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

  1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. Turn on subs.
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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10.  @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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  11. Furukawa Mirin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAsBEkXAkE
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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. "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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  16.  @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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  17. 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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  18. Imposing ridiculous standards of beauty which is almost goddess level? Come again? The topic is J-idol.
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  19. 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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  20. Look up Furukawa Mirin, center of the most popular group of about the 5th most popular company.
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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. Look around more.
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  24. 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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  25. 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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  26.  @HylianHanzou  You're in Japan? To edit, is this a real life fandom or online?
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  27. 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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  28. Your examples are total bullshit. Try again.
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  29. They're mostly high school and college.
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  30. ​ @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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  31. 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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  32.  @errorys4183  Of course they're "not a band". They're idols. That's the point here!
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  33. 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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  34. 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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  35. 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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  36. 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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  37. 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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  38. 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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  39. 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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  40. 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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  41. 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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  42. 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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  43. 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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  44. 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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  45.  @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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  46.  @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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  47. 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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  48. 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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  49. 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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  50. 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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