[Charts & Rankings] AKB48 surpass Ayu as best selling female Japanese artist

[Diego-kun]

Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer

Now, I was living in Tokyo during the boom and they did have some level of general popularity, but outside of their otaku fanbase, it was primarily limited to elementary school aged children. I didn't see them quite have the pervasive fanbase that you find with say, Arashi (every age group in the country across both genders, essentially); but yet AKB is selling over a million every single and Arashi is not. Hmmm wonder why? It couldn't possibly be the insane sales tactics. (sarcasm).

Is Arashi that popular among boys? I thought 90% of their fanbase (and other JE's groups) were girls.

[SunshineSlayer]

Originally Posted by Diego-kun

Is Arashi that popular among boys? I thought 90% of their fanbase (and other JE's groups) were girls.

Oh, Arashi is well liked across both genders. The ones primarily buying CDs, concert tickets etc are still majority women (across many age groups) I imagine, because a lot of the public in general just don't buy physical releases anymore unless you are a dedicated fan, but they have a decent fanbase among men too. They figured out the way to grasp all fanbases: women want to date them, grandparents want them to be their grandsons, and men want to go out to the bar after work and hang with them.

SMAP and Arashi are two of the only "boybands" who have managed to just be generally well-liked and supported by men as well as women.