Gone, but never forgotten.

It’s been three weeks and I still haven’t entirely gotten over it.

And something tells me, I don’t think I ever will.

When the news of Yuuka Maeda’s graduation broke, I was standing in line waiting for the SNSD fanmeet in New York, which was pretty much the weirdest feeling in the world because I was super excited for one event while SIMULTANEOUSLY having my heart broken. And if anyone wants to know what happened next, well, after they herded everyone into the performance hall and started playing SNSD videos, I finally let the tears stream down my cheeks, in the dark, where no one could see.

It was the one goodbye I never wanted to face. And now it was just over two months away.

I first came to know of Yuuka in the summer of 2008, when High-King was formed as a one-off unit and mostly I was interested because of O Captain My Captain! and then-Momusu-fave Reina. Trailing behind the aces/leaders of Hello! Project was this 14-year-old kid, with a fuwa-fuwa marshmallowy face and a squeak of a voice that stood out amongst the rest of the group. The funniest thing about “Cinderella Complex” was that you could always pick out Yuuka’s lines because no one else in the group sounded remotely like Yuuka.

But if you ask anyone what they notice first when they actually see Yuuka Maeda, it’s the neckmole.

At first I just thought of it as a distraction, and everytime I watched High-King’s video I’d be like O Captain My Captain! DAT NECKMOLE GET IT AWAY FROM ME harharjustkidding. But no one could deny that she had a ridiculously cute face—and a personality that would inevitably come to mean so much.

It was later in the fall of 2008 that DAT NECKMOLE re-emerged, this time as one-quarter of Shugo Chara Egg, which at the time I really resented because they were replacing Buono! as the OP theme song singers for Shugo Chara! and I was like NOOOO BUONO SHOULD DO EVERY SHUGO CHARA THEME EVER. And I pretended I really DID NOT WANT “Minna no Tamago” because obviously Buono! is TEH BESTE, but you know, by the third week or so of the new Shugo Chara! season I was just like

But the summer of 2009 was the moment everything changed forever.

My most distinct memory of EARLY early S/mileage (aside from the group being formed and their first indies single being announced) was listening to “aMa no Jaku” in the car on the way Anime Expo 2009, which if you know your convention history … is the year that Morning Musume came. And there’s all sorts of drama and weirdness behind this; if you remember my posts about AKBquest 2009 I was all bitter about Momusu after having to deal with Stupid Ass Wotas and I guess that was the summer I kindasorta ditched them. I mean Reina and Koharu were the main reasons I was still interested in them; Koharu would be out the door a few months later, and Reina’s charm just started to stagnate after that year (plus she stopped doing photobooks so BAH).

It was at the moment, then, that S/mileage kept my hope in Hello! Project alive.

S/mileage was 3/4ths of the Shugo Chara Egg I had come to love, plus they changed out the one member I liked the least—although to be frank I was never that big a fan of Saki Ogawa either. But gosh did I feel bad when she graduated in August 2011; I mean, after a while a certain idol-group lineup starts to grow on you even if you don’t love all the members equally. And if losing Saki was a hit to my heart, imagine how it was going to be to lose Yuuka.

It really was a matter of them being in the right place at the right time. “aMa no Jaku” was a pleasantly cute song, but by “Asu wa Date This Title is Freaking Long” I was sold (and “Suki-chan” confirmed it even further); S/mileage instantly captured the youthful aesthetic that had been drained away from Morning Musume (remember, this was the heart of the EmoMusume era) and that BeriKyuu were growing out of. Someone had to remind us of the freshness and vivacity that only U-15 girls could bring, and it came in 8 letters and a punctuation mark: S/mileage.

And they still are.

My favorite S/mileage moment of all time probably is (and always will be) the Japan Record Awards 2010, when Saki Ogawa tripped coming up a flight of stairs the Flawless Four inexplicably stopped the Korean Wave in its tracks and beat out SNSD for Best New Artist. To this day I find it utterly improbable—these high-school n00blets beating out an incredibly polished Korean act?—and of course I support both groups now, but my heart always lies with S/mileage. BECAUSE OF YUUKA REASONS.

I also believe that S/mileage itself was built Because Of Yuuka Reasons—that the group was constructed around her voice. The way I figure is this: she had that distinctive squeak, and you couldn’t just stuff her in any lineup and expect it to automatically work. She was one of the Eggs’ most polished and ready members by the late 00′s, and a future ace in the making: she could hold a note, had that neckmole charm working in her favor, and had been a lead in the Shugo Chara! musical. So they found her a set of groupmates whose voices would blend with the squeak, like an oboe quartet, creating the sound that kept hope alive in Hello! Project: the S/mileage sound. It’s something you can hear especially well with the non-single songs on the Warugaki 1 album, although they also sound like they’re forcing it at times—which I blame more on Tsunku writing songs in the wrong key (it wouldn’t be the first time) and the sound engineers having the levels turned up too high. In the right range, and with the right arrangement, the [original] S/mileage Sound is something distinct that the group can call its own. And we have Yuuka to thank for that, for being at its core.

Sometimes I’m not sure if this is a S/mileage tribute post or a Yuuka Maeda tribute post. But maybe that’s an essential part of it—that they are inextricably linked, that you can’t talk about Yuuka Maeda without talking about S/mileage and vice versa. A stupid ass wota once asked me: “To you, what is S/mileage without Yuuka?” My response: “WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT AIR?”

What is life indeed.

And now S/mileage faces a future without Yuuka, which in a way is even more daunting to look at than a future without Saki Ogawa—half the original members gone, a future handed over to a new generation of n00blets, who we hope can carry that youthful spirit for another few years. If they should see disbandment somewhere down the road … well, that’s the ultimate Bad Ending I don’t want to think about, but they also have the new Musume generations to help support each other, promising a new Hello! Pro wave that will last past the maturation of the Hello! Kids. (CAN YOU BELIEVE RISAKO SUGAYA IS TURNING 18 THIS YEAR. NO, ME NEITHER.)

And as for Yuuka, it will always be the greatest regret of my life that I never got to meet her in person. I knew wasn’t going to make it to Japan for her graduation show, not when I had just blown all my money on going to New York for SMTown … oh the irony. I thought I had done what I could do as a stupid ass wota IN AMERICA. Momusu. Berryz. AKB twice. SMTown twice. But there will always be that blank spot in my heart, a spot where I should have met the original S/mileage and told Yuuka in person that I loved her—it will remain a wish forever unfulfilled, all because she had the rest of her life to get on with.

It’s a shame we’ll never get to see her finish growing up, into the beautiful young woman she’d already started to become. Looking through the last few photos of her, of the final memorial photobook and the last UTB shoot, I realized that she had already changed so much from that marshmallow-faced, neckmoled kid that had stolen the spotlight during the Shugo Chara! years. And part of me hates to say it, but she sounds like one of those kids who’s going to go to school in a totally different field of study and never be heard of in the entertainment world again. It’s the Maiha route. Some part of her personality just says to me that she’s had her fun, and chosen to move on. I hope I’m proven wrong, but … if not … then I wish her the best of luck.

That's all there is.

Her blog goes down at the end of January, so I hope all the obsessive-compulsives have finished downloading the data. Eventually we’ll only have memories left of her, saved in every form of media (digital or otherwise), but never quite adding up to the experience of actually having her around. It already weirds me out just to look at the “Please Miniskirt Postwoman!” poster and realize that lineup is gone forever. I mean, at least when Saki left there was the arrival of the 2nd generation to distract us and add spark to the group. But with Yuuka leaving, there is only a spark going out, an emptiness that we must face alone.

What is S/mileage without Yuuka? A S/mileage forever changed, but one I will still support and hope the best for. But what is Yuuka without S/mileage? A young woman now moving on to next stage of her life, yet with a whole other lifetime of memories to take with her. And the best part is, she left these memories with her fans too. So let us not mourn what we have lost, but rather, smile as we remember the good times past. To smile beyond the tears: I suppose it’s what she would have wanted.

For all the smiles, Yuuka, thank you.

"World's Cutest. June 6 2010. Ayaka Wada, Saki Ogawa, Kanon Fukuda, Yuuka Maeda."

“AKB48 and Google+ have a lot in common. Only psychologically stunted, obsessive-compulsive geeks understand how they work.”
- Some famous dude

For many fans, their first memory of the AKB48/Google+ launch was the futility of trying to submit comments as the Google servers got hammered. Or perhaps, prior to that, signing up/reactivating G+ accounts that were otherwise useless because everyone was still on Facebook or Twitter.

But now that the smoke has cleared (and people can comment on the girls’ posts like normal human beings), the online landscape has shifted dramatically.

Two tone?

One week ago, a livestreamed press conference helmed by 48-Boss Yasushi Akimoto himself delivered a lot of talk and promises (and at least one stretch of second-hand embarrassment as Google’s English-speaking representative touted the perks of the G+ service). And while many of those promises are yet to be fulfilled—I’ll believe in a livestreamed concert or stage show when I see it, and apparently Hangouts only work if you have about 9 fans (hi Sawako)—the simpler aspects of the network have already begun to crystallize into a unique fan-to-idol infrastructure.

One of the core tenets of the ~48 system, aside from “idols you can meet,” is that “there’s so freaking many of them.” As the group’s influence and popularity has grown, however, it has become harder to keep things straight, especially as far as Internet outreach. Some of the girls get signed to outside talent agencies that set up blogs and Twitter accounts for them (or not), some of them just go ahead and set up an online presence anyway (or not), some have solo blogs and some have group blogs, some are on Ameba and some are not. There’s even a junk trail of AKB detritus, like unused Ameba pages connected to Pigg avatars and promotional Twitter accounts long since silent (where have you gone, Teams PB and YJ?) that lie scattered across the online wastelands.

Enter Google Plus. Or as I like to call it, AKBoogle+.

AKBoogle+ represents the great tidying-up of the Internets48, and even invites the n00blets of NMB48 and HKT48 into the mix. What was once a distracting, internet-hopping chore—open up Twitter for Haruna and Mariko, stop by the no3b blog, check in with Myao and Sumire at HoriPro, browse a pic loader (or Tumblr, even) for the latest cell phone snaps—has been centralized into a single, perpetually-updating page: the Google+ stream. It’s as simple as getting an account, picking which girls you want to follow (and don’t forget to add the “AKB Kids’ Room” account for all the under-18′s), and checking the G+ stream regularly. No more having to bookmark multiple sites and social networks: if everything is up and running properly, then AKBoogle+ is, in theory, all you’ll ever need to stalk your idols’ day-to-day activities.

The key phrase here is in theory. Although the commenting snafu has been fixed (note to Google server admins: in case you haven’t noticed by now, this is whatchamacallit48 Japan crap is really popular in certain pockets), the AKBoogle+ network remains a work in progress. Certain usage patterns are starting emerge: Acchan has instantly fallen in love with G+ and is spamming at every opportunity, others are playing around with the ease of media sharing (Team 4′s Shimada and Nakamata flooded everyone with adorable penguin cosplays last week), some of the members with Twitter accounts are cross-posting out of convenience (and then Sumire kinda freaked out because apparently she hadn’t introduced herself on G+ properly), some are using it mostly to signal their good mornings and goodnights, and … well … MY WIFE has used it in sporadic outbursts but hasn’t been as regular as the others. Maybe she just prefers the Ameba interface, as she continues to post regularly on the No Sleeves blog.

That will be one of the ongoing questions as AKBoogle+ gets itself off the ground: How much or how little are the girls supposed to use it? For those who already have an online presence elsewhere, they may see it as a time-consuming redundancy—Why do I have to post on this when I already updated my Ameblo? For the social networkers, at least, they’ve discovered cross-posting functions that will automatically put up tweets and accompanying photos, thus keeping the G+ accounts active. The best use of AKBoogle+, it seems, is as a half-blog half-social network: You can have more than 140 characters, but you don’t need to go into paragraphic detail about everything you’ve done the past few hours. Just a quick snapshot and a couple of descriptive lines works best. (Post one KojiYuu pic and watch the comments fly! It’s a shame G+ has a 500 comment limit, because I bet they could outpace Kpop blogs and Facebook walls within hours.)

Oshiri? 500 comments in 14 minutes.

So in the end, who wins? Almost everybody:

THE WINNERS

The ~48 System: The girls get a new online toy to play with, and the haphazard blog distribution is now straightened out by one all-encompassing network: EVERY member over 18 gets their own personal G+ account, while all the babies get to pass around the smartphone that’s used for posting to the Kids’ Room account.

The less popular members and n00blets stand to benefit the most from this, because they now have a platform where they can get a fair amount of “screen time”—and if HKT48′s Yui Komori (or whoever) wants to hog the G+ by posting 4 times in one day, she totally can, and put herself in everyone’s view.

The Fans: Assuming you can read simple Japanese, or know how to pass things through an online translator, this is a new avenue for the 48 Experience. Like mentioned before, it’s not quite a blog, not quite a Twitter, but what it is, is a lot of fun. Sometimes the girls reply to each other’s posts, resulting in candid interactions you might not catch on a static blog account. (Seen on a Miyuki Watanabe post: “Night night Milky.” “Go to sleep, Ayaka.”)

As an unexpected bonus, I’ve also found myself encountering members I might not have otherwise gotten to know about. The thing about following one’s specific faves—especially if you’re a well-established fan—is that you get locked in on those particular girls and are blindered to anyone else that might be appealing. (Or if you want to get to know other members, it can be a real chore hunting through the Internettes and finding specific media where they are featured.) Now, just by letting the Kids’ Room account scroll by, new names and faces drop in constantly, and ohmigah does anyone know where I can buy Anna Murashige photos.

Google: Okay, admit it, how many of you signed up for Google+ or brushed the dust off your Google+ account when AKBoogle+ was announced? That’s what I thought. This dying social network has just gotten a MASSIVE shot in the arm, not just from Japan, but from AKB fans all around the world, who probably find Google services more accessible than those moonspeak internet services where you have to fill in all the forms in Japanese. This may also have a knock-on effect where, let’s say AKB Superfandude joined G+ so he could stalk Tomomi Itano, and then he tells his 5 Casual Fan friends that they should get on it as well (yes this is a miracle hypothetical world where AKB wotas actually have friends), and then the 5 Casuals tell a bunch of other friends who may not even be interested in AKB48 to come join G+ just because they’re on it.

1. Get people to sign up on Google+ because AKB
2. ????
3. PROFIT!!!

Samsung: The unheralded winner of this entire deal may be the company that just sold dozens of new Galaxy S II LTE smartphones to Japan’s biggest idol conglomerate. “Hey, we have a bunch of girls here who need Googlephones for their new social networking accounts, what’ve you got?” Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to make a sale like that? It’s like making a corporate bulk order, only famous. So you throw them the best you have to offer—photos, videos, data connection, BOOM! So simple even an idol can use it! $200 discount with a 2-year contract! Then cross your arms and rake in the dough.

And just think, you even have a chance to sell replacement units when someone does something stupid like drop her phone in the toilet.

THE LOSERS

Ameba?: The entity that stands to lose the most from this may be Ameba and other Moonspeak social networks, as the pop-culture gravity of the AKBlack Hole pulls Japanese users into the Google Vortex. It’s no secret that Japan has evolved its own social internet infrastructure, with names like Ameba/yaplog/mixi/GREE that are familiar locally but practically unknown outside of their native land. But if news items like the Balse Incident are any indication, Japan is joining the rest of the world as far as social networking—first hopping on Twitter, and now getting aboard G+ with the AKB bandwagon. If Acchan decides she’d rather update more on AKBoogle+ than Ameba—especially considering that her Ameba blog is constantly tops among celebrity blogs on the site—what does that spell for Ameba traffic?…

Fresh penguin ni naritai no~

The launch of AKBoogle+ has transformed this little province of Google+ from a deserted two-lane road into a bustling superhighway. Even after the initial spike of interest, there’s still plenty of traffic on the network: the moment a new post pops up, you can see the comments come streaming in, and new users are still continuing to sign up. While it’s too early to call anything a success or failure, one certainty remains true: We are all giddily anticipating the moment Miori Ichikawa turns 18 and gets her own account.

It’ll be the freshest, lemon-iest G+ account ever.

But, I already sang the praises of web streaming last year (and would like to think that I have been at least partially vindicated by the Mobekimasu turnout), so this isn’t really about that.

Today we’re talking about how New Media is influencing Old Media!

The OLD way of doing things.

The changing face of television

Right now, TV is still pretty much the dominant, mainstream form of Old Media entertainment. You can go on all the livestreams and webshows and be on ALL THE BLOGS and become your own meme, but in the entertainment world, especially in fuddy-duddy physical-CD-sales-still-matter-more-than-digital-sales Japan, you haven’t really made it until you’re on TV. But TV shows are starting to take on a different from tenor from ten or even five years ago.

The explosion of The 48′s in Japan’s pop culture landscape has caused repercussions in how all entertainment programming works. In the OLDE DAYS, you would have your National Idol Group and they would show up on their flagship TV show once a week and the girls would mince about playing goofy games and performing silly skits and tell you which songs are coming out this week. Wotas Of a Certain Age may recall this format as Hello! Morning; even older veterans will probably laugh me out of the room and tell me to get that n00b shit out of here.

But it’s a much more fiercely fought battleground now. Not only are AKB48 and all their sister groups clamoring for public attention; seemingly every agency now has a stable of young female entertainers who want to win you over with their charm and occasional performing-arts skills. And the obvious dilemma is this: (1) You cannot stick them all on TV at once. (2) Even if you could, the costs would get prohibitively high for producing EVERY SHOW about EVERY GIRL GROUP.

Thus, Japan faces the following TV-programming challenge:

(1) Produce idol variety shows that aren’t total clones of all other idol variety shows.
(2) Do it in the most efficient, low-cost manner possible.

Out with the old

The cornerstones of idol programming continue to be what I call “old” TV show formats: you know, the kind where the girls are situated in a studio, and hosts or comedians lead the way with various games and activities. Sometimes, the girls themselves conduct the proceedings; either way, this format accounts for something like 90% of AKB programming, which is why I only bother to watch about 25% of all AKB shows. Similarly, this was Hello! Project programming before they were taken off TV due to their own irrelevance.

But like I say, old formats are ooooold. And at some point you realize you’ve been watching AKB Dodgeball for the last two and a half years now, and you know all the pranks and punishments and which players throw the hardest and the only change that came as a result of adding Team 4 girls is that now you get to see AKB Dodgeball being played by Team 4 girls. An even worse example was The Sashiko Show (not its real name) starring Rino Sashihara, who in her exploits seemed constantly intimidated and outnumbered by the male comedians who co-starred alongside her. A formula for success, recycled over and over again, gets diluted over time.

In with new media

Can it ALWAYS be Yuuka time? Please?

That’s why some of the most interesting developments on idol TV shows are seeing how New Media and web/viral/social/crowdsource mechanisms are changing the paradigm. (Oh gosh did I just use the word “paradigm” in a totally serious way? brb shooting myself.) Funnily enough, Shitty Mid-00′s Hello! Project may have been one of the pioneers in this regard; remember in the dying days of Haromoni@ when Morning Musume would take Youtube submissions from random fans and play the videos while commenting on them? Yep, that was early Web 2.0. It was also a cheap< way to generate content because now you could take up extra runtime just with crowdsourced video footage.

A couple of new shows this year show the New Media influence on Old Media reaching ever greater heights. Hello Pro Time, which premiered in spring 2011, runs on the premise that you can get closer to the Hello! Project girls than ever before because they’ve been given handheld digital videocameras—which are cheap enough now that they’re probably just an incidental cost for the TV studio—and are asked to film themselves going about their daily activities. The results, if sometimes uneven, are at least refreshing: you see Saki Shimizu playing with her adorable pet dog, Sayumi Michishige trying to cook a meal, Yuuka Maeda training with the junior S/mileage-ettes when they were first brought on board. And of course who doesn’t love the footage of Berryz just roaming the streets of Seattle IN AMERICA.

Even more avant-garde in concept is this fall’s Yonpara, starring AKB48 sub-unit Not Yet, in a “Skype conference call” format that may be the first of its kind. Yuko Oshima, after all, is a busy woman with busy priorities, so if you want to summon her up with the rest of her bandmates, you’ll need to find a free hour in between all the other stuff she does.

Well I must say those matches just look charming.

While at first an entire TV show based on videoconferencing may have seemed like a recipe for disaster—the early episodes were only funny because the girls didn’t quite understand how to use the Skype screen, and Sashihara’s laggy connection made her appear to be 1.5 seconds slower than the rest of the universe—Yonpara‘s unusual constraints have led to some pretty clever party games. Sometimes the girls have to demonstrate teamwork using the four quadrants of the screen; sometimes their locations (like a restaurant or cafe) provide the basis of that day’s entertainment; sometimes you get to see Yui Yokoyama’s barefeet (which is fanservice enough in itself).

And the most important thing about programs like this is that you save so much on the usual costs of running a studio-based show. Who’s paying for Hello! Pro’s or Not Yet’s cameramen? Nobody! In the first instance, the girls ARE their own camera crew, and in the second, the PC webcam is doing the job. And what about renting out studio space, especially in Tokyo, with the highest property costs EVAR? Not even a concern! Wherever the handheld camera or the webcam is, that’s where the studio is—and it costs the producers nothing for Saki Shimizu to hang out at the Shimizu household, or for Yuko Oshima to take a break in her dressing room (if anything, the company shooting her drama is the one paying her). As we seek new forms of idol variety programming, and producers seek cost-efficient ways to create that content, we will probably see more Web 2.0-styled content like this—not always the most skillfully polished product, but the kind with its own unique flavor.

As the episodes press on, however, some concessions have been made to the needs of Old Media. The Not Yet show recently abandoned Skype due to laggy software and poor picture quality, switching instead to a setup with HD cameras synced over broadband. But the quadruple split-screen format remains, so the spirit of videoconferencing is still there. And recent Hello! Pro Time episodes have hewed closer to a traditional reality-show format, especially with all the new names and faces joining the collective—it’s just easier to take the cameras out of the girls’ hands for a few moments, and let the pros film what’s going on. After all, the job of idols is to perform in front of cameras, not operate them, right? But no doubt, the best part of H!PT is still the girls mugging for the cameras—and each other—when the pros and the fans are long gone.

Even if these shows like this are wildly unpredictable at times, we can probably expect to see a lot more New Media creeping into the Old Media as everyone becomes more computer-literate in general, and the need to cut costs breeds new, surprising solutions.

JE T'AIME

No you fools, this is Buono! The internationally loved idol trio will be delivering their pop-punk sound outside of Japan for the first time with a February concert in Paris.

Copypasta’d from UFA Facebook:

Buono! will hold its first overseas live in Paris!!
Schedule: 2012/02/12 (Time TBC)
Place: La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Paris, France

Buono! aura son premier concert à l’étranger à Paris !!
Schedule: 12 février 2012 (horaire à fixer)
Salle : La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Paris, France

La Machine du Moulin Rouge

Commence freaking out

At the same time, I was also making a sincere effort to understand the physics of the Korean Wave myself, without freaking out over ridiculous fan behavior or the spammings of bored English-as-a-second-language kids all over the social web. The fact that my Internette Frandz also thought poorly of these psycho-fans was a big help, I think. It all came down to being on a similar wavelength: worship your idols, but don’t be a doof about it. And if you must spaz, spaz with dignity.

So it was with that reformed mindset that I woke up on the morning of Sunday, October 23, and … made sure to go to church first.

THEN it was time to make the trip to my true place of worship: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, IN AMERICA.

Even MOAR ways to throw your money at SM Entertainment!

I arrived at around 2:30 pm and discovered an already-long line just waiting for the merchandise booth to open up. Gosh, even if Koreaboos don’t have proper “conventions” the way the Japan/sci-fi/fantasy kids have conventions, they certainly have captured the feel of it by making people wait in lines for EVERYTHING. Fortunately it wasn’t too long a wait once the booth opened up, and I came away with a souvenir t-shirt, a cheer fan of MY WIFE Seohyun and one of Hyoyeon that would eventually end up in @hopeandmemory‘s hands. Then came the hard part: waiting for the concert to start.

THE GOODS.

I whiled away the hours by people-watching as I sat on a ledge outside the Garden, and at some point I found myself eavesdropping on a couple of “SMTown Grandmas/Aunties” who were chaperoning their girls to the concert. (In that sense the demographic was not too different from, say, the folks who take their kids to see Swift/Bieber/Jonas/whoever.) They swapped stories like grizzled veterans of the pop-culture wars: “My granddaughter recently got into this Korean stuff,” they would say—”she found it on Youtube and from her high school friends and we flew all the way from Florida/Texas/Istanbul for this concert.” It sounded just like the weeaboo explosion from a few years back: a bemused older generation, wondering what their kids saw in this bizarre foreign entertainment, not realizing that that was exactly the point. You old people wouldn’t understand.

One of the SMTown grandmas also bemoaned the seemingly trivial, overpriced SMTown merch: “I paid $8 for this man on a stick,” she said, holding up a cheer fan of Super Junior’s Ryeowook. Yes, but your granddaughter is going to cherish that eight-dollar man-on-a-stick forever … or until she goes off to college and discovers Danish country-metal, I dunno.

When the time finally came for doors to open, I muscled my way through the crowd and into the entrance lobby … only to find that the entrance for General Admission was, in fact, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING.

Which was incredibly annoying because it was already 6pm and everyone else was lining up and General Admission was freaking FIRST COME FIRST SERVED.

Yeah, see, this line? THIS WAS JUST THE LINE FOR MERCH. It went all the way out the building.

So I scooted all the way around the city block, from 7th Avenue to 8th Avenue, and sped past the already long-ass line while clutching my “GIRLS BRING THE BOYS OUT” sign. This, of course, got plenty of approval from SNSD fans waiting in line, so I was glad to have provided some brief entertainment as I finally found the back of the line way on the opposite corner of the building—33rd and 8th.

It was also while waiting in the GA line that a member of the Japanese press came up to the mother-daughter pair in front of me, and started interviewing them in English about “Why do you like K-pop and why does it appeal to you over American music and are you familiar with any J-pop and what do you think are the differences between American, Japanese, and Korean music.”

OHMIGOD I HAD SO MANY ANSWERS IN MY HEAD but all I could do was stand there, listen to the interview, and cringe in my mind as the 14-year-old girl gave out lots of shallow, 14-year-old-girl answers that tried to sound deep. Something about autotune. Image vs. talent. SHINee having “smooth” dance moves compared to their peers. I dunno. I was so ready to jump in and offer MY EXPART OPINIONNE but lemme tell you something, Far Wiser To Keep Your Mouth Shut And Appear Stupid Than To Open It And Appear Even More Stupid. I’m sure that, in her own little world, that 14-year-old girl is already a KOREA EXPERT who knows everything she will ever need to know about music performance and production. But one day, once she’s grown up, maybe she’ll realize just how much—or how little—she truly knows.

As the doors opened up and the crowd started to trickle in, I thought I had prepared myself enough for this moment. I’d been listening NOT ONLY to Girls’ Generation’s newest album and the latest of f(x), BUT ALSO some well-known hits of SHINee and Super Junior so at least I wouldn’t be confused and bored when the boy bands came out. My signs and lightsticks were on hand, ready to wave at a moment’s notice. And I’d been to enough K-pop concerts now to know about the fangirl screams. MY BODY WAS READY.

But nothing, NOTHING could have prepared me for the experience of actually being on the General Admission floor.

LOOK AT THIS TEEMING MASS OF HUMANITY.

Let me explain it like this. You are THE CLOSEST POSSIBLE to any of the performers on the stage. You are also standing room only. And since everyone else also wants to be as close to the performers as possible, you will all be crammed up against each other like sardines in a can. Personally, as a 125-pound weakling, I can probably maybe take on one high school girl if I had to fight for space. But an entire mass of them, united in the cause of screaming at hot Korean guys? HELLO, IMPENETRABLE BRICK WALL.

So it was in that spot, surrounded by impenetrable bricks, that I stood for another 40 minutes waiting for the concert to start—while the same couple of commercials cycled on the projection screens above us. By the 7th go-round I was about ready to buy an iPhone just to play that damned Super Junior Shake game and get “Mr. Simple” out of my head.

Finally, at around 7:20 pm, IT CAME. SMTOWN NEW YORK.

I think my playlist of fancam videos (starts with the one above) can explain the feeling better than anything else. It was chaotic, it was wild, and half the time the performers would use the forward stage so all I could see was their rear ends … but it was a time that I truly felt alive, the flashy outfits and ridiculous haircuts on full display, the R&B/dance-influenced beats swirling around me, the screams of excitement raining from the rafters … I think that, by preparing myself better and not trying to be a snarky troll this time, I finally got into the feeling of what SMTown was all about.

(Those interstitial videos about SMTown artists being your “Friend” are still mildly cultish and creepy, though.)

Being two weeks removed from the event, a lot of the memories are already starting to fade … but the impressions left on my mind still remain. The sight of Girls’ Generation taking the stage for the first time, and learning to appreciate Sunny’s curves up close. (Those thighs, my God, you could never understand them until you’ve seen them from like five feet away.) MY WIFE cutely tripping over her English as she said, “I’m honored to be … honored to be … HERE.” Seeing three-fifths of SHINee rise up in the sky like the angelic beings they are as they performed the extended, dancepop-on-steroids version of “Lucifer.” And of course, the most epic of all epic happenings—seeing the English version of “The Boys” performed on stage for the first time ever IN THE WORLD.

And in the end ...

Even though the concert was four hours as usual, this time it felt too short by the time everyone came out for the finale—I wanted to stick around just a little longer, maybe stick around forever, and breathe in the excitement one last time. Then came the downpour of confetti, and unlike last year, I was close enough to be showered in the paper rain this time, my hands grabbing randomly at everything, even though plenty of it ended up in my jacket pockets and souvenir bag anyway. In the thrill of the moment, tears of exhilaration came to my eyes, and I stopped paying attention to who was crossing the stage—all that mattered was being there, the sensation that only so much love and so many people could bring, the feeling of a night unlike any other night.

“Now I’m sad again!” I thought for a second, as the audience filed out of the stadium still buzzing but physically worn out. But that sadness would not last for long. I met up with @hanachan01 and friend (thanks for the pins, btw!) by the merch booth and, as expected, spazzed with dignity over our respective experiences. “I think I got stuck in the SHINee fangirl section.” “I WAS the SHINee fangirl section.” We also got a photo taken together with my AKB48 Troll sign, and I’m pretty sure I overheard someone walk past saying, “Anti-fans, maybe?” But no, it was just a jocular way to end the night, blowing off some steam before finally returning to the NORMAL WORLD (although in my case the Normal World would have to be delayed one more day since the Soshi fan meet was immediately the day after).

New York remains, for me, the city of dreams. It’s where I’ve chased those dreams and made them come true: AKB48 in 2009, Girls’ Generation in 2011, and in another two years, another five years, another ten years, who knows what else. And it’s not necessarily just about stalking idols and GLORIOUS NIPPON or GLORIOUS KOREA or anything like that. There is more to the gridded streets of Manhattan than just playing host to the biggest Asian stars—it’s about the infinite realms of possibility, and knowing that those who venture there can make all those possibilities happen. And so I remain, forever a dreamer, in the city that doesn’t sleep. [Frank Sinatra quote]

So being the NORMAL person that I am, I slept back in my hotel and returned to Times Square the next morning around 7:30 am to the following sight:

Who are all these people and why are they wearing pink shirts?!

In traditional Good Morning America fashion, every 15 or minutes or so the crowd would go wild as the camera focused on the teeming masses. This meant that NORMAL Americans watching this on TV suddenly saw signs such as “Girls’ Generation” and “TaeNy pairing ONLY!” and wondered if there was a new Occupy going on.

The winning sign, clearly.

I also brought my reversible AKB48 troll sign once again:

Hey look, that's Aki-P's face!

and since the guys I was standing with were pretty well-humored, they laughed in amusement instead of being freaked out. I’m guessing a couple of them were probably even fans (wahaha) since they kind of nodded in smirking approval.

AFTER Soshi-spamming the October 24th, 2011 Good Morning America broadcast, the crazy ass Sones went their separate ways and I decided I would explore New York for once in my life with the free time I had. I figured the World Trade Center might be too sensitive a subject (plus you try getting into the Financial District on a Monday morning), so I ended up in Central Park instead, which was exactly the oasis of calm I needed.

And now, a green interlude:

MISTER SQUIRREL SEES WHAT YOU DID THERE.

I’m actually not very good with crowds at all. Left to my own devices, I would probably end up like Henry David Thoreau and move to some butt-crack middle-of-nowhere forest (but with internet access) and spend the rest of my days in peaceful solitude (FOREVER ALONE). So trying to attend concerts, conventions and fan events is actually a contradictory thing for me: but somehow, it simultaneously brings out my inner Anxiety Cat AND Insanity Wolf, causing me to end up accomplishing extraordinary things.

After stepping away from the pop culture madness for a few hours, it was time to dive headlong into the fray one last time, for the SNSD Fan Meet and Special Appearance Presented To You By Soshified®.

By 1 pm, a several-hundred-strong crowd had already started to line up at the Best Buy Theater (not actually a Best Buy store but just a performance space sponsored by the company) on 44th Street and 7th Avenue, in fact snaking around 7th and stretching as far back as 45th. Mostly everyone was just chilling about, being very Koreaboo, until around 2 pm or so (AHAHAHAH DID I SAY 2PM o wait) THE FOLLOWING GLORIOUS IMAGE SUDDENLY APPEARED ON THE MTV BILLBOARD SCREEN:

GOSH do those nine girls in the middle look familiar to you or anything.

In fact, this was a constantly looping promo video (upload to come later) that also included images such as the following:

A fairytale vision.

As you can imagine, this caused the crowd to freak out immediately (and then the reactions got more and more subdued each time the video looped).

While standing in line I also happened to overhear a guy who apparently was an SMTown gopher and was sharing awesome backstage stories like “that amazing, epic, life-changing moment when I was standing by the door of their dressing room and all nine of them came out, greeted me, and thanked me” as they headed out to begin the show. And he kept saying things like, “I used to have a bias [oshi] before but after last night my love for all of them has gone up a thousand percent” and “Watching all the music videos and TV shows will never prepare you for what it’s like to meet them in person.” I was just standing there quietly, glowing with happiness for him, because I knew he’d just had his first meeting-your-idols experience, and true enough, you never forget your first time.

At around the hour of three, the crowd exploded with excitement again as the billboard showed live footage of the Girls’ Generation interview with MTV Iggy (the international branch of MTV that actually still covers music and shit). Basically, what we saw on the billboard screen was the girls at the studio, and the studio was located right above street where fans were lined up. Thus it created this feedback loop between the screen, the studio, and the street, and during commercial breaks the girls would wave to the fans below and everyone would just go nuts.

Basically the interview footage looked like this.

Unless Yoona and Taeyeon started to fall asleep (upper left), in which case it looked more like this.

It was also while waiting in line that the news broke from Japan about
Yuuka Maeda graduating from S/mileage but THAT IS A POST FOR ANOTHER TIME and Dear Lord you have no idea how emotionally conflicted I felt as unspeakable joy collided with unspeakable despair in my heart.

The random cheering, interview-watching, and running commentary about which member seemed the most jetlagged continued until about 4 pm, at which time we had to make sure OUR BODIES WERE READY.

To help with that, the Soshified staff were giving out free 10 x 7 bromides. I got Snow White (Taeyeon).

The crowds, already sweaty with anticipation, filed into the Best Buy Theater, which basically had a “House of Blues” style layout, if you’ve ever been to one of those concert venues: the audience area is standing-room only, although the rear section is slightly raised so you can see better. What this means, though, if you are 5’5″ like me, is that if you get stuck behind Some Tall Guy YOU ARE SCREWED.

The crowds continued to pack in, forcing me to make bodily contact with everyone around me (Anxiety Cat! Anxiety Cat!), and to start out they played a few music videos to get everyone pumped up. Then, after a brief glitch(??) and delay … it happened.

GIRLS BRING THE BOYS OUT

I can’t begin to describe what the atmosphere was like as So Nyuh Shi Dae, Girls’ Generation, the freakin’ greatest 9-member girl group (now that Morning Musume has ballooned back up to 12) took the stage and launched into a live performance of “TEH BOYS.” I mean, yeah, we saw this last night at SMTown, but it was diluted by the presence of NOT VERY INTERESTED SHinee fangirls and The ELFs of Rivendell and whoever else. Whereas this performance, packed into a much smaller space, with EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE to see this group perform—it concentrated the intensity of the moment to unimaginable levels. Cameras and cellphones (including my own) were hoisted into the air, trying to capture what they could, signs and balloons quivered back and forth, and an entire wave of human bodies rippled with the beat as the words we had been drumming into our heads for A WEEK AND A HALF now issued forth from the mouths of goddesses who stood right in front of us.

And if you thought that was intense, the crowd became even MORE frenzied when the girls sat down for the talk portion of the event. Yes. THEY WERE JUST THERE TO TALK and have fun with the crowd … but the audience got so carried away with all the bumping and shoving, I could barely stay on my toes, and at one point my plastic bag in which I had my signs and the Taeyeon photocard almost got ripped away from me as someone tried to move in an opposite direction. As a result the photocard now has a massive crease in it but I consider that AN HONORABLE BATTLE SCAR EARNED ON THE FIELD OF SONE COMBAT.

The talk portion was your usual fluff piece about how much eeeeveryone loves SNSD and the fans are so awesome; the girls were very entertained to see this presentation called “Qualities of a SONE” which included things like:
- Your favorite color is pink (actually I prefer checked school uniform motifs)
- Your favorite number is 9 (I prefer U-15)
- Your room is completely decked out in SNSD goods (hello Miichan poster & calendar, S/mileage calendar, Young Jump alternate covers for AKB48 singles, Berryz shrine … lolololol)
- SNSD rules your desktop wallpaper, cellphone wallpaper, ringtone … (I pretty much have S/mileage desktops/background for everything, so…)
- They know all the lyrics to all the songs (“I WANT YOOOU! I NEED YOOOOU! I LO–” oh wait)

OBVIOUSLY I DO NOT HAVE THE QUALITIES OF A SONE, HOW THE HELL WAS I EVEN AT THIS EVENT LMAOOOO.

But after this silly bit of “fanservice” they turned the mics over to the girls and asked them to describe their feelings about being here, to show off some of their special skills (I FOREVER curse the Tall Guy with the huge LED sign that blocked my view of Sunny’s aegyo), and basically just be overcome with emotion at the fan turnout and enthusiasm. They also did a couple of games like picking out the best fansigns (PROTIP: visual gags work better because it gets around the language barrier), and having a signed T-shirt throw which got REALLY CHAOTIC AND DANGEROUS omg please never do that again because trampling was about to happen.

All in all I think the presentation was both fun and professional, and while the physical hazards of fan enthusiasm kinda freaked me out I think they got the right mix of activities for fans to enjoy. Definitely not as awkward or boring as some convention guest panels I’ve been to.

The funny thing was, other people were clearly more Anxiety Cat than me and tried to back out of the crowd as the claustrophobia rattled their nerves. This would open up bubbles of space where I could press forward and over the course of the fanmeet I went from being about 10 rows back to maybe 5 rows back, which meant I could take photos like this:

Every fan has a wish. And there are times when that wish can seem impossible, when the object of your dreams lives on the other side of the world with only a fiber-optic connection to link you to them. But every great aeon or so, a genie will arise to grant those wishes, and what I saw this evening was hundreds of wishes being fulfilled in an outpouring of pure joy. In fact, it was not just one genie, but nine genies—who with their poise, charm, and talent, continue to make our most heartfelt dreams and wishes come true.

So instead I will pad this out into a thousand-word post by including a picture:

Hi girls!

A more thorough write-up to come once I have calmed the hell down.
(And uploaded the videos.)

ARE. YOU. READY?!! AY ... KAY ... BEE ...... oh wait

It should have been no surprise that Koreaboos on the East Coast are pretty much like Koreaboos on the West Coast, except with a better public transit system. With enough transfers and rail tickets, I could pretty much take the trains and subways from Newark, NJ (cheap place to stay) all the way to JFK International Airport just to greet GIRLS’ GENERATION.

This also meant making an appropriate fan sign:

BAAAHAHAHA JUST KIDDING

That’s more like it.

After taking a leisurely morning to actually buy the stationery to make these signs, I train-hopped my way into the heart of Manhattan so I could make a RELIGIOUS PILGRIMAGE to the current holy ground of all SMTown fans: THE LG BILLBOARD IN TIMES SQUARE.

I see MY WIFE, Seohyun.

What’s funny was, as I was standing on the street corner waiting for the SMTown commercials to pop up (there were a bunch of generic LG ads playing as well), a small group of girls was patiently observing, waiting for the holy messiahs of Kpop to appear on the big screen as well.

And when they finally did …

Hi Sunny!

GIRLS' GENERATION MAKE YOU FEEL THE HEAT oh goodness I need to fan myself now.

AND WE'RE DOIN' IT, WE CAN'T BE BEAT

Since the fangirls were there, I struck up a brief conversation with them about our plans for the weekend and kind of just wibbled about everything that was about to happen. After spending the afternoon wandering the streets of New York, I caught the subway into Queens and rolled into JFK around 7pm to discover …

I always forget you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat crazy ass Koreaboos.

… the Soshi Army, already waiting.

Including their shock and awe division, of course.

Despite our worst fears about how the deplaning was going to be handled (Super Junior and SHINee fans got screwed earlier in the day when the boys arrived on the morning flight and snuck out the side, presumably to avoid the screaming hordes) everyone was in a pretty festive mood, and the atmosphere of fan camaraderie kept us from getting bored. Typical icebreaker: “Who’s your favorite member?” or “Which section are you sitting in for the concert?” I guess when you come down to it, it was really a chance to get the hell off the internettes and out of the house for once and mingle with people of similar, specialized interests that Normal People just wouldn’t understand.

(This didn’t stop at least one girl from trying to explain to one of the security guards what SNSD was about by showing him the video of “The Boys,” which he appeared to be studying very intently.)

Oh and the Korean press were in attendance as well, leading to my section of the crowd being filmed/photographed about five times since we had all the cool signs (and I kinda freaked out a couple of fans next to me when I “accidentally” flipped to the AKB side of the placard lmao. But I calmed them down when I said I was just trolling).

After about an hour and a half of waiting, everyone was shocked, SHOCKED to find out that we had been trolled again and SNSD was coming out a totally different exit from all the other passengers and crew of Korean Airlines flight KE 85. This resulted in a MAD STAMPEDE (and at least one person falling to the ground, YIKES) as everyone tried to catch up with the Soshi contingent. Then we had to try to intercept them as they made their way to the huge pink SMTown bus parked right in front of the terminal.

My fancam sucked since I was in a terrible part of the crowd where I couldn’t get any decent footage.

At least one genius, though, decided he’d stand right by the doors at the front of the bus instead of trying to follow the girls, and this meant that the girls CAME TO HIM instead as they boarded the bus. Smart move there.

The next twenty minutes were spent with the crowd trying to wave to the bus—it was very hard to see anything because of the windows being painted pink all over (it’s those mesh windows that they use for full-bus ads). Still, the girls tried their best to wave to the crowd a few times while they were in there, including one who had the idea to wave her lit-up cellphone screen, so that we could see the light moving in the window. Somehow, so near, yet so far.

[I would like to take a moment to side-eye the loud, obnoxious BNF who kept bragging about how she got to touch YoonA, because while we are all a bunch of crazies trying to get close to see some celebrities, I think trying to make contact with them like that is breaching personal space right there. If you meet them in person and get a handshake, that's one thing, but creeping on them like that when all they want to do is get from Point A to Point B ... I would consult my book of manners.]

So in the end, all we got was a lot of chaos standing outside the bus trying to get the girls’ attention:

Best fanchant: 'BRING THE GIRLS OUT! BRING THE GIRLS OUT!'

and a brief view of Tiffany’s hot pink suitcase being loaded onto the vehicle.

HEY AIRPORT GUY BE CAREFUL WITH THAT, THAT IS A HOLY RELIC.

Eventually the bus rolled out, we saw some faint shadows waving to everybody one last time, and Girls’ Generation disappeared into the night.

IN REALITY, if I were to list the causes of Momusu’s current trajectory in the Japanese pop culture landscape, it would go something like this:

1) the natural showbiz cycle
2) everyone’s original favorites left
3) Tsunku ran out of great song hooks and the producers ran out of good arrangements
4) Poor marketing management
5) AKB48

HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!11 about that last one, btw.

The hardest goodbye

It is almost too daunting to answer the question, “What does The Great Ai Takahashi Graduation of 2011 mean to Morning Musume?” You have to go back to basic principles and answer things like, “What is Morning Musume about? Who are they? WHAT are they?” Of course, you can Wiki things like that and give perfectly neutral, factual answers, but THAT’S NOT THE POINT.

The point is, Aichan was one of the remaining members who came in at the height of the group’s popularity, and now that she’s gone, only Risa Niigaki remains as someone who personally remembers the era of the group’s hundred-thousand sellers. (“AI WO KUDASAAAAIIIIIII~”) More importantly, Aichan stood firm as group leader when it really did seem that Teh Entire Hello! Project was on the verge of collapse—when Tsunku tried to pass off a derpface and two pandas as a “generation” and then shrouded them in obscurity; when a spaztastic Miracle could move copies of her anime tie-in single but never had the vocal chops to support Morning Musume as a whole; when the entire Old Guard was forced to leave the organization because it no longer made financial sense for the likes of Rika Ishikawa and Natsumi Abe to sit on their asses and shoot photobooks every 14 months while collecting checks. To add further insult to injury, a certain miniskirted schoolgirl army from Akihabara insinuated themselves into the public consciousness, and the rest—as they say—is Japanese music history.

Or is it?

Through it all, Aichan weathered the changing fortunes of Hello! Pro, taking on a workload that involved being a lead vocalist, the face of the group, and—after Miki Fujimoto slunk out the back door—its leader by seniority and age. And she did it for longer than anyone else in the group’s history, hanging on during their darkest moments. Bad personnel decisions, bad songwriting, a drop to near-total irrelevance—shouldn’t have anyone with a sane mind said “Screw it” and jumped ship?

But the fact that Aichan had to be asked by Tsunku to consider leaving shows how much she did all of this out of love for her fellow groupmates. Her supposedly bland personality, that humble country-girl demeanor that made her ill-equipped for superstardom, may have been the very quality that kept Morning Musume on life support. The dwindling sales, dwindling fans, and lack of media attention never seemed to bother her—she just wanted to get out there and perform with her girls, every day and night, living the the dream of being on stage.

So perhaps it’s only appropriate—and many fans seem to have made a big deal about this—that when the time finally came to wake up from the dream, Aichan did so in street clothes, rather than the sparkly-ass ballgowns that had become a Momusu graduation tradition. For Aichan was a tradition unto herself—when you’ve been the leader the longest, when you’ve made it to the age of 25 (which is YEARS past the usual “idol expiration date”), when you are not just the spiritual cornerstone of your group, but all of Hello! Project, and even rival idols outside your organization look up to you, you’ve damn well earned the right to graduate on your own terms. And if you want to do it in a t-shirt and jeans, that’s fine.

In a way, that outfit made the moment even more touching—that we weren’t just saying goodbye to an untouchable goddess in sequins and frills, but to an old dear friend, who had decided to embark upon the next step of her life. There was a deep, satisfying fullness in watching her take those final steps off the stage, leaving this life way she had entered it: as a humble country girl, in a t-shirt and jeans, just someone you could walk up to and be friends with.

The very definition of an idol.

Funny, that name, Takahashi. It means “high bridge.” And literally, she was, bridging an entire generational shift in Japanese entertainment culture from the Hello Pro era to the AKB era—and doing it with a grace and level-headedness many stars lack.

Her final act as the “high bridge” was to help Morning Musume’s 10th generation of members cross over, a changing of the guard that had been maybe two years in the making. The bleeding of mid-decade Momusu members—Koharu, Eri, Junjun and Linlin—and the rapid-fire addition of two new generations (the 9ths haven’t even been around a year yet!) signifies a dramatic refresh for the group. As the sun sets on one era, so it rises with another.

It is the End of Morning Musume. And it is the Beginning of Morning Musume.

MY DAUGHTER!!! (on the right)

Before we go any further I would just like to say that Haruka Kudou is MY DAUGHTER and boy am I glad that she got in while Karin Miyamoto is nowhere to be found, because quite frankly Kudou and Miyamoto are about equal levels of cuteness but Miyamoto has these DEMON CHILD EYES which I’m sure is the reason why Tsunku is keeping her from making a major-group debut in anything.

While it is most likely that no amount of new members will ever return Morning Musume to their former glory (unless Atsuko Maeda, Yuko Oshima and Minami Takahashi all join), the fact that they even had a former glory is still something to be proud of. And the fact that plenty of girls still audition for each new generation, that “getting into Morning Musume” remains a badge of honor among that fanbase, speaks enough for itself. I think, deep down inside, one of my strongest-held beliefs is that getting into Morning Musume will always be a bigger deal than getting into AKB48. If you run the math, the 48-system runs auditions every several months and admits something like a dozen girls each generation. It can even be dramatically more if they are starting an entirely new group in Jakarta or Taipei or Reykjavik or something. Momusu, on the other hand, is sparser and more unpredictable with their audition system, and no generation (aside from 1st) has ever admitted more than four new members.

Perhaps a more correct analogy would be to say that “getting into the 48′s” is like “getting into Hello! Project Eggs,” and conversely that “getting into Morning Musume” is like “getting into AKB48 senbatsu.” Entering the flagship group is an exponentially more difficult task than simply entering the idol agency’s training system; one needs to demonstrate a skill set, confidence and charisma beyond the average teenage girl. Or you can just be Sawako Hata because GOD KNOWS how she ever got into anything.

As the years go by.

However you slice the math, it means that Haruna Iikubo, Ayumi Ishida, Masaki Satou, and Haruka Kudou (can we just call her Kudzu? Because her name sounds so much like Kudzu lmaoooo) all accomplished what only 29 other young women have done in their lifetimes. So yes, it is clearly a big deal. And regardless of how many singles they sell, how many fans they have, how many years they remain with the group, it will remain—as a certain High Bridge Love will tell you—an experience that will remain with them forever.

It is the end. And it is only the beginning.

One of the surprising outcomes from AKB48′s 2011 Jankenpon Tournament (aside from Acchan, Yuko, Tomochin, Yukirin et al. getting kicked in the early rounds, and Mika Komori throwing the Vulcan “live long and prosper” salute out of confusion) was the amount of fan wailing over who “should or shouldn’t” advance in the tournament. Trying to call a winner, or declare one participant more deserving than another, in what is essentially a game of chance is like saying that you “deserve” to win the lottery because you always play the numbers of your birthday and your relatives’ birthdays and you’ve lost the last 457 times so you’re due for a win. This makes about as much sense as insisting that Rina Izuta “deserves” to make center because She Is An Adorable And Wonderful Human Being or that Mayuchi “deserves” to advance past the first round because she won last year. Look, even the Los Angeles Lakers have to play a full season of basketball and beat several teams in the playoffs before they can be crowned champions; they can’t just stroll in and expect to be The Winner Of The NBA every year, right? That’s a lesson they quickly learned from the 2010-2011 Dallas Mavericks.

In case my shitty analogies didn’t make it clear, jankenpon/rock-paper-scissors is a game of chance and nobody “deserves” anything. But I guess that would be too logical, and the whole point of being a fan (short for “fanatic”) is to be illogical! AMIRITE?

My understanding about the purpose of the Janken Tournament is that it is designed to completely scramble AKB48′s Senbatsu (“The Chosen/Selected”) system in an entertaining way. The tournament wipes the board clean and says, “We don’t care who you are, what you did, where you’re from, as long as you love how long you’ve been with the group, how popular you are with the fans, how many singles you’ve been featured in, how many theater stages you’ve performed in, whether your dad owns a chain of pachinko parlors, OR WHAT. You just have to beat your fellow performers at rock-paper-scissors 6 times in a row and YOU, TOO, COULD BE THE FACE OF AKB48 for at least one single.” It re-opens the promise of what was established at the group’s inception: that everyone has a chance to be a star.

As we all know, reality has a way of screwing with theory, and the idea of everyone getting a chance in AKB48 has been overthrown by the hierarchical seniority system of Japanese society. If you look at the CDs and music videos, the magazine covers, the commercials, the product endorsements, etc., it might as well be AKB07, the way the same famous faces get featured month after month because (1) they were the most confident/talented/marketable at the start; (2) management pushed them as lead performers; (3) fans latched onto them the most; (4) newcomers entered and management tried to introduce them as well; (5) [casual] fans only wanted to see the girls they were used to; (6) management ends up pushing the same personalities over and over because that’s what sells product. At this point the organization has locked themselves into a vicious cycle where as soon as Maeda, Kojima, Itano, Oshima and friends graduate, turn 27, get married and have kids, the entire ~48 system is FARKED.

Y HALO THAR Mayuchi!

The Janken event turns over all of that and says, Hey look! Even this 4-foot-11 undergirl who no one heard of until now can become the center of attention! Or it can end up like this year where one of the Super Senbatsu ends up making center anyway, but she has to step over a lot of nobodies (and MY WIFE) in order to do it. So say what you want about Mariko but she still earned it, in a way, by having a run of good luck.

Of course if you REALLY wanted to overturn the Senbatsu system and put the neglected members in the spotlight, it would be all too easy to reverse the General Election results and say that the girls with the least votes get center and everyone who made Senbatsu last time gets kicked out. But that is too harsh of a judgment—one that can be done by a computer and provides no entertainment or intellectual value. Besides, a senbatsu lineup with NO familiar faces would have limited appeal; it’d probably still move a million copies just by having the AKB48 name on it but I think many would feel put off and say “It doesn’t feel like an AKB single because so-and-so isn’t there.” Furthermore, the media hoopla surrounding the tournament itself—the preliminary “guidebook,” the ticket sales for the live viewing, the Asia-wide simulcasts in theaters—provide yet another revenue stream that management would be fools not to capitalize upon. Reversing the election results: can be done in 30 seconds in Excel. Holding a massive rock-paper-scissors foofaraw: makes a few extra bajillion yen.

You have been MINEGISHI-FIED.

And with a lineup that randomly mixes famous faces, mid-stream members, and the nobodies, it does a fairer job of realigning the system than listening to the mad, intoxicated cries of “Make Izurina center!!!!!11″ and “Miichan48 virus!!!!!” and “GTFO Mikapon!!” Everyone knows the rules of Jankenpon, a 5-year-old could play it, and so the event levels the playing field almost perfectly (unless you’re some weirdo with crazy good reaction time or you cheat). If this were a tennis tournament everyone would be complaining that Haruka Shimada was a lock to win, if it was a piano competition we would have Sakiko Matsui center every year, if it were a bodybuilding contest you might as well pencil in Sayaka Akimoto’s name already. But with a pure game of chance like this one, with an absolutely level playing field, you just don’t know, and that’s part of the fun.

((Of course, one could also try something logical like testing the members’ song and dance skills in front of a panel of professional judges, and having the highest-scoring performers get picked for senbatsu, but get that meritocracy-based Simon Cowell shit OUTTA HERE.))

To paraphrase a famous quote from TEH BIBLE that I heard just this past Sunday: “You say the Janken Tournament is unfair? Or is it your ways that are unfair?”