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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