Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - [Charts & Rankings] AKB48 surpass Ayu as best selling female Japanese artist
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Old 18th September 2017, 11:24 AM
Chibi-Chan Chibi-Chan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer View Post


While I don't agree with categorizing everything as extremely pedophiliac, although there is certainly that element (I've been to idol concerts and you can tell), there are also fans who are simply just fans. Believe it or not, I'm a fan of idol music, just not particularly AKB. I can appreciate Morning Musume because they at least sing live and have complicated dance routines and their songs were written by Tsunku, so particularly with their older material, there was a lot of musicianship to those songs that you didn't really typically find with idol groups; and I'm a fan of several Johnny's groups (but my faves tend to be the older group like SMAP, TOKIO, Arashi etc., not a fan of the super young groups).

So it's not quite fair to lump everyone as being pedophiles, Johnny's particularly, in general, have a far more general audience than the female idol groups do. BUT in particular with the female idols, they are indeed extremely exploited by the companies that they work for, and if their fans truly cared about them, you would think they would be standing up for them to be receiving better treatment. This isn't something that is just specific to the idol industry unfortunately though; it's something that is ingrained into the culture itself, so there is still quite a long way to go before women, especially in the entertainment industry, are seen as more than just puppets on strings.
I have no problem with people liking idol music. I couldn't care less about which music people like or not.
My point was that with AKB and its subgroups, an idol group was created, that first and foremost is promoted and sold for adult men to masturbate to. If AKB would only be popular among teenagers, so be it. But the main marketing target are adult men, since they have the money to buy all those bikini shots and hundreds of CDs. The way AKB is marketed isn't compareable anymore to the way Momosu was at their high. Momosu's main marketing target were teenagers, especially girls with the same age as the members back then. There would also be a lot to criticise regarding Momosu, but looking back, the early Momosu (I don't know the current Momosu) was nowhere the level of objectifocation AKB is.
If normal people now support AKB and buy their CDs and go to their concerts, they actively support the abuse of children. Only because 5 out of 50 girls aren't minors anymore, doesn't make it any better. Not to mention that they were children, when they entered the industry. Those girls are forced to make "sexy" bikini shots, dance as if they are having sex on stage and so on. Making children do this, so that adult men gain sexual pleasure from it, before they even know what sex is and before they had a chance to explore their own sexuality, is sexual abuse of children.
So if people support AKB, they support the sexual abuse of girls.

And regarding Johnny's, I wasn't saying that their audience consists of pedohiles, which obviously isn't true, but that there were some more or less better known cases of men in the industry taking advantage of boys who are under Johnny's.
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