Comments by "redfish337" (@redfish337) on "The Japan Reporter" channel.

  1.  @nont18411  No one who lives there for any significant amount of time isn't going to run into issues. That's what they mean by foreigners. Expats. You might much prefer what sucks in Japan about what sucks about your own country, but if you're an expat you're still much more keenly aware of them since you've seen differently. The local of a place might not even realize that different is even a possibility.
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  2.  @aksarayakobus  Idol system died with scandal at the end of the 80's. Showa idols moved out and it was a shift to what would actually be called J-pop. '90s and '00s were mostly about soloists... but SPEED/MAX and such in mid '90s which were more reminiscent of J-pop and Morning Musume around 1999/2000 which is the first modernish group. But after just a couple years of popularity it was right back to soloists. AKB caused MASSIVE proliferation of idol groups from 2010 and on.
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  3. There are something like 100 different companies. Competing with each other. They cooperate in a sense as well, but in the end it's competition. Idols groups are formed by massive corporations.... or dedicated idol companies.... or a guy who would have done vocaloid but wanted more tangible presence to his music... or the members themselves.... or some cheats trying to make a quick buck. And naturally they all have different policies. Support the policies you like. Don't support black companies.
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  4. It's not even 25. That was just their perception. Mai started before the idol boom and she wouldn't have really had many recent examples to look at besides H!P. So even at 22 or whatever she felt she was getting old since that seemed to be what prior groups had been doing. That company's flagship group actually started with a 24 year old but once it got more established it built up more of a farm system and focused on training from younger. But now 11+ years after the idol boom, it's clearly been pulled up to 30, and that's still just a soft limit. (ie, it starts falling off precipitously but there are still likely dozens of examples of them). Yukirin has already declared she will stay until at least 30... which is in 3 weeks, and she has the name recognition to pretty much pull the perception of the upper limit to however old she gets when she quits. The Momoiro Clover girls will also soon have the opportunity to push the limit (oldest is 28).
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  5.  @julosx  In her last group (same company as current group and NOT the abusive company), she and other members wrote about half the lyrics... the other half of the songs' lyrics and the composition was outsourced. Not sure if to other parts of the company or to independent composers.
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  6. Problem: "65% of tourists concentrated in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hokkaido, Okinawa" Japanese solution: "Let's make JR pass cost 50% more so people just stay in the same area."
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  7. ​ @mrbob4104  You have a gross misunderstanding of idols. 90% of idols who stand there and smile will get utterly dusted by the competition. Many if not most get a commission on sales. 10% are pretty enough to do okay just standing pretty but are basically conceding a natural advantage. Sure, they might not know how to design a webpage for maximum clickthroughs or whatever, but they're definitely at least practiced in the art of sales.
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  8. BABYMETAL basically aren't idols in the modern sense. They're a Perfume but with a different concept. Amuse is a huge company but didn't really have many idols. And those it did have aren't run the same way. They look like idols but don't act like them. THAT SAID, BABYMETAL seems a lot more concerned with image than a lot of idol groups. For example, there are no SNS accounts for members... they have no? meet and greets, they have no MC segments during lives. They do sort of stonewalled interviews from time to time- but it seems like overall they don't let them talk for themselves much.
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  9. She's not an idol. Her group disbanded in 2017. She should just be under regular actress rules.
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  10. ​ @errorys4183  Chris is basically correct. I don't even know what you're getting on about. I have 8 hand-written letters from J-idols. BABYMETAL doesn't even do MC during their sets. There is definitely a difference.
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  11. In the end, the song is associated with the performer, whoever that might be. If BAND-MAID songs weren't BAND-MAID songs but were performed by idols, wouldn't you still like the songs? Even if an idol group has a good singer they pretty much aren't ever good singers top to bottom and someone else could probably do it better- but the song associates with a particular performer and that's just what you get. This is really easy to see with BAND-MAID, because their first three albums weren't their own, and even World Domination (5th) includes tracks with first credit to Akutsu Kentaro. I like "Fate" even though Kanami wasn't first credit. It's this guy in the captain uniform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ujGqGSGak "Thrill", the song be wrote that got BAND-MAID to go viral, could have easily been a PASSPO song performed by his band at their idol lives if he felt like giving it to them instead of BAND-MAID. As for the benefits of an idol over a band... well, if you aren't actually there at lives and doing meet and greets then you really aren't getting what they're selling. I do put BAND-MAID pretty much at the top. But the idols with the sorts of songs I like don't really give up as much ground as they "should" so to say.
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  12. They leave by custom around age 30. They don't have to. And fans wouldn't actually mind if they stayed. Since that's the general custom, companies are hesitant to hire older girls since it increases the chance that they will have a short career. But I've also heard of multiple cases where someone was older than the requested application range and applied anyway and was accepted. It's not black and white. Also, group dynamics is a thing. Seniority is also big in Japan if not quite as much as Korea. So if you come in as the newbie but 8 years older than everyone else that can cause tension.
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  13.  @chocchipcookiegirl  Why should she be immune from running gags? That's how you actually get screen time on variety shows... and that's how you actually get recognition and popularity in a group with dozens of members. That was her personality/persona. Bunch of 18yo 150 cm idols running cutesy themes and she's a bit older running a more mature persona at 166 cm with a sporty theme and pushy character. It's not like all the mixed Filipino/Japanese get shoe-horned into that character. The two others I know off hand were even in groups that had a self-introduction song. One was the leader, but was played off as dreamily beautiful but ditzy. The other was leader and center, and played off as a homebody fan of geeky stuff like video games. So those are the three half Japanese/Filipinos I know. One played off as sporty and pushy, one beautiful and ditzy, one pretty but a loner/geeky. Sayaka moved into acting. Denchan moved into modeling. Aichan does 2.5D idol stuff for a company that makes music games.
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  14. Sometimes they write the lyrics. Though it's very rare for them to compose the song, it does happen. Some play instruments on occasion. The song writers are usually known and clearly by a particular person (or crew). The genre of songs is vast. The breadth of topics of the songs is vast. They usually just go with a mild backing track rather than autotune. There's no requirement for quality singing so there's really no point faking the singing quality. Sometimes they do their own choreographies. Lots of other times it's an ex-idol. They aren't supposed to be special- they're supposed to be normal. But the big name groups do favor fast-learners. Because they don't have time for "the right amount of repetition"... they often just have to roll with it. Being pretty isn't a requirement. There are a few layers to their personality depending on if they are national level idols or not. Chika ones actually have to be able to hold 1-2 minute conversations so they save themselves a lot of trouble if they just stick to the truth and simply refrain to answer anything they don't want public. And that by and large seems to be the case.
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  15. They have lots of freedom. What those freedoms are depends on the group and company, but they generally have plenty. If they're giving up any freedoms it's pretty much to date, be fat, or smoke. And there are various idol groups that allow each of these things so they should have joined a group with those values if that's what they most care about. If you want to be a full time, national level, oudou (orthodox, but literally "noble/kingly path") idol, then you usually can't do this stuff. While there are the occasional weirdos, Japanese idol fans understand and value the concept of on/off. Which basically means they are much less likely to be bothered out in public than people of comparable fame in other countries if they don't appear to be "on". By and large it's much more a job than a lifestyle than it is in other countries. The girl in the video joined a group with management set up as if it was some huge company... but it was basically being run like a garage band. Basically, she was a salaried contracted employee for the level of a group that most people in the West do for fun with their buddies on the understanding that they'll probably never make any real money. De facto, there was no money, so her salary wasn't paid... but they also wouldn't release her contract even though they weren't holding up their end. So it was a slimy business, or one incompetently run by someone who had a big dream of running a group, didn't want to throw in the towel. In any case, she went to court and got paid. And apparently didn't have so bad of an experience in the idol world to not want to try her own hand at making a group.
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  16. Got married. They had a show featuring them last year (2020). Not sure if it's at all possible to find it. But the article about it said: precious metal jewelry design, married.
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  17.  @errorys4183  There are idols who play instruments so your definition doesn't stick anyway.
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  18. ​ @errorys4183  Idols existed long before the 1980s. But J-pop as a genre didn't exist until around 1989. It's called Kayoukyoku or Showa Era Pop. I don't know where Pink Lady and such actually sort, but in terms of who actually gets sorted into 女性アイドル at stores, that pretty much starts from Morning Musume (1997) due to the relative dearth of idols after at least one suicide and an attempted suicide were the death knell to the Showa idol system at the end of the '80s, fairly clearly delineating the eras. Especially since they had an Emperor change in 1989, the first in over 60 years, and first since the war. Oh yeah, and the bubble burst around the same time. So there's definitely a before and after the early '90s in the Japanese mindset. MAX and SPEED and such showed a revival was coming with Momusu, but still are usually sorted as plain J-pop. De facto, the word has shifted. Almost all groups are born by way of Akiba style of AKB48 or Momoiro Clover. H!P is still active and regained popularity so it is still included despite some older methods. And 48 and Stardust both had to adapt to having larger fanbases than they were perhaps designed for. As for idols who play: Bandjanaimon Ai Oke While it disbanded recently, Minyou Girls had a shamisen. Probably others but I don't know every group out there. And also disbanded are some two way groups- PASSPO which ran more idol than band and Rurirori which was the opposite. The idol festival system isn't conducive to instruments- turnaround from one group to the next can be 30 seconds or less since usually 3 groups get a 20 minute set each hour and any wasted time means you only get to do 3 songs instead of 4. Nevertheless, such groups exist and that breaks that definition. And BANMON has multiple MV with millions of hits so they are significant.
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  19. I remember an old AKB skit that seems to be purged off the internet now so I can't link it. The main character was looking to give up her seat. Which included offering her seat to a "pregnant lady" who actually wasn't of course. A couple obvious situations that could be messed up. Then an "old man" comes on with a cane or something and she says to herself that there's no way this could be a mistake- and it's something ridiculous like he's really a mime. So she fake slaps that person and yells "stop being so ambiguous!!" The last one and all is played for laughs, but you can kind of see the thought process behind it there.
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  20. What same problem? This talks about a wide variety of problems, which shouldn't really be fully overlapping in most cases, if any at all. The problems of the national idol group members are not the same problem as the main interviewee here, who was in a group which had a disbandment live to about 50 fans. The girl group industry has crashed at least a couple times and the current iteration has a top tier which has actually encouraged proliferation of other groups. The boy group industry has been a lot more monolithic, basically all under Johnny's taking a destructive stance against most competition. Only the Exile groups really managed to flourish, perhaps because they were distant enough by theme, perhaps because they were under Avex, which is a goliath company even Johnny's would be concerned messing with. Johnny's isn't as concerned about age, but is otherwise one of the most controlling of all- sabotaging people who leave the company and try to start out on their own. Particularly since K-pop has managed to fracture the boy group industry a little bit, more indie style groups and such have formed. I'm not really sure of their particular situation, but I can't imagine them being able to proliferate as much as the girl groups since they're mostly relying on 10-40 year old girl money while the girl groups take 20-50+ salaryman money.
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  21. My impression is... Amuse is basically establishment. They're stable, monied and connected. Most other idol groups even when they are attached to a major company are a bit more wild west where there's more freedom but more risk. Seems to often still act like a Japanese music company from 20 years ago for better or worse. Maybe Nobita or someone will come with better understanding.
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  22. That was just their impression, and at least one of them is actually only talking about one company- the translation just fails to mention that. Indeed, that first girl is actually really OG. She started as an idol in 2006, several years before idols got popular again around 2009-2010. When she joined, there weren't a lot of examples. The most recent popular company was H!P, and their system shifted idol group members out into solo or other projects by about age 25. That was just one company's system. But since that was really the only really prominent company in recent memory before she joined, she thought that company's culture applied to everyone. At the end of this video she says she had been too concerned about age- that she is training relatively old idols. 30 is the soft cap in J-idol. There are plenty of over 30s, including some prominent ones. In the 25-30 range... there are probably hundreds if not 1000+ such idols.
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  23. Idol fans don't care about stuff like that. That's the sort of fun stuff that makes the underground idol scene fun in the first place.
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  24. Frankly.... huh? What pinchike fandom were you in?
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  25.  @DJ_Black_Tourmaline  I can see most? of them. I can't see the 3 I posted on top of yours though. I suppose it's possible it's Nobita but I think it's just youtube's robots. I used to be able to post links to at least internal links without issue before. But since the err.... whatever the hell you want to call this situation from 14 months ago or so, it's hard for links to get through. It'd be nice if they'd at least flag it for you and tell you what may be an issue but nope, it acts like you posted it and then doesn't really. Even though there are spammers who are obviously spammers and immediately get 500 likes on their comments and youtube's robots don't seem to care.
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  26. There's no difference in Japanese. So they have to go very out of their way to try to make it sound different- and most usually fail at doing so unless they've recently had practice. And if they're reading from furigana (basically a pronunciation cheat sheet), there's not even any indication that there's a difference.
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  27. All this stuff should be taught in high school if they're going to bother to make a law at all. Seriously do not know why they can't cut 5 minutes off every other course to add a "practical life skills class" to the curriculum. What have you learned recently in your continuing education?
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  28. Minegishi Minami: Auditioned at 12. Debuted at 13. Graduated at 28 and a half. 15.5 years? I mean, I guess Brown-Eyed Girls is officially still together if you count years of hiatus as still being together. Reni is still going in Momoclo. Debuted in 2008 at age 15. Now 28. 12+ year career and counting. Even the group with the company mentioned here with a quit at 25 years old general expectation: Michishige Sayumi: Auditioned and joined at age 13. Graduated at age 25. 12 year career with one group. Sure, a lot of girls just treat it as a part-time job during high school and/or college. But the ones who really want to do it can put together 12-15+ years in the industry. And the relatively low emphasis on training means they can pretty much just get out there and do a lot of their training while they've already started performing.
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  29. Everyone mentions porn as if it's a long-term career. It's just another one with a soft age limit. And it burns bridges to some other careers. One has been successful, but in general it's a bad long-term bet. So it's mostly just a quick payday for people who desperately need a quick payday.
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  30. Yeah, that's a bad translation since plenty of groups still hire past 25. As an aside, poor Yuko Nakazawa. =P
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  31. ​ @MariaLisseth  I'm not sure where you think I disagreed with you on anything.
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  32. Why? The idol's response to having a bad experience with a certain company was to make her own group. If A SPECIFIC COMPANY did something bad before, then that's a reason to not support such a company. Enoha Girls and Nijiiro Fanfare both disbanded in 2019. Did this video tell you about something bad a company you support was doing?
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  33.  @mao-sama6446  Guess you're on mobile. It doesn't look like anything on a monitor.
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  34. Underground idols have shows after 6pm on 2-4 weekdays and busy weekends. They have to fit some practice and training and rehearsal in there, but basically there's no real overlap with schooling. It's a busy life if you do both (though some idol groups don't perform as much). But there's no conflict. Some that have actually posted about it in the last couple years. Very very partial list. https://twitter.com/yuipon_kisaragi/status/1375727974754881543 https://twitter.com/karen_koizumi/status/1375039793403371523 https://twitter.com/qumali_mei/status/1374291567838515205 https://twitter.com/airi5150/status/1344496706352627713 https://twitter.com/natsuisara/status/1373968343795867648 https://twitter.com/shachi_staff/status/1371789330570567684 https://twitter.com/nanaco03101/status/1370557004259848195 https://twitter.com/qumali_sao/status/1240563694620180480 https://twitter.com/shiori_f_BJ/status/1240135904284549121 https://twitter.com/nakamura_akari/status/1239179513805672448
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  35. That's actually the goal for many of them who do idol work in the mainstream groups in particular. So that's already not just on the radar for them but in many cases the actual mission. And it's long been taking as many of them as it wants. That answer was always there. And may have been the answer for about 20% of them originally. Now there are many more idols but not really any more demand for actresses.
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  36.  @Dflowen  Idol work isn't STOPPING them from pursuing an education. I mean, I suppose there could be some black companies who ask too much- which is why like part 1 of this 2-parter shows, it's important to read the contract and shop around. While the age range does spread out more than they sometimes think- as the first girl admits at the end realizing she had thought too much of age, the core idol age is still high school and college age so of course they are expecting girls to be in high school and college and having to schedule around that. Again, it doesn't cause much inconvenience for anyone because lives are basically after 5PM on weekdays or on weekends anyway and they can switch around the scheduling for everything else. They'll even give them a little time off now and then ahead of exams. But the companies aren't signing them up for classes. It's ultimately their own responsibility to come up with their next path. The company can maybe give them a little bit of work even if their group disbands- there are kind and asshole managers but even if they have a kind one who wants their ex-members to do well there's only so much they can can keep them on for and then only so much they can do for ex-employees. Since I follow a lot of them on twitter I can just search for keywords under "people you follow" and quickly get a lot of commencement photos. Many are going to college. Many can do it. If they can't, then maybe they shouldn't idol. But that's their call.
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  37. It is also often unduly attacked by people with as much of a misconception about Japan as the weeaboos.
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  38. It's not really 25. That was just her impression. Which she later states at 9:20 wasn't really correct. Part of the issue is she actually debuted before the idol boom so there weren't a lot of previous examples. The prime company when she started had a major farm system and so when it started them so young they still could have 10+ year careers by 25. Also, since leaving the group usually doesn't cause anywhere near as much "damage" as in K-pop since it's pretty much an expected part of the process and not a sign of more impending trouble, they're supposed to just ascend to a more serious and specialized part of the entertainment industry (or retire and become normal). Later life Korean girl groups are often awkward because members are still officially tied to the group but start acting less and less like it.
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  39. She's still in the group. Research better.
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  40.  @GhostCow  Saw Wagakki Band and BABYMETAL in the same weekend. Saw SCANDAL, AKB and Yosei Teikoku on another weekend. Saw SCANDAL, PASSPO, BANDMAID one week. And I rank these particular shows: Wagakki 1st BANDMAID 2nd PASSPO 3rd Yosei Teikoku 4th SCANDAL 5th AKB 6th BABYMETAL 7th SCANDAL 8th I like a few certain bands the best but actually at the shows the idols mostly do fine. And they're cheaper.
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  41.  @P.90.603  They've been wearing masks since before there were cell phones to hide behind. It's not a political to them. And even then avoiding random social interaction was given as a reason to wear one. Something that was normal to do some of the time for whatever practical reason just became normal to do all of the time. And so instead of signaling do not disturb some of the time- which is very reasonable, many are now signaling do not disturb all of the time which is damaging.
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  42. Not too long ago a group sent out a statement that said something along the lines of.. our producer was deathly ill with covid and we really thought it much more likely than not that he was going to die. Some events have been postponed. Sorry for the inconvenience. There is no excuse. Everyone writing that and reading that understands that of course that's valid excuse! But this is just procedural. Now in the NGT case it would have been more appropriate for the management to do the apologizing but it's not like they're the perpetrator either. They are tangential victims... from my mind only the actual perpetrators should be apologizing. I think all of this is silly. But it is how it is. And it's not like the art of apologizing isn't silly in its own ways in my own country. This sort of part of the culture is one of the biggest headaches, lost in cultural translation. When I lived there, we, the foreigners, never apologized for anything outside the company. Surely we caused some problems- some by being foreign, in other cases just as a matter of doing our work, properly, as ordered. If someone complained whether justified or not, a Japanese person was sent to apologize on our behalf. A pinch apologizer. It didn't matter if we were right or wrong. It didn't matter that it was done by someone else. It just had to be done. Yeah, I think this is weird. But it's just business as normal over there.
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  43. I don't know how much you know about the Japanese music industry.... but there kind of aren't any. Japanese pop music shifted from kayoukyoku around 1990. Along with this came pretty much a crash of the female idol industry, the pop of the bubble economy in Japan, and the change of an emperor and therefore a reset of the Japanese calendar (they also use Western). They had 'idols" before but it's basically a different system best covered pretty much totally separately. Pre-1990 idols aren't even sorted with post-1990 idols in Japan... while there are some influences and connections it's basically a totally different category. The oldest ex-member from a major "modern" group is 48, and she's a extreme outlier... rest of her group is something like 35-42. And even that group didn't start a wave- female idols went extremely out of favor in the mid-2000s in favor of female soloists (boy groups remained in favor). And so the idol system as we know it is really only from about 2008. On this specifically, Mai (first girl here) joined in 2006. This is before idols became big again. So she actually is part of that trailblazing group. She's about as old school as you can go in terms of the modern system. It's going to be about 15 more years until we start seeing significant numbers above 50.
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  44. Everything is different. One issue with drawing out the negatives is you can find a bunch of negatives if you draw from everything. Oh, but some of them are problems by being indie... others are problems by being signed to a big label... some by having many fans... some by not having enough. Some by having older fans. Some by having younger fans. Some by having a strong Internet presence. Some by focusing on meet and greets. That's a lot of problems! Everyone is facing problems, but each one isn't facing ALL the problems. Momoclo is super established. Whether or not they get well paid, they will have access to side gigs that will pay. But you know back before they actually got popular they did relatively touchy meet and greets. Perfume stopped being idols a long time ago. So the "rules" wouldn't apply anyway. But in their idol days you could... actually hear their voices. They were actually singing. I think they still usually are but the live voices are backing tracked nearly into oblivion. Additionally, it seemed like A-chan in particular wanted a little bit of creative input that's been constantly denied. If they were actually in an idol company it's much more likely the live voices would have more prominence in the mix and they would also likely have had more opportunity for creative input. So even if they aren't under idol "rules" it's not like they aren't giving something up by how they are being managed. But both of these companies are interesting in that their groups' members don't have individual twitter accounts. They may have instagram, but still, Japanese talents basically all run twitter accounts- the character limit was always very convenient for Japanese text. The point is it gives off more of the feeling that basically all of their thoughts need to be checked and approved before being released to the public.
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  45. DearStage is probably fine enough. Not to say they are definitely without any bad policies but they're a bit of the OG of female produced companies. Super big companies are too corporate and may see it too much in terms of what sort of money it can bring in. Super small companies might be experiencing pipe dreams- with their problems more a matter of incompetence than malice. In general they hide their issues which is why it's a bit hard to say. Sometimes a company that seems super above board in all they do does something weird and you never get explanation. The one thing you can usually check out easily though is turnaround. That is, if a member quits and joins some other group 2 months later, then the first group doesn't have an evil non-competition clause.
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  46. Team Shachi of course! Or Nijicon. Or Qumali Depaato. Fes tive or Neo Japonism or the codomomental groups. I mean, of course you can follow Candys too. You can follow all the groups on twitter (pretty much the only thing it's good for). But they're, one, super indie which is no big deal but means survival rate is low, and two, not really full time, on purpose. And three, if you actually go to Japan like some of us idol fans, they are Sapporo based which makes actually seeing them live a pain in the ass compared to almost all other groups. But hey, if you're following, go ahead and follow: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4a2WS82JyLf1WL6IRZv1ig/videos https://twitter.com/candys_idol https://twitter.com/smi1e_25
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  47.  @BoucheronsNo.1Fan  Warning, many of the ones on that long stream (will probably be 5+ hours) will be bad, especially if you're used to Seiko Oomori and such. It's that level of indie afterall and that's why I usually recommend 1-2 tiers higher up. But it is the next stream coming up, and I do very much appreciate that they stream and even leave it up, as a lot of them either delete it immediately or only leave it up for a week or so.
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  48. Probably she's not from Tokyo or Osaka? There's a rail network but it's not really what most people use outside of those two cities or the city centers of some of the other cities. I remember I would meet college friends in Tokyo. They'd try to help me find the right train home. I'm the foreigner and they're the local who speaks the language fluently so of course they know what they're doing, right? And then I'd realize they're from Tochigi or Iwate or Shimane or whatever, just moved to Tokyo a few months ago, take the same line in to school every day and don't actually know shit about how the lines in Tokyo connect. But in the context of idols, that seems strange. Very few idols can afford to just take a taxi everywhere. Most of the indie ones will be playing venues all over the place and will get around for her job a lot more than a student would.
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  49. It's not the music industry. It's basically everything with a structure over there. It's a weird system of managing shame and blame. Basically everything that happened was just normal. The difference is the music industry, Maho could actually make a fuss and be heard, and the public overall seemed to side with her.
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  50. Nobita's video is a hit job. Nothing new from him. But she's basically rightt. She's not really disgruntled against idols. That's why she's made her own groups. She just had a bad experience with a particular abusive company. And is warning people to be careful of the contract stipulations. Which is fair. Nobita's issue is in taking the few bad experiences and focusing on them. There are something like 1000 groups at any given time. And yet Minegishi gets dragged out in every one of these videos without proper explanation.
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  51. Frankly. in the Japanese entertainment industry you usually just get a "it's a personal matter, but 2 months ago I got married to so and so, thank you for your continued support" message. No notice they were ever dating anyone. Big stars may have paparazzi style stuff spying on them and have it thrown in tabloids but usually no one knows anything until after the fact. The difference being that male idols have the general tradition that they can make a career out of it, whereas for girls it's considered an introductory position and you're supposed to move into something more permanent later. And that image goes along with the historical age range of them basically being high schoolers and you can sort of see where they're like, it's illegal for you to be physically intimate at your age anyway so just don't even go there while you're in this high school age group. But I don't want to generalize too much. As that's what this video does wrong. There are female idols who get married. More of them are making a longer career of it and so companies seem to be taking that into consideration. There's a pregnant one as we speak. I forget who it was, but there was one that gave out something similar as above... a little after graduation from her group she sent out a message that said "it's a persona matter but 2 years ago...." or some long period of time like that. The bottom line is it's a bunch of different companies with a bunch of different policies. They obviously try to hide their issues, but if a company is too sketchy then there's too much to keep track of and it's going to spill out. Support good companies.
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  52. They went through worse. Not sure about anymore. And that's because the story she tells here is one of the worse cases and in the end her response was to ditch the bad company and make her own group using better rules rather than renounce the whole scene. You see... K-pop groups it's more likely for that first two years to all just be training. She actually got to be an idol. See if she liked it. Shine on stage. Their company was making money. Maybe no actual profit... maybe it was bleeding money... but it at least had income and was paying down some of the expenses. K-pop group would still just be in training spending money and not making money.
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  53. Idol world is one where trees and raccoons and Hawkeyes and Falcons can legitimately help against the armies of Thanos. Despite having something like 1/1000000th the power of the top tier Avengers. The idol world applies "plot armor" to those idols so that we can better enjoy the show. If they were to fight logically (according to the mythos), they are useless and should just stay home. The regular singing world doesn't have the plot armor, at least not to the same degree. So many of them are useless and should stay home. The idol world gives them plot armor so if people like someone saying "groot" all the time or of standing so incredibly still they they become invisible to the eye... that they can still make it on the team.
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  54. Turn on subs.
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  55. He said from the beginning he doesn't like idol culture... whatever that means, it's not some monolith. The girl who makes up most of this video already answered for you. Her response to abuses large enough to require legal action wasn't to leave the scene but to make her own group. There are probably 100 companies out there. Fault them for their own abuses, not the abuses of their competitors. Don't support black companies.
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  56. She did it herself because she wanted to show she was seriously sorry. That company has had LOTS of similar things but she's the only one who ever did that. The actual punishment was being placed on probation in the trainee team for 7 months. She was then reinstated as a full member WITH A PROMOTION. And is still in the group now, 8 years later.
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  57. They need to be whatever their group's image is. Girl crush J-idol doesn't sell in Japan... most of the fans of that just go straight to K-pop. If they want to sell to girl idol fans in the past couple years they've gone with yami aesthetic and now a little more landmine aesthetic. And more importantly they need to just hire a youtuber to join the group from the get go. But just because there's no real girl crush concept doesn't mean they can't have badass concepts. Like say BiSH in "Giant Killers" That group also has a song that is just one big censor bypass . When that's the group aesthetic then even outside of the group there's not so much expectation of anything.
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  58. There's not really a way to enforce stuff at the level presented in most of this video unless someone brings attention to it. To be clear, most of this video is about an extremely indie level group which had a final disbandment live to about 50 people. Pre-corona. And that was the final disbandment show where basically ALL fans would show up- probably fewer than half can show up regularly since this level of group performs hundred+ times a year. The point is it's pretty much a garage band level. So if you put together a band with some buddies and play some gigs you probably understand that you probably aren't really getting paid. Especially considering how much time you put in practicing and expenses. If you can manage to get to a medium indie level then maybe it's a little bit more sustainable but at the super indie level, don't quit your day job so to say. The government isn't coming in to check on your practice hours. Oh, you practiced how many hours for that little compensation?! In Japan, there's a culture to grin and bear it. In general this is a good thing, but can be abused by the unscrupulous. Or incompetent. And so at her level when they were probably only bringing in 5-10 dedicated fans, everyone could see that there was basically no money being earned, so that there was no money being passed out was no surprise. She said as much. It wasn't until they got slightly more popular that she started wondering about it. (And frankly, after expenses, there probably STILL wasn't any money to pass out to them). The problem for that girl there was she joined a group with the economic reality of a garage band, but were contracted as if they were a more stable group and she was expected something more like hourly/salary. And had a terrible contract at that. So while a person in a band would either believe in the band and grin and bear it and try to grow the band with the realization they may never earn any money, or fold 'em and try somewhere else... her contract apparently let them not compensate her, and then was unduly strict in terms of termination. She then brought that to the attention of the courts. And she won a settlement. Government can be on the lookout for obvious issues in public. For example, minors cannot work after a certain time of night, so on broadcasts, at that point, younger members of groups just leave. Even at this indie level, if a minor is in group those groups play earlier in an event and if they do fan-meetings after, they leave at their announced curfew time. The government can enforce on broadcasters, but even at the indie level the fans can start whistleblowing on their side. But the government isn't coming right up on their grill behind the scenes during their practices and rehearsals- the group just has to clear paperwork and taxes. It's up to the members or parents to whistleblow issues from behind the scenes.
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  59. The garbage bin thing is the biggest cop out too. I don't know about this instant, but for years there were thousands upon thousands of RECYCLING bins. It's only the trash bins that are gone. People still want your cans and bottles. Recycling bins earn money. Trash bins costs money. At least where I lived... recycling was free but burnable trash had to go in special bags that you had to pay for. So there are recycling bins all over and no trash bins. News flash: These are functionally the same for terrorists. It's just a bad excuse to not want to have to take trash when most Japanese have been trained to pay for their own trash at their own home.
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  60.  @DuBstepAnDa98  It's not even clear if she actually got it started or not. Apparently she's pretty much doing the same thing up in Sapporo instead. And in any case, on any given night there are several choices of live event and probably over a dozen on the weekends. Fans are already used to moving on to a new favorite member or group after graduation or disbandment. Idol cafe is basically a different genre. Now if you were a big fan of someone you might go support them on occasion but doing that actually means not going to some other live that would be available. And the cafe isn't cheap either- most of this stuff would likely run more expensive than going to a live.
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  61. Furukawa Mirin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAsBEkXAkE
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  62. LiSA is under sacra so she's anisong, perhaps the most popular of the ones who don't actually do voice acting. Anisong can be rock... it can be pop... quite a few of the ones who sing it do both but LiSA leans a bit more into the rock side. aimer is just plain J-pop. J-pop pretty much started with rock songs- so a group has to go pretty hard for it to not actually still count as J-pop. And there are hundreds of idols with alternative and rock elements in their music. It's not all cutesy stuff. And even some of that "cutesy" stuff still might have nice bass lines or guitar solos. I wouldn't be into idols if not for it.
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  63. Anti-idol was 10 years ago already. All this sort of stuff has existed in at least parts in the underground. No makeup idols. Chubby idols. Angsty lyrics. Lots of fun stuff in the underground. And lots of crap. It's all already there in the underground... some even getting up to the mainstream. And yet people keep beating the drum that idols are just about cute girls singing cute songs.
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  64. Girls have long been told they're supposed to follow boy idols, and such. And now there's K-pop. Why are they older? Well, there are a few things in play. But I'll just say money. Underground idols perform something like 200-300 times a year. Maybe $4000-15000 a year... and that's WITHOUT buying additional fan meetings. Poor college students have even $4000 in expendable money every year? The college age fans go to great effort to save up the money to go to 2-5 shows a month. The single salarymen has lots of expendable money and has no trouble going to 25-30. They might have a fairly even age distribution of fans- but it appears to run older because that's who can afford to go to 300 shows a year.
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  65. "Does being an idol mean you work within a specific set of the music industry?" Yes. At least in this context of idols. What that actually is is hard to define though. "Women who continue to work as performers after age 25, does just continuing to perform mean they are still "idols"" If they were idols before and are still doing the same thing they are still idols after 25. Honestly, 30 is the more appropriate number these days, and that's still just a soft cap- I could find you ten over 30 with no trouble and many more with some scouring of the Internet. A lot of ones who know they're in it for the long haul don't publish their birth year in the first place so you don't even know if they pass 30 or not. The first girl debuted before the idol boom and didn't really have many examples to look at. The big company around the turn of the century mostly had people leave by 25. "or do they have to be working for specific talent and booking agencies?" Not exactly. They can be self-produced and still be idols. Again, basically every point you could use to define idols has a counterexample so defining is hard. The term includes national groups all the way down to those with like 20 fans afterall. Below the super mainstream, basically all of them perform at events where they get a 15-30 minute slot, and then go outside the main hall to do fan meetings for an hour, where it's understood that they will be getting most of their money for the day. Having good music means having more fans so it's not like the music means nothing but at the end of the day the fan meetings pay the bills.
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  66.  @DJ_Black_Tourmaline  They were band ja naimon. Now they're bandjanaimon maxx nakayoshi but I figure everyone still just calls them banmon. They always played their instruments at times, but only the drummer is a professional so she did it more overall. Yuzu plays all the instruments though so pretty sure she's plenty talented enough for it. But they're "not a band" so they always focused more on the dancing side. They may have made some declaration of moving more away from idol- but I don't actually see any real changes. The main point remains though- instruments don't mean they're not idols. Really there's no good perfect definition. It's like Visual Kei... it's more a matter of a different sort of culture than it is a music type. Idol is usually pop while Visual Kei is usually rock.... but they're technically both genreless in terms of music and much prefer the rock side of idol. And pretty much none of the cultural things apply all the way across the board- a groups is just built around that general culture, taking and discarding parts of that culture as it so desires.
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  67. They don't. Plenty of them even audition over 25. Moreover, on average, the older ones actually push more sales because of fan loyalty. I could easily find you 100 over age 25. The soft cap is 30. And it's still a soft cap... could probably find about 10-30. The issue is there pretty much aren't any above age 40. It's not supposed to be a career. Not to say fans won't support them- they have no problem supporting seiyuu over 40 doing pretty much the same thing. But seiyuu have a permanent career so if they ever feel like they can't pull off the dancing anymore they just drop that side gig. Maybe this will change in the future, but for now it's still considered an introductory job and you're supposed to ascend to something more specialized and permanent.
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  68. Imposing ridiculous standards of beauty which is almost goddess level? Come again? The topic is J-idol.
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  69. Nice PP. Go to any shows? I've never bothered to make any longterm friends there. But totally could. It's not hard. You're standing in line for hours with hundreds of people with at least one shared interest. Which is enough, but if you can find a couple more shared interests you might have a real friend. I'm pretty introverted but it's boring AF to stand there that long and talking to other fans makes the wait much more bearable.
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  70. Look up Furukawa Mirin, center of the most popular group of about the 5th most popular company.
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  71. Well, I hope your opinion is unpopular since I don't know what you're basing it on. Do you understand how this works at all? Fans spend a lot of time talking with idols. In the case of underground idols like the one showcased in the video, the biggest fans may spend upwards of an hour each month talking to their favorite. The music may help them find the idols they want to support. And good music makes the event more entertaining. But the idols that a fan chooses to support are probably only somewhat related to the songs they most like. You get to be on quite friendly terms. It's of course a contrived friendship, but not necessarily always 100% fake. Idol fans want the best for their favorites. But the idols are of course employees and therefore obligated to not badmouth their company. And whistleblowing anonymously is basically impossible. Fans talk to the idols for hours and the idols provide no indication that there is anything wrong.
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  72. You don't care that they have the rules? Or you don't care if they date? There are groups that allow it. While probably most don't. And probably a lot of that stuff is actually sort of kind of in the middle. Don't ask, don't tell, or... we don't care as long as you don't make it to the tabloids sort of policies. Despite the reasons they often give about purity or whatever, if I was manager and decided to institute some sort of rule the primary reason would be safety reasons. Then for simplicity. Not purity or whatever. I'm not sure what's actually best or if either system works depending on what other policies are in place or if one or the other is better for small scale or major operations. But so long as it isn't truly systemic and you can join groups with either system, I think they should apply to the groups with policies they agree with rather than join one and break the rules.
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  73. Look around more.
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  74. Oh, it's complicated. Because Westerners tend to balk at the no dating rule.... but lax enforcement of the no dating rule was one of the major factors, with those accused of the assault having been involved with other members. And apparently some men were sometimes at the dorm/apartment who shouldn't have had access. That was one of the protections in place that was ignored by management and allowed those guys to get close enough to assault her.
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  75. Every place has shadows. Japan is a great place to visit because the shadows will by and large leave visitors alone.
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  76.  @HylianHanzou  You're in Japan? To edit, is this a real life fandom or online?
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  77. Since someone posted again to remind me this exists... again... was your pinchike fandom: [ ]Japanese people in Japan [ ]Japanese people on the Internet [ ] People in your country in your country [ ] People in your country on the Internet [ ] Random non-Japanese on the Internet
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  78. Your examples are total bullshit. Try again.
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  79. They're mostly high school and college.
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  80. ​ @mariachiara2616  So how is it "most of the time children" when they are mostly 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. SOMETIMES there are younger members involved but that's SOMETIMES not "most of the time". If you have issues that it's sometimes, that's fair. You shouldn't need to exaggerate the situation.
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  81. Most of this video is on a group with 873 twitter followers that had a disbandment live with ~50 people in attendance.
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  82.  @errorys4183  Of course they're "not a band". They're idols. That's the point here!
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  83. I don't know what you mean. You're aware of what's out there right? Momoko was H!P so I really don't know why you think she was particularly unique. You want them to write their own songs? You want them to do their own choreography? You want them to not be in schoolgirl outfits? You want them to have some other sort of music genre? All that stuff is out there.
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  84. It was basically a censor bypass to insult people obsessed with Japanese stuff in a bad way. But like most insults people push the bounds and started using it for just general interest in Japanese stuff. Just remember that in the original source of the word (Perry Bible Fellowship comic) it's a nonsense word said by IDIOTS after someone says something sensible.
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  85. Media has long hated idol fans- or at least used them as an easy target. If you're actually there go have a look for yourself. If you'll be around Tokyo for GW maybe consider going to Neo Japonism's <1 hour live on 5/4. Drink charge only (600 yen). Of course this is still a bit of a bad time since you don't really get the intended experience with 567 restrictions in place.
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  86. Everyone knows about the "dark" side. The media has long taken every opportunity to put down idol fans in particular. Dragging Minegishi out every time as if that wasn't her choice and probably not what the company actually wanted. That's nothing new. I think the narrative is something like nice and untalented school girls sing and dance for evil companies in front of gross middle aged men. What we need is the nuance. Talk about no boyfriends, while Mirin is 30 something and due to start maternity leave at the end of next month. She talks about not being able to audition past 24-25... while I know Kirameki Anforento just added a 27 year old a couple months ago. She got stuck paying for lessons while I've seen multiple companies advertise that they will cover that. She got stuck with a 7 year contract when idol fans know how often girls move from one company to another. Yeah, there's usually some sort of non-compete clause but it's something in the order of months- sometimes the new twitter account pops up within a month. And in the end she got out of her evil contract.... and started producing her own group! You put down the industry but it's not some monolith. Girls expect having to put up with shitty conditions in order to shine on stage. That's what they've been told. That's the expectation. What they should be being told is other companies have better conditions-don't sign a shitty contract, you can find better.
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  87. If only it hadn't been 18 in Tokyo and the other major cities where most of the idols have their activities. (It was handled at the "state" level- the national law just handled egregious cases)
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  88. Most are high school and college age. It then branches out further from about 11 to 30. There are fringes above and below that. It's a shame, but in the end not my problem if other demos are peer-pressured away from appreciating a good thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2BDjYAROZM
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  89. Amuse pretty much isn't an idol company. Sakura Gakuin is/was their farm/training system for their actresses and talents. They ran it with a bit of an idol image but in terms of actual policies it and particularly BABYMETAL weren't run as idol groups in the modern sense. An actual idol company would have plugged the hole in the formation with an official member within 2-4 months... 1-2 months to wait on the hiatus member, 1-2 months to hire and train a replacement. Sometimes idol companies can be a bit cold, but turnover is just an expectation. BABYMETAL management seemed to be in denial which dragged it out forever.
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  90. They vanish because that's what the company decided. Probably different policies already exist. If not, they will soon because competition will get worse. As far as idols are concerned I hate the delete everything approach. Other companies leave it as a placeholder and lock it so it's hidden. Other companies delete most of it but leave a farewell message. Other companies leave it totally as it was. Other companies transfer the account to the girl. Some of them make them delete their old stuff. Some of them don't have to delete their old stuff but their NEW COMPANY might. Which is from the fan's perspective the danger in transferring the account to the girl even if that seems like it should be the best choice.
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  91. They can go to college WHILE they're an idol. It's hard of course, but there's hardly any actual time overlap. It's just a matter of finding the time to sleep and study.
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  92. Stuff happens in every entertainment industry. No surprise there. The offence here is applying one brush to ~100 companies. As if it's some sort of monolith and not 100 different policies. There is a married 7-8 months pregnant 30 something idol in one major group as we speak. They're competing with each other for both fans and idols. They poach from other companies when they can... that's why there's often a non-compete clause. It's just usually in the order of months not an evil 7 year one. That shows that it was a black company. Does what some other company did have anything to do with companies I follow? If you notice problems with a company I follow then I can be pissed about it. But a company shouldn't be faulted for the sins of its competitors. You don't blame everyone for a minority of troublemakers. If a company does wrong, then you put THAT company on blast.
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  93. Idols work is considered to be for high schoolers and college age. It starts earlier than that, especially for big name companies with farm systems. And goes a lot later than that, especially in the underground. There's a soft upper limit around 30. Fans will still support older people and the upper limit for first-timers is probably more like 27-28 but companies rather invest in someone who's planning to stay around for several years to justify new costumes, etc. Idol work is an introductory position in the entertainment industry. You're supposed to move into more permanent work. So if you're 26 and you missed the idol boat then you just go straight into singer-songwriter or whatever. The idol will move out of idol work into that or whatever their goal is. If you just practice you aren't really that disadvantaged compared to a typical idol moving out but the idol might be able to do photoshoots, theater work, etc more easily using their idol period contacts if the singer-songwriting alone isn't cutting it. The person training to sing on their own has more eggs in one basket but that's just how it goes if you skip the idol phase which gives you a broad taste of the entertainment industry.
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  94. The main story in this video is a company took advantage (either by malice or incompetence) of someone who was legally an adult but wasn't actually wise to "real world" pitfalls yet. If she was actually a minor her parents would have had to provide legal permission. So I don't know if the solution of only letting them sign once parents are out of the way actually solves the problem.
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  95.  @MiaSponge  Male groups were always inhibited by Johnny's. Now that Johnny is dead, a lot more can form and flourish without so much pushback. And Johnny's itself can finally move out of the '60s or whatever era their policies were based out of. AKB48 pretty much encouraged proliferation. We have Tokyo Idol Festival since 2010 and Sasshi's been top there for the last few years at least. As you say, it's very oversaturated. I will disagree on your assessment of the wota though. It's quite dependent on group.
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  96.  @PervertHeart  WACK is sketchy but it's sketchy like signing up for Big Brother or Survivor. You know you're in for public BS from the start- that's the "fun" and you join it with that in mind- maybe your group's name will be A*** S** P** and that's just the fun of it. And if you're actually in BiS then you should know that that's the one that has always been run as actual anti-idol not just alt idol so really anything is possible. It's a lot harder to say how they REALLY are behind the scenes. But that BiSH has 4+ years of stability and a couple of them have been allowed to do side projects suggests the company perhaps isn't as bad is their outward persona suggests. Now compare those shows I mentioned earlier with something like American Idol. Yeah, they add a little drama but they're supposed to be uplifting, family friendly entertainment to make everyone feel better about themselves. And as far as I know, the contractual stipulations, even if you just appear at the show, but particularly as you get closer and closer to "winning", are extremely predatory.
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  97. The soft upper limit is age 30, not 20. Last time I calculated, about 85% of AKB48 was age ~17-22. They're not being forced to graduate at 20- that's when they're moving into their prime. Idols fans are loyal- most of the most popular members are older. H!P, the company the girls in this video talked about which is popular among female idol fans, runs a little younger, leading to their misconceptions. A lot of indie companies run older.
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  98. Not really sure how you'd get access to see how they're interacting with fans at the tokutenkai without actually going to events yourself. It's not like they're recorded. If it's a major group with rare events people act a little more giddy. If it's a minor group they are used to seeing every night they're pretty nonchalant. Typically about 90-95% of the fans are pretty normal. College guys or whatever excited in the front and jumping around if allowed. Most of the older guys wallflowering further back where they aren't in the way of the crowd shifts. If it's a free or drink charge only event, then you get a lot more creepers. But even all this is just a basic estimate. You really should understand that each group has their own sort of fandom.
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  99. I would say it's the second most covered thing at lower levels (after the founding) and the most covered thing at the high school level.
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  100. Kawaii image isn't everything. It's dependent on group. They do indeed usually leave by custom by around 30 though and shift to more permanent careers/get married. But.. to be frank, we don't really know yet. We know what H!P members from 2000-2010 or so did. We've started to see what AKB's been doing. But honestly AKB caused massive proliferation of groups around 2010. Most of the idols out there... haven't actually truly aged out yet. Sure, some of them quit and started work or just decided to get married or whatever so they told us what their plan is early, but ignoring the ones who try it out and quit within a year or two (ie, didn't like it, probably just went and got a real job), the actual career idols born out of the AKB push are mostly still just chugging along.
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  101.  @P.90.603  Of course it's an issue. Maybe not THE issue. But an issue. It's the same as people walking around with earbuds in or glued to their phone. It's a "do not disturb" sign. Now, in a big city, having a do not disturb sign on can be helpful because it's often simpler to fade into the background than actually be a named character. There are over a million stories passing through Shinjuku Station every day and no one's got time to be a named character in very many of them. But if the complaint is that you don't have friends, then don't make it so easy for yourself to fade into the crowd. Sure, plenty of loud and obnoxious people wears masks all the time. But lots of people use them as a passive defense against human interaction.
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  102. Guy is spamming.... but.... I don't disagree. Songs are good. Go listen to the 5NlthN58Bps one.
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  103. Underground (chika) idol just means the ~95% of them that aren't signed to a major label and/or largelly play at small venues and festivals. If you mean something nefarious then you can't use the word underground in this case because it already means something specific.
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  104. Because she was 20 and therefore a legal adult. He could advise her but ultimately it was her own decision. If she was under 18 or 20 (I've seen both so not sure what the law actually is) then he'd have to sign off himself.
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  105.  @Ennasalin  She wanted his approval. If he utterly refused then maybe she wouldn't have gone ahead. But I don't know if utterly refusing would even be his best move since it might make her bitter forever. And it's a bad contract, but it's also kind of "whatever"... it's not a bad loan or a bad marriage prospect or something. Basically she was doing a job she wanted to do... for free. Volunteer work. And she could quit whenever she wanted... she just couldn't go join anyone else. So from his standpoint, he gave fair warning to her, she'd get to be an idol as she wanted for a while, and when she finally gets sick of being an idol for free, she'd quit, and be unable to join anyone else for 6 years or whatever, forcing her into getting a real job.
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  106. Japan (and pretty much everywhere else not once under UK control) is under civil law, not common law, and so previous rulings mean little from a legal standpoint. But it still means someone sued and got compensation- so everyone on both sides of the contracts going forward gets to know that that's a thing that can happen.
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  107.  @BoucheronsNo.1Fan  Indie groups streaming here in 60 minutes. They keep it archived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6No6_9GiNg comodomental's new unit has a short live in 7 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVDKgZuBlIE A different one has one in a couple days around this time of day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AXFHYN8b5o NEO JAPONISM has a whole bunch of no-audience performances uploaded. Maybe twenty 40 minute sets. Most of this stuff is pretty indie. The problem with suuuuper indie stuff is it's a lot harder to get much of anything from abroad. CANDYS does look like they're uploading at a decent rate though.
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  108. Heh...' Good luck to them I guess. I expect it will eventually get far worse than the physical idol scene though.
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  109. Good luck to them I guess. Here's my estimation: +tubers have much lower expenses so there isn't so much risk of a company that would liiiike to pay them well but some bad business decision suddenly put them $50000 in the red. In this day and age it might just be bad luck, like money spent on an event that is forced to cancel. +vutubers should have more personal freedom because pretty much whatever they do while "off" shouldn't have any true effect on the character they play. Negatives: expenses are fairly obvious for idols. While you don't know how much trickles down to them, you can see how much it costs to rent a venue or make a music video, etc. Though perhaps you can see their personal clothes or accessories, etc, or their personal buys- like say a new iphone or whatever. But you really can't guess much of anything from the vtuber. The Internet is full of asses. Having to pay 25 USD to get into an event is a filter. Sure, anyone can get into AN event. But if an idol group has 200 events a year, that's 5000+ USD, so when you look at the regulars, they're people with jobs that allow at least 2000 USD or so worth of leeway. So idol groups have a bit of a monied core fandom that is recognized by members of the group and more or less regulates the rest of the fandom. Until it gets to the Internet. Then it's open season from every joe schmo keyboard anti and a much greater chance of harassment from someone randoms 1000 km away.
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  110. That was just her impression and she specifically mentioned one company but for some reason the translation ignored that. It's really no issue to find 100+ idols who are 25+. Also, when you quit an idol group you "graduate" so everyone knows it's not supposed to be a long-term career.
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  111. It's always priced around merchandise. Don't underestimate how many polaroids the fans buy. If they look relatively busy for at least half of their buppan hour then they should be making enough to get by. How that actually gets distributed by management... hopefully they read their contract carefully before signing.
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  112. Turns out one of the primary factors in her being assaulted was lax enforcement of the no dating custom. Guys who shouldn't have been there had had access to their dorm. Including the guys who were accused and ultimately settled. I don't know why the purity thing is brought up so often when I think the primary reason the companies do it is because it reduces their headache. Which includes that it's a defensive measure meant to keep guys at an unambiguous distance. Not to say that a no dating rule is definitely a good thing- but it is protective so if you want to let them date and not have such as rule then you need to fortify elsewhere. No dating custom means she's not with someone- but it also means she's absolutely unavailable. Dating means she's potentially available. The no dating custom certainly saves them from a lot of hassle because the fans know she's single and that that's not changing so don't even bother trying.
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  113. I can't speak for everyone, but yes I like the music. Of the groups I follow anyway. And I suspect that's at least a factor to some extent for basically everyone. It's not like they just randomly play songs- they know they have fan favorites. In the case of something like AKB where I only like 5-20% of the music or so, the show is still usually entertaining. But there are lots of groups where I like +70% of their stuff so I usually rather go to shows where several of those are performing. Sure, if a real professional sang the stuff it'd probably sound better. But they aren't. If I like the song, that's just how it comes- that's how it goes. But some of them are chaotic fun and so the singing quality doesn't really matter too much. And some of them really are pretty good singers so it sounds fine enough. So I have no issue buying and listening to the songs I like. I like hundreds of idol songs. But the songs on a track are at a disadvantage compared to hearing them live. Not because I want to hear amazing singing that sounds better than the track- I might expect that from a band, but I don't from an idol group. But because the show is fun and that combines with fun songs for a really fun experience.
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  114. It's not in Japan either. The audition forms are public... Imaginate: 14歳～29歳までの男性・女性。 合格後に、株式会社imaginateに所属可能であること。 経験不問。主な活動場所は、都内近郊となります。 ※未成年者の方の応募に関しましては、保護者の同意が必要となります。 Plus: 【応募要件】 ・明るい方 ・連絡がしっかり取れる方 ・14〜25歳の女性 ・経験者優遇、未経験者歓迎 ・月15日前後の都内でのライブ活動やレッスンに参加可能な方（地方の方は都内寮に即入居可） ・現在他社契約中の方は所属事務所の許可を得た上で応募 Toy Planet: 6歳以上、経験不問 特定のレコード会社やプロダクションに所属していない方 現在、所属がある場合は、一次審査応募までに契約解除を証明できる方、もしくは事務所関係者と円滑な連絡が取り合える方 (事務所移籍可) (No upper limit is listed- someone recently debuted 2 days short of their 27th birthday) Stardust ６歳から２５歳以下の男女（俳優・女優・タレント・モデル等ジャンル不問） 特定のプロダクション、レコード会社、出版社と契約されていない方。自薦他薦は問いませんが、他薦の場合は本人の許可を取ってからご応募下さい。 Dear Stage: 2021年1月時点で特定のプロダクション、レコード会社、出版社等と所属・契約を結んでいない、 １２歳から２５歳の女性 (アイドル・声優・タレント・モデル等ジャンル不問） ※未成年者の方は保護者の同意が必要です。 The issue is one of the favorite companies of female fans of idols H!P, has stuff like this as their audition requirement: "2021年1月22日時点で小学6年生～高校2年生の日本在住の女性。" This would be about 11-17. This is a popular company. But it's just one company. But if this is your image of idols (both girls in part 2 of this mention this company- again, it's popular with girl fans of girl idols), then you may have a distorted view of idols- that's a 14-29 audition form listed at the top.
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  115. You chose an ambiguous stamp time. First is listed in bottom left corner as "last idol" (ラストアイドル), followed by "=love" mistakenly written as love. (イコールラブ) Both of these are at least tangentially Akimoto Yasushi groups and are larger than this.
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  116. The girl in the interview got out of her contract... and then made her own group, ostensibly with better rules. Yeah, there are real problems. But there are also hundreds of groups on something like 100 different companies... all with their own policies. What happened to her has nothing to do with what happens in Amuse. Does Amuse have some bad policies? Maybe. Research and see. They should only be faulted by their own bad policies, not their competitors' bad policies.
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  117. Well, there is one main difference here. In J-idol they debut quickly. So she was paying lesson fees for a short time before debut. And after debut her work paid for lesson fees. So she worked two years for free... as an internship if you would. Meanwhile the K-pop trainees would still just be in training, racking up debt. She worked for free- K-pop would be working for debt. Additionally, this is a shit contract. So bad that she took legal recourse and the company settled for an amount she was happy with. This was an egregiously bad contract. I'm not familiar enough with K-pop to know how common their slave contracts actually were/are.
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  118. Yorushika is UMJ. Sawano is Columbia, which is Sony. And you've found a simple truth about the Japanese music scene. It's pretty much impossible to rank things. Yorushika is basically 99% Internet based. A good model for a pandemic. They get millions of views. But if they pretty much don't want to perform live then that makes them hard to compare against those that do. Especially once things open up more and the real venue performers don't have to be promoting with one hand tied behind their back anymore.
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  119. Japan was at least somewhat in the right, but in a 4th crusade sort of way.
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  120. A lot of it is just the dynamics of boy and girl groups in Japan. Johnny's has been the preeminent boy group company for decades and while other groups have formed, it's sort of ruled with an iron fist, power plays and some questionable ethics. But... their guys have been supported by the company into their late 30s and 40s so they can make a career out of it. Meanwhile the female idol system has basically crashed twice and now the main company 46/48 have a concept that isn't easily copied and they've more or less promoted the proliferation of female idol groups. Many, many, maaaany groups. Most of these idols aren't really talented enough to make a career out of it. Which is fine- every job isn't a career. They just have to be honest with themselves about their prospects.
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  121. What is this "idol industry" you speak of? Is it Ebichu which just announced they recruited 3 new members out of 7000 applications? He flashes a lot of photos of mainstream groups like that. Or is it like the group the girl actually in the video was in? It currently has 872 twitter followers and their disbandment live had 50 people in attendance. Do these things with such a vast difference in scale have anything in common at all? You can do marriage and be an idol too. You join a group that allows that. Not common, but it exists. I know of at least 3 groups that have it... but I forget the name of one of them. Vtuber and hololive, etc sort of stuff is going to be based on the company. Just like the idol sort of stuff. The advantage to them is they can fully keep their personal life separate. The disadvantage is their fans are also anonymous. Idol fans who actually go to shows can be weird but are generally pretty nice. They self-regulate and try to get rid of anyone who goes too far. The Internet is the Internet. But in the end it's just going to be by company. If hololive has certain policies, other companies will note those policies and compete against them by offering different policies.
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  122. Lots of rock idols.
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  123. No. Basically all industries in Japan have toxic elements and black companies. Distancing from the idol moniker has to do with distancing from idol stereotypes, particularly concerning quality. Idol systems have a different model in terms of evaluating if something is good. Here's an attempt at an example. Here in the USA, professional wrestling is popular. Which is essentially theater despite all the training and practice they do, with a good professional wrestler judged by the quality of his persona and acting more than technical skill. So it's possible MMA "wrestlers" who fight seriously may often go by the term "grappler" to distance themselves from professional wrestling. I'm not an expert here so I may be making stuff up on that point. But you maybe can get the idea.
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  124. Japan has been focusing on "girl next door" "anyone can be an idol" themes with their idols for over a decade now. So yes, people understand that they are people. Even in the limited number of shows I've been to I've seen idols fall off stage, hit their head on speakers, leave in a hurry in the middle of a performance in distress and with no comment, have to go on a capella when the music dies on them... Most of this sort of stuff is ENDEARING. It's humanizing. What you don't want to hear is that the seemingly nice girl next door is really a total *** behind closed doors. Surely some of them are. But it's hard to say who that actually is so you hope it's not the ones who you support.
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  125. No they don't need to focus on the negative. Otaku types and idol fans have LONG been scapegoated and abused by the media over there. Like say the Iwate saw attack... media jumps on it as a crazed fan. It still gets brought up as such in videos similar to this. Then they actually have a trial and he says stuff like "I didn't know their names I just wanted to hurt people". Just a bitter unemployed man. Sure, people interested in becoming an idol should be warned as much as possible that there are bad contracts out there. While bad contracts are hardly unique to the idol industry, since one of the concepts behind J-idol is, in a sense, marketing people with no marketable skills, a lot really aren't bringing much to the negotiating table, especially if they're new with no experience. They need to be warned to apply to multiple agencies, carefully review the contract stipulations, etc. But that isn't important info for the general public. The general public has already been prejudiced against idols as glossy talentless teenagers doing handshakes with perverted 40 something otaku. That's the information that's already going out as a part of a constant stream of cheap shots. They need to hear stories like the one that Asian Boss did with the Igari Tomoka who was paralyzed and now performs in a wheelchair.
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  126. Shame we don't have better ways to distinguish the difference I guess. This is the train. You get about a second to make a judgement call on maybe 50 people. Of course it's going to be based on stereotypes. If you take more than a second to assess someone else will take the seat OR it gets awkward by looking too deliberate in something that's not supposed to be too deliberate. You're not trying to get to know people. You're trying to get into the most comfortable seat before anyone else does. You're not judging them as a person. You're judging them as a mass that emits odor and noise that you will be next to for 10 minutes and probably never see again. And frankly, as the foreigner, we are usually a bad bet. Jackie Robinson wasn't the first black player. Many previous players were intentionally overlooked. Even though they would have been an improvement. They intentionally overlooked better players on account of race. Clearly racism. Okay, now say I put 40 guys in front of you and give you 5 seconds to put together a five man basketball team. You only get 5 seconds- are you just picking randomly? Aren't you going to go for the tall athletic looking guys? In terms of the train, that's not us the foreigner.
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  127. Johnny's controlled the system with an iron fist and it was more or less the old system where idols are to be kept distant and secretive and manicured. The members themselves were allowed some extra freedom in dating as such as they are expected to be idols into their late 30s and potentially beyond. But the company had the business contacts with films, dramas etc and would do stuff like deny access to media that was at all critical. If another company tried to get a drama contract or something they'd threaten to deny access to their more popular groups so that their own guy would get the spot. Shady power play stuff. And since this was kind of the old way of doing things, they barely ever had any online presence or SNS and a lot of stuff couldn't even so much as be uploaded. Oh, and there were accusations of sexual harassment from Johnny himself. Nevertheless, he died recently, with honors... just swept everything under the rug and tried to stick with the bright side moving forward. They're modernizing as well. But basically if you didn't like the way Johnny's did things, too bad, because they controlled boy groups whether you were contracted with them or not. The Exile style groups were released under Avex and produced by someone who went to the same school as the Avex president. so they had the standing and were different enough in activities from the Johnny's groups that they could do fine. And Avex is utterly massive and isn't really a smart fight to make anyway. It was very hard for other groups to get established since Johnny would inhibit them so badly. Then K-pop hit the scene and took advantage of that wide open DMZ of sorts- with an image somewhere between Johnny's and Exile. And since they had foreign revenue streams and didn't actually care about Japanese drama contracts Johnny's couldn't really threaten them. Moreover Johnny was already in his late 70s by the time K-pop was coming in strong. And with K-pop being the Avengers level threat to Johnny's, the result of that chaos is there's now more opportunity for smaller and indie groups to and such to form and succeed. But it's still more limited and they don't yet have the sort of musical variety or quantity as the girl groups. Guy groups don't have the custom of quitting around 30 and switching to solo or otherwise... Johnny's groups' custom was basically they could work as long as they could. This sort of remains to be seen on if the smaller indie groups can actually make a true career out of it. But I would expect most of the other issues to be similar. And like the girl groups, that means it's dependent on company.
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  128.  @rumrunner8019  Not sure if exactly what you said is out there. Just that all the individual pieces are. A lot of stuff is out there. That's a lot of the fun.
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  129. No there are not. You underestimate how many idols there are. Maybe the rate is higher than a random sampling of girls since it's taking from a group of people who seek attention and have had a little taste of receiving attention. But it's not all that many considering how many there are. It's probably something like 0.5-1%. And 0.5% is a number I've seen cited as the nationwide number for all girls.
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  130. Like most of the world that wasn't colonized or conquered by Great Britain, Japan is under a civil law system rather than a common law system. One of the biggest differences between the two is that precedent pretty much has no legal weight. She sued, she got a settlement. And everyone in the industry gets to know that that's a thing that can happen going forward. Also, I do want to scale this properly, since the video is a bit misleading/confusing by flashing a bunch of mainstream groups and then spending most of the time on one specific underground group. When this group disbanded, it had 50 fans in attendance. Just want to make sure you're aware of how indie an operation this was.
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  131.  @dropmelon  They probably don't fully know what they're getting into. So they could very well not know that some idol groups don't actually care if they date and so they should apply with one of them if that's something they care about so much. But that idols can't date is the stereotype. Anyone in Japan interested in idols in the slightest, let alone to the level that they would want to be one, would have heard that. That it's more complicated in practice is the harder to get info.
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  132.  @rayyanali4471  Furukawa Mirin.
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  133. A lot of them join the idol industry because many of the groups are ostensibly part-time and they can do schooling at the same time. YMMV what that actually means though based on company/group. Quite a few quit on realization that they can't properly handle school and work at the same time. Maybe that's because they overestimated themselves or underestimated their commitments or their commitments were downplayed by the company. And on the other hand quite a few others post graduation photos and could in fact do both simultaneously.
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  134. ​ @fandarzelig  Sure! Also, if you don't really know about this, "idol" is genre-less. Even in Japan probably most have a certain image of it being cute pop songs, but even if they just looked into mainstream groups that stereotype doesn't really pass. And it definitely doesn't pass in the underground. "Idol" refers to all those cultural aspects that are hard to define... a group could be festival-theme idol or dempa-idol or hip-hop idol or metal screamo idol or anything really.
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  135. Here's an example recruitment page from the underground: 応募条件 25歳までの女性 土日のスケジュールが取れる方 他の特定プロダクションとの契約がない方 -up to 25 year old female -available on Saturdays and Sundays -not under contract with another company ・待遇 入所料・レッスン料無料 都内近郊の方は規定の交通費支給（交通費支給には審査があります） 地方の方は都内寮への入居も相談可能 活動にかかる費用は一切かかりません Working conditions no entry fee ; no lesson fee allowance for travel to those within the metro area (travelling expenses will be reviewed) consultation for those from the countryside in moving into the city There are absolutely no costs involved with joining. Now, if you were to actually apply you'd want to carefully check how you'd be paid, the schedule, how long you would be under a non-compete clause after quitting, etc... but you at least know you aren't responsible for paying anything in. And if a company has groups already you can just go through the history of ex-members and see how that was handled. It's just due diligence before signing a contract. Or you as a fan can look at how past groups were treated.
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  136.  @sdnlawrencej5662  Hidden camera sure is creepy that's for sure. Handshakes are whatever.
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  137. Of those who I followed most over the years: Mainstream: 5 out of 5 are doing fine. Indies: 2 out of 5 are doing fine, 1 out of 5 should be doing fine because toward the end she announced she had graduated college... because being an idol and going to college really don't actually have much time conflict at all (it's just a matter of if you have the willpower to burn the candle at both ends or not), there is no information on one, and the last is having some trouble. So is that a bad enough record to scare people away? I don't think so.
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  138. Everything the girl says is fine as she's talking a specific case. Probably everything the lawyer says is fine as well even though he is generalizing a little bit as he seems to have experience. Nobita's framing, on the other hand, is troublesome. The problem with most of these style of videos is the motivation of the narrator who is supposed to be leading people through this.
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  139. There's a little bit of overlap of fans but there's very little overlap of activities. And the music style is different and usually very obviously anisong. Most of the trouble idols actually get from fans is from unknowns on the Internet rather than the people that actually come to their shows. Not to say the ratio is any worse, just that seiyuu idols are national level (if niche) and that gives them heavy exposure- both good and bad. They also hardly ever perform. Their job is voice acting. Their biggest advantage is they already have a career in something that they can potentially do forever. The seiyuu idol work is just on the side. As an aside, while the fandoms are fairly separate, that even the idol seiyuu are often quite a bit older and some other seiyuu are in their 40s and still do idol-like concepts at times is strong evidence that fans won't turn away as idols get older. Idols quit around 30 by convention- lots of fans wouldn't stop be fans.
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  140. It's not hypocritical. The people who brown-nose at their company to 60+ hour work weeks and then go to all the after-work drinking parties to brown-nose with their boss again and live their life as if life is work get the promotions. They probably have a family, but they hardly ever see them. Idol fans want to get off work by 6-7pm so that they can actually get to see the shows. Then they don't go to the after work drinking with the boss since they're always at shows every night. So, while they are probably still working overtime, since they actually have a little bit more work/life balance than the work is life people (even if the workers are more likely to have family, because, again, having them and not ever seeing them isn't really balance...), they look like slackers by comparison. Idol fans would probably loosen a lot of corporate rules. But you don't get into position to loosen corporate rules when the workaholics pass on promotions to workaholics.
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