Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
There are some polls with the japanese public indicating the biggest idol group for some years now has being Momoiro Clover Z... I also remember reading somewhere that the selling strategies that seek for older men and otakus made a good part of the general public unconfortable about following AKB48
|
From my own experience being over there, I can say I feel like this is pretty much true. That's not to say that AKB doesn't have a general following as well, especially for certain songs - in particular Koisuru Fortune Cookie, but its nowhere near what the sales would have you believe.
I feel like in a lot of ways their popularity was bought. Being over in Japan at the time it happened, it wasn't like it was a gradual rise. It felt like literally overnight, they were just everywhere on everything. And not to bring up such a bad side of Japanese people, but in general they tend to be followers....so it felt to me like people just jumped on the bandwagon because Oricon, Music Station, whatever whatever was suddenly telling them this is the popular thing now. Yasushi Akimoto (akbs producer) is imo pretty cutthroat, for the last several years it has seemed like Morning Musume had been banned from making tv appearances despite that sales wise they were actually doing pretty good again. It wasn't until this year finally that they started to appear on the same shows as AKB48. But even then, this year on the Music Day special where every artist performed at least 2 songs on stage, MM only got to do one. an old one. With a guy in a character suit onstage in the middle of their performance. Or the recent Music Station where they counted down the artist overall sales, I feel like Morning Musume was only "allowed" to make an appearance because it would be considered an embarrassment that they weren't in the top 25 and AKB was in the top 10. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it though. lol
btw. He has been appointed the duties of producing the opening ceremonies for the 2020 Olympics.....FML. There is a petition going around opposing it. Hopefully it won't happen.