’s population. So YEAH, you take that video down before it gets worse. Like being reported on USA Today.

Now, I’m not here to argue whether the Sercial Jersterce Jihadists or the AKB Imperial Defense Force are in the right. But what I AM trying to figure out is AKB management’s very weird, very detached reaction. I think it goes something like this:

Let me take you back to a distant time in Japanese entertainment history: the late 2000′s. Okay, not that long ago, but a time when a reasonable fraction of the world’s population had taken an interest in Japanese animation (“anime’s”) and comics (“mangoes”). However, that same fraction of the world’s population had also gotten some negative press because of anime and manga content. What I’m talking about is a number of criminal cases were guys carrying anime goods across the border, or having it shipped to their house, fell afoul of the law because they were believed to be in the possession of porn.

Japanaporn.

Which somehow made it SO MUCH WORSE because it was from those inscrutable Orientals and it probably meant you were trying to arrange for sex dates with 12-year-old girls over the internet. Now, maybe it was just a slightly skeevy drawing of Azusa Nakano in a bikini or whatnot, but to untrained foreign eyes, it’s a Japanese cartoon so IT MUST BE PORN (and YOU must be a child molester).

Now, from what I have been taught, this is actually one of the causes that led up to Japan passing the infamous “Anti-Loli Law” around late 2010. You know, the one that says you’re not allowed to make fictional drawings or cartoons of minors having inappropriate sexual contact? Now, the way most of us understood this law was that the underlying philosophy behind it was (1) Oh God Think Of The Children!; or (2) Anime/Mangoes Is Disgusting Otaku Hobby So Let’s Censor It. But the SURPRISING third reason, which I learned from an academic-level Comic-Con panel, was that (3) Japan doesn’t like it when shitstorms in the Western world make their entertainment media look bad.

I mention this because what we have right now is absolutely a shitstorm in the Western world making Japanese entertainment media look bad. Never mind if it’s warranted or not; never mind if it’s a Barbaric Misogynistic Society getting called out or Evil White Oppressors imposing their morals on a culture they don’t understand. At this point I’m not even bothering to care anymore if the head-shaving was forced or voluntary. Regardless of what took place, it has attracted a ton of negative attention to the AKB organization. Sure, everything’s cool when they’re just “the biggest pop group in the world with a ton of bubbly songs” and people say “Oh that’s cute (if a little weird)”—but on the morning you wake up with a ton of YouTube flags and the BBC raising a suspicious eyebrow at your cultural practices, that is definitely the time to be doing damage control.

SUSPICIOUS EYEBROW.

For the only thing more embarrassing than a Japanese individual causing a disruption in Japanese society is Japanese society causing a disruption on the world stage. The nail that sticks out is hammered down, goes the old saying, and when the nail appears to be all of Japanese culture suddenly sticking out on the world map, they get to hurryin’ and hammer that nail down real quick.

So the video gets taken down.

Not because they’re sorry, or even realized what they did wrong, but because of this internalized self-consciousness about wanting to look good in front of others, and clearly an attractive young entertainer losing her mind and weeping with a shaved head was not a good look.

In the end, the angry locusts got what they wanted, but not really what they wanted. Meanwhile, in AKBland, business continues as usual and girls put their love lives on hold (or they hang out with guys when no one’s looking and try not to get caught). Everybody wins, but nobody wins.

And in case you were keeping score:

Heads shaven: 1
Videos uploaded: 1
Videos taken down: 1
Actual issues solved in Japanese society, the entertainment business, or the idol genre: 0

EDIT: After ~doin’ mah research~ I took note of Togasaki’s Q&A piece, stating that Minegishi showed up to film her video apology already shaved, much to the surprise of the staff. So, whether the tinfoilhatters still wanna believe she was “forced to do it,” I dunevenknow man.

Oh, and now Perez Hilton’s brand of yellow journalism has picked up on this story. I think we’re just going to have to keep watching as it develops.

I think Miichan is kind of a genius for pulling such a shocking, theatrical stunt—her scandal has gone viral in ways that no other AKB member’s ever has. If this is her scheming way of getting a little extra “screen time,” of flashing her rebellious side by showing up The Management, I’m impressed that she can still play the media-manipulation game even in a state of distress.

I am surprisingly calm.

Maybe part of me was just waiting for this to happen. “Get into Jpop,” they said. “Idols are cute and fun!” they said. “THEN THEY’LL TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR FAVORITES,” they didn’t said. So I’ve just been waiting all these years, waiting until they ‘got’ Miichan, because you don’t get to be as big as AKB48 without having a giant target painted on your back for the gossipmongers to take aim at. And with all the shots they’d been taking recently—Nacchan, Rumifu, Sasshi, the HKT quintet, Yuttan, Chiyuu—I was quietly dreading the day some of those rounds would hit MY oshi.

And then it came, and I had no tears or despair or outrage left to spare. Just blank, void … nothingness. It’s something so unjust, so illogical, so evil, that I have no feelings to feel about the situation. And no, I’m not going to watch the video. I don’t think I ever will. Why contribute even ONE pageview to an act of shame that will just disturb me really badly?

STAND UP FOR LIBERTY, MIICHAN.

Perhaps, also, I’ve just been completely numbed to it over the years. Seriously, try me. Mari Yaguchi? My first favorite idol? Ask me about how she resigned from Morning Musume in 2005. Everything that happened to Ai Kago in the last seven years or so, including a gott damn suicide attempt? The circumstances that sent Rino Sashihara into exile in Hakata? And, while it wasn’t an actual “scandal” situation, having to witness Hello! Project’s Last Hope Yuuka Maeda step down from S/mileage and return to a normal life?

THEN THEY’LL TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR FAVORITES.

It must have been sometime last year, or maybe the year before, that a bunch of AKB girls all got haircuts in a row (and maybe some H!Pers too?) and I joked, “Gosh I hope Miichan never cuts off her long gorgeous locks.” JOKE’S ON ME NOW, I guess.

While the head-shaving is seen by many as a Traditional Asian act of penance, I was reminded of a more contemporary example. Miichan’s favorite pop artist is Britney Spears. And remember what Britney Spears did when her life hit rock bottom? A strange parallelism, I think.

At the same time, conspiracy theorists are pointing out that the video being distributed on official channels means that Management forced her into the act, or at least approved it (if it was, indeed, her idea). But if she lies about “This was my own idea,” then maybe the tears are a lie as well? We know that idols are told to play up their personalities and “act out” as needed when in the public eye. And Miichan, who is pretty sharp on variety shows and anytime that a camera is trained on her, could surely have been playing up the emotional manipulation factor by overacting. Sorry I’m not sorry. Sorry I got caught. Sorry for having a personal life. Sorry your whole system and organization is ridiculous but I’m going to use my acting skills to get the fans on MY side and make you look like a bunch of jerks.

I don’t know. You don’t know. We may never know.

And now this has raised such a big stink that even the “I don’t follow AKB/Japanese culture/live on this planet BUT I AM A SERCIAL JERSTERCE EXPART” crowd is busy jumping the outrage bandwagon. I appreciate the support, but could you just.

Anyway.

One more tangent here. Has anyone ever met these actual “delusional fanboys” who would supposedly lose their shit if their idols actually had boyfriends/went to the toilet/had body odor? And I don’t mean like on 2ch or Okcupid, where anyone can make up a troll personality. Do these “creepy desperate lonely virgins” really exist, or are they just a fake boogeyman made up by Management and Media to scare idols into submission? Because every concert I’ve been to, everyone is reasonably sociable (even the eccentric hardcore fans), and the other English-speaking fans who attend are always like, “Wow THE JAPANESE WOTAS are really nice and they give you free goods.” So I don’t know what to make of “THE JAPANESE WOTAS” because my personal, physical-world experience is a 180° turn from what the media pundits and SERCIAL JERSTERCE EXPERTS say.

Maybe if the suits in charge took a moment to look at What The Fandom Is, instead of What They Imagine The Fandom To Be, there would be a little less injustice, illogic, and evil in this corner of the world.

And then I might be able to feel emotions again.

AFTERWORD

By the way, I think the shaved head looks oddly cute. It reminds me of the “embarrassing makeup” penalties on AKBingo! Dodgeball.

And if anyone has noticed, what does not kill idols really DOES make them stronger. Yaguchi went on to be a TV personality, and has since been invited back to perform and MC alongside Hello! Pro like an old friend. After Kago actually did almost kill herself, she got her life in order, started a family, and is now happily raising a child. Sasshi took the “shame” of HKT exile and turned it into her own brilliant self-promotional tool, becoming a sort of den mother for HKT48 and preying on all the adorable lolis (but also leading the way as a seasoned performer).

Whenever an idol hits a low, that’s usually when she starts clawing her way back up, spinning the first chapter of an epic comeback story.

Just you wait and see what Minegishi has in store.

They came at a time when AKB48 was already a Big Thing, a time when you could ask random people on the street and they kinda-sorta knew about the group, a time when all the teams had been filled and the trainees from the last few auditions had been promoted. So now you had a bunch of girls who were looking for an opportunity, but had no place to slot themselves in.

They’re even cuter in 2D! (Source)

As they grew to a reasonable number, they were rounded up into Team Kenkyuusei, which technically meant they were available for performances but didn’t have a set structure the way the “letter” teams (A, K, and B) did. Instead they were more of an amorphous blob, shifting in size and shape depending on the immediate needs of the AKB Theater: their main role, it seemed, was to substitute for members who were absent from the regular teams on performance days. I confess, I didn’t really follow them back then, because how do you root for an amorphous blob? Why get attached to someone whose future was a giant question mark?

Occasionally they would get lucky, like when Yui Yokoyama was promoted to Team K to replace a graduated Erena Ono, but that was more the exception than the rule. They got a TV show to themselves, AKB Ariyoshi Kyowakoku, but it was forever third-fiddle to flagship shows like AKBingo. They eventually did start to crack the upper echelons with appearances like AKBingo!‘s “AKBeginner” segments, and being featured in Majisuka Gakuen 2, but they were still nomads in search of a true home.

The announcement of “Team 4″ should have legitimized them, but many fans at the time were simply bewildered at what it was supposed to mean. Was this a “fake” team, or a real step up for them? Yes, they got full Team status and had photos in the AKB Theater lobby and everything, but how was the performance schedule going to be set up? After being assigned an actual stage show to perform—a revival of Boku no Taiyou (Himawari 1)—things looked like they had stabilized. After toiling for the last couple of years, the girls with no place to go could finally stay.

They got magazine photoshoots, they yukked it up with the Johnny’s boys in Bakaleya High School, they got a starring role in Majisuka Gakuen 3, and lo and behold, they were even appearing regularly alongside higher-ranked senbatsu in the mainline TV shows. When the 2011 Janken single (“Ue Kara Mariko”) came out, they got a proper coupling track just like all the other teams: “Hashire! Penguin,” a never-give-up anthem that summarized their worldview in just under 4 minutes.

And yes, casual bandwagon-jumpers like me took notice of them at last, because how could you not fall in love with these fresh-faced babies that everyone else in AKB doted on? Paruru was knocking people dead with her dimpled smile; Ranran was knocking out golf balls 170 yards (and embarrassing Shukan AKB‘s producer in the process); Minarun had a snappy comeback and a deadly stare for every situation; and Lemon, geez, Lemon was a walking meme in herself. They were truly like the Old Teams of years past—they had all come in around the same time, trained and struggled together, and finally gained the recognition they longed for. Team 4 was an underdog story with a happy ending.

But the happy ending was not to last.

Just days before Atsuko Maeda’s graduation ceremony at Tokyo Dome, a far more heartbreaking event took place: Team 4′s disbandment was announced.

Never was there so much outrage, so much shock, so much despair—all over a group of girls that, just a few years earlier, most fans would probably have struggled to identify. To have your babies taken away from you, to have their hard work wiped away in one fell swoop—didn’t anyone understand?! Why disband and re-arrange the teams now? Just when they had finally gotten it together! It was the ultimate slap in the face to them: Yeah, we made a Team for you, but we still aren’t sure where you belong, so we’re going to re-shuffle you with everyone else. Of course, it’s good in one’s professional career to form new bonds and seek out new relationships, but to do it this way was a complete kick in the shins, a punch to the gut, and a stab in the back.

I played “Hashire Penguin” 22 times in a row the following morning. It was a bubbly, cheerful, high-tempo funeral march for Team 4, the only way I could find to honor them. They would be moving on up to new opportunities in the AKB48 system, but things would never be the same again. Their brief one-year run would be lost to the annals of music history, and someday only old-ass wotas like ourselves would remember AKB48 had that one extra Team, a footnote for an era when they had more girls than they knew to do with. (Of course, some would say they ALWAYS have more girls than they know what to do with…)

However, the legion of fans that Team 4 had won for themselves would not be struck down quite as easily. The thing about AKB is that it is still, in many ways, fan-driven—maybe they don’t quite have the “Idols You Can Meet” accessibility that they used to, but events like the Senbatsu Elections and Request Hour have that quirk of being run by direct fan vote. And Request Hour is the ultimate place where fans can take a stand for causes they care about: voting SDN48 into 3rd place in their graduation year, getting a Sasshi-led unit into the Top 10 (because Sasshi fandom is the Homestuck of AKB fandoms let’s be honest), pushing Sayaka Akimoto’s solo song ever higher because she freaking deserves it. The fans may not have had the power to put Team 4 back together, but there was still one last way to show their support.

I think we all knew, early on, that things were getting weird with Request Hour 2013. Familiar, million-selling singles from the last few years toppled into the deep lower rankings—apparently people had heard BEGINNEERE enough times that knocking it down to 81st was no big loss. SKE48 barreled their way into many of the mid-ranking levels. Day 3 turned into Takamina Appreciation Night (and Troll Her With Numerous References To Acchan Night), and when the outright No. 1 of the last two years (“Heavy Rotation”) slipped into 4th, it was clear that the tide had turned.

There have been complaints that ever since AKB48′s climb to the top, Request Hour has been devalued by the tastes of casual fans—people were voting in “Heavy Rotation” because they only knew “Heavy Rotation,” and weren’t looking at the whole scope of the AKB repertoire. Stage songs? What are stages? I can’t even get into the Theater because the hardcore wotas have completely clogged up the ticket lottery system. So maybe that’s why, in recent times, more knowledgeable fans have fought back with online campaigns: Let’s all vote for this one song, okay, not necessarily because it’s the best song or your favorite song, but because these particular performers deserve recognition.

First there was Mariko fandom, trolling the way only Mariko can troll, by pushing her title song up to 3rd. Then a deeply emotional, heart-swelling moment as Sae Miyazawa got her chance to shine. (“Xie xie” indeed.) And then, because there were no other spots left…

“Hashire! Penguin.” Number 1. Number 1.

Team 4, reunited, lighting up the stage in ridiculous sparkly-blue penguin outfits. Like the immature babies they once were, and would always be. It’s hard to describe the emotion of realizing how far they had come, but the smiles on their faces said it all.

The Girls With No Place To Go had reached a place where they could go no higher. They had vaulted past the senbatsu singles, past historically significant stage songs, past the units with fan-favorite members, past the solo acts, past everything, and these damn penguins had slid across the ice to the top of the tallest mountain in Antarctica.

There had been no place for them in the Teams because the Teams were already full up. There had been no place for them in the regular TV shows unless producers went out of their way to find a spot for them. And in that awful August of 2012, they learned that there was no place for them at all—that having a fourth Team was an inconvenience and it was easier to just break them up and re-shuffle everyone.

True, there were many times when no one was quite sure where they belonged—but they absolutely belonged in that moment, up on stage, receving the ultimate honor of Request Hour. And now, instead of being a footnote, they remain preserved for all eternity on video: the penguins’ last run together, the underdogs who finally did get their happy ending. Disbanded, but never forgotten, Team 4.