It started, like so many things, with a single incident.
Sometime around spring of last year (2011), back when they were shooting the “Real Idol Zukan” photobook, they had a Ustream broadcast set up to show all the behind-the-scenes work. And this idol group came on—I don’t even remember their name now—and for the hell of it, just started dancing °C-ute’s “Massara Blue Jeans.” Because, you know, when you’ve got time to kill at a photoshoot, what do you do? You dance to old idol songs from 5 years ago. Not that I’m knocking it; I think indies-period °C-ute had some of the best songs EVRAR. But that spontaneous outbreak of dance sure came out of nowhere.
As the months went by, more incidents followed, and I started to connect the dots in my mind. You had a member of Vanilla Beans on the Kawaii Girl Japan webshow saying that she’d been inspired by Buono! to become an idol. Nico/Youtube dance sensation Kozue Aikawa, the face of DANCEROID, got her start dancing to mid/late-’00 Hello! Project songs long before the Vocaloid fandom claimed her. Rino Sashihara of AKB48 freaked out because she got to sit next to Momoko Tsugunaga. (Then again this is Sasshi we’re talking about, who freaks out over ALL the idols, but still.) Shiori Mori from Passpo gets all excited because she went to a Buono! concert. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, some random member of AeLL, who I don’t even know, mentioned on a radio show that she was a fan of Maasa Sudo.
And then there’s this.
When Kyary met Risako
