Truth is, I almost didn’t become an AKBtard. In one way, I am one of the true old-sk00l fans, but in another way, I am still a n00b who discovered them just last week. And it’s really hard to explain how that happened without going back and telling another really long-ass story. It’s still a love story, albeit one with separation and heartbreak in the middle. You’ll see.

Too Ugly to Get Into Hello! Project

The time was 2006. The place was some stupid ass wota forum for Hello! Project fans. Being stupid ass wotas, of course there was also a passing interest in other idol groups, and everyone raised a curious (if doubtful) eyebrow when this thing called AKB48 made their debut. “That’s a lot of girls.” “Sounds like a wannabe Hello! Project.” “Sounds like a lot of girls who were too ugly to get into Hello! Project.” And believe me, if you’d seen them at the time, that last statement would have been true, because this was back when the group was still a low-budget after-school club that met up in Akihabara for shits and giggles and the girls probably had to do their own hair and makeup. And you can forget about plastic surgery!

ohgawdlol.

I can confirm—and I have the burned MP3-CD to prove it—that I got in on the ground floor and liked “Sakura no Hanabiratachi” when it first came out. I even saw a copy of the CD single at Book-Off in summer of that year and told myself, “I’ll come back for it later,” and when I finally did come back (er …. in October), the damn thing was GONE.

So the moral of this story is, if there’s something you’re thinking of buying at Book-Off, don’t wait 2 months to pick it up.

Who's this idiot who wrote all over my photobook?

(You should wait a week at most. Like, I saw this photobook of Akina Minami that I wanted, but I didn’t want to stress my budget too much, so I decided I’d check in again the following Monday, and BOOM! The book was still there, I bought it, and unwittingly ended up with a freaking signed copy.)

“Skirt, Hirari,” I didn’t like quite as much, but I was clearly piqued by the level of fanservice that the group was offering. I mean, skirt-flipping was something you just didn’t see in H!P (at least back then. In this age of sekushi butt grabbing and assless chaps, I don’t even know). However, there was also the obligatory chorus of stupid ass wotas who were sooooo offended because idol culture is supposed to be PURE and INNOCENT and skirt-flipping is an abomination to Yahweh Seiko Matsuda, or whoever.

So, that was kind of an off-single for me. But then came a revelation. Something NEW. Something FRESH. Something AMAZING!

Aitakatta! Aitakatta! Aitakatta! YES! (*BOOM BOOM BOOM*)

You know, there is a reason this is AKB’s signature song. That’s because it’s a freaking AWESOME song.

I was ready to dive in. Pull the trigger. Pick out a favorite member, start ordering merch from YesAsia, write naughty fanfics about what the girls do during their off-hours. And then something terrible happened.

Their next two singles sucked.

The School Uniform Gets In the Way

I have, in retrospect, tried to listen to “Seifuku ga Jama wo Suru” and “Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou” and appreciate them for what they are. But frankly, those songs just don’t do it for me. And I don’t think it’s because they’re in minor keys—there are plenty of great songs in minor keys—but that they don’t use minor-keyed progressions well.

So to me, they will always be “the song about dating high school girls” and “the song about bullying” that made me avoid all of AKB48’s singles for over a year and a half.

A year and a half!

Do you know how long a year and a half is in idol time? That’s like, an entire generation of Morning Musume! I had, for some totally arbitrary and dumbass reason, frozen AKB48’s songs out of my regular music listening.

I had gotten in on the ground floor only to bail out at the first sign of trouble. And do you know how dumb this was? Their next single, “BINGO!”, would end up being one of my all-time favorites … except that I never bothered to listen to it until TWO YEARS AFTER IT CAME OUT.

The PV was even posted on TEH BLOG and I ignored it! Ababababaaaaa!

So. You may wonder now how I managed to stay in the loop about AKB. And the answer, of course, lies in the first part of this story.

Sion loader.

Fanservice For the Common Man

Ironically, the frequency of AKB picture posts at Sion went up right in the middle of my moratorium, causing me to unintentionally scroll through them even as I was looking for pics of other girls. In the following months, I slowly watched the members grow up in still frames and photocards and cell phone pics, without listening to a single note of their music. It was like “watching” a TV series by reading episode summaries, which I guess is a super weird way to follow an idol group.

Wouldn’t you know it, though, I kept coming back for those pictures. I liked looking at Haruna Kojima’s cute ears. And hana from H!I wouldn’t shut up about Manami Oku and Atsuko Maeda. And yes, I kept checking out pictures of “Gachapin,” because I couldn’t get enough of how funny that name was. I mean, most idol nicknames are just cutesy or diminuitive versions of their real names. “Nacchi.” “Gocchin.” “Aichan.” “Sayumin.” “Momo.” “Manoeri.” Who the hell gets their nickname from a dinosaur in a children’s show? XD

Blwwwweeehhhhh

And the weirdest thing was … I was really starting to like her. Minegishi’s face was always easy to pick out. Her natural cuteness and charm were infectious. If there weren’t any Haruna pics that day, Minami was always my next priority. But I still wasn’t listening to their music. For me, AKB48 for the purpose of drooling over was good enough.

But Yasushi Akimoto and his marketing team were clearly not happy with the casual interest of stupid ass wotas such as myself. It was like being one of those Christians who only show up at church on Christmas and Easter. So it was in the summer of 2008 that certain pictures showed up in the AKB48 section of the Sion loader. Pictures that, once they were seen, could not be unseen.

Bikinis. Lots and lots of bikinis. And screencaps of a PV that, apparently, featured AKB48 wearing nothing but bikinis.

This, I thought to myself, is relevant to my interests.

I wanted MOAR. I googled for the video. And then it came: the brassy opening chords, the Motown sense of melody and harmony, the irresistible sight of 16 20 idols (hell, I have trouble counting) having the time of their life at a poolside party.

After a year and a half of silence, “Baby! Baby! Baby!” had won me back.

Some famous dude once said about this blog that the founder of the Love and Pop Research Institute majored in AKB48. Which is sort of true, but not entirely.

Actually, I did my undergrad in Hello! Project. My graduate study is in AKB48. LOL!!

As a researcher of idols, one of my most commonly visited resources is a neat little loader known as Sion (or possibly Narushiba), which is moonspeak for “Lots of pictures of cute girls.” The connectivity is spotty, and it isn’t updated as consistently as it used to be, but there was this time—maybe around late 2005 through early 2009—when it was pretty much the nexus of all idol eye candy. If you ever visited TEH BLOG during those years, it was about 70% likely that the picture posts came from Sion. (The other 30% was Dist posting pics of weirdo crap like his doll collection, or spiders. XD)

AND THIS GIRL. UUUUUGGGGGHHHHH SHOOT ME NOW.

It was an amazing time to be a Sion regular. You could get entire Berryz and °C-ute photosets, most of Momusu, random-ass Hello Pro subgroups, “unofficial pics,” random gravure idols, U-15 lolis whose only claim to fame was maybe appearing on various TV shows (and hence the origin of WTF Girl), actresses who would nevar evar pose in a bikini except for a bunch of photobooks when they were like 15 years old and no one knew who they were (hi Erika Toda), and—little did we know at the time—this scrappy up-and-coming idol group called AKB48.

Then, at some point, Sion went offline for several months, the H!P Kids updates stopped coming, and the entire AKB directory got taken down (possibly because they were swiping photos off of the girls’ fanclub-ONLY! blogs). The site has never the same since.

But it was during those heady golden years when Sion was pretty much the freaking Library of Alexandria. I showed up at the doorstep 4 years ago looking for Berryz pics, and came out knowing more faces and names than any dirty young man would ever need to drool over.

And that was where I met MY WIFE.

What the Hell is ‘Gachapin’?

I wish I could say that Minami Minegishi was the first AKB48 member I ever noticed and that it was love at first sight. But what do you think this is, some kind of anime? Actually, the first AKB girl to catch my eye was none other than the classical beauty, Little Island Sunshine Vegetables Haruna Kojima. I remember posting a screencap of her from a TV drama and asking, “Who are YOU? :drool:” to which another stupid ass wota replied, “Why, it’s Miss Cute Ears!” and ever since then I have always been fascinated by Haruna’s cute ears. They became even MOAR fascinating when I discovered that she has a little mole on her right. (To say nothing of the one on her lower lip.)

And yes, I got this pic off Sion of course. XD

BUT THIS POST ISN’T ABOUT YOU, HARUNA. Sorry.

Now, one of the things that makes Sion so great is its rigorous directory system that sorts every uploaded picture into an appropriate category. Like, you can go H!P Kids -> Photocards -> Momoko and find enough RAT to cast a freaking Pixar movie. Or you could go H!P Eggs -> Yuuka Maeda and find TEH LOLI GRAIL. As you can see, this system makes Sion a much more enjoyable loader to browse than those catch-all ones where pics are posted purely chronologically and you might have to wade through, I dunno, 3 pages of Mai Hagiwara spam before finding Airi Suzuki.

The wonderful people who run Sion are even smart enough to take into account the commonality of certain names in Japan. So, for example, you would find Rina Koike’s pictures in the U-15 section under /06u15/k.rina/, which differentiates her from /u15/rina/, who is some other ugly little Rina that I don’t care about.

But sometimes the cataloging system likes to have a little fun. So, like, there’s two girls named Minami in AKB48. A fact that is quite clear to me today, but wasn’t so clear back during my “Wow that’s a lot of girls” period when I just discovered AKB last week. So one fateful day, while scrolling down the Sion page, I saw a new directory that I hadn’t seen before.

/04talent/akb48/teamA/gachapin/

What the hell is Gachapin?

I love you, you love me

A little bit of Googling told me that Gachapin was this jolly green dinosaur from a children’s show, sort of the Japanese equivalent to Barney. Which didn’t explain much of anything, so I figured I might as well click on the pictures and find out about this “Gachapin” chick. I’ll tell you this, she was definitely not the kind of natural beauty that Haruna was. In fact, the choice of nickname for her was uncannily appropriate.

o hai.

The googly eyes that kind of bug out at you.
The prominent front teeth that stick out just so.
The chubby cheeks that could store enough nuts and seeds for the winter.

She was cute, I guess. But like I said, this isn’t an anime, and it wasn’t love at first sight.

It was, however, the beginning of an unforgettable love story.

Why Gachapin? Watch and you will understand:

Whither Summit Beach South?

Something is rotten in the state of AKBland. Where once I had gone willingly for regular servings of delicious cake, I find that one of my favorite lovelies is fading into obscurity right before my eyes.

How can you not fall in love with that face?

I thought, maybe, that it might have just been some kind of natural phenomenon. Maybe Minegishi’s loli good looks had started to fade at the age of 16, maybe they were just trying to rotate other girls onto AKBingo!, maybe a health condition had forced her to slow down a bit*. But what has transpired in the past few months has gone beyond the realm of natural. What we are witnessing right now is something of a much more sinister nature.

*We all know that Manami Oku went on hiatus for “knee problems,” which really means Erena Ono took a lead pipe to Manami’s kneecaps when she wasn’t looking because there’s room for only one U15 pedobait in this town. BITCH.

My wife.

You must remember this. A kiss is still a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh. And Minami Minegishi was in freaking No3b, for God’s sake, a 3-person sub-unit, and you don’t just get into sub-units unless there’s something awesome about you, and she starred in that Mendol thing that was the cross-dressing J-drama of the year, she got an entire photoshoot to herself in UpToBoy, and she even got her own damn solo photobook before freaking Atsuko Maeda did (AND YOU CAN LOOK THAT UP). This girl, in 2008, was lined up to be a star.

Check out that nice, big, round, pair of ... eyes.

And then, I don’t know what the hell happened, she just kind of started sliding into the shadows, like maybe she didn’t play in the AKBingo games as often as she used to, and then she kind of fell to the back on PVs and performances (you’d need a high-powered telescope to spot her in “Atsuko Is A Big Fat Attention Whore Namida Surprise!”), and although she managed to get on board AKB48’s trip to France, she apparently never made it back to Japan. Or fell off the freakin’ face of the earth.

I'd hit that. SO HARD.

I mean, you don’t star in a J-drama and a sub-unit and get a solo photobook then just end up 16th place in the voting contest for “Iiwake Maybe.” Behind people like Sae Miyazawa and Rie Kitahara! What the freaking hell! What has Kitahara ever done? I mean, aside from the dicks she obviously sucked to get those votes?

Srsly.

There are many possible explanations for this. Most of which probably involve some convoluted explanation about rivalries between other girls, sales and popularity figures, TV/radio/media exposure, and management decisions. But there is at least one explanation that cuts through all the bullshit and says what needs to be said:

INBOU

INBOU!!!

INBOU DA!!!!!

Nihongo Resources defines Inbou as “いんぼう [陰謀] (n) plot intrigue, conspiracy.” Which is all fine and good if you are a boring person translating boring Japanese texts about boring things like Junichiro Koizumi’s tenure as Prime Minister or Toyota’s secrets of lean manufacturing. But I leave it to a much more eloquent man to really explain what the hell is going on:

I remembered that what I was little, I had liked N.H.K. In elementary school, I saw Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. It was such an interesting anime.

Huh. Anime …

Mentioning anime brings up images of otaku. When it comes to otaku, they tend to be poor at human contact. People who are poor at human contact tend to become hikikomori.

Really?

I see! At this point, the direct connection between N.H.K. and hikikomori finally should be obvious to everyone. In short, by broadcasting such interesting anime, N.H.K. mass-produced anime otaku, thereby essentially creating hikikomori on a large scale. Dammit! What a dirty thing to do!

However, now I had stumbled upon their conspiracy. … I had discovered the truth behind everything. H stood for Hikikomori! In other words, N.H.K. represented “Nippon Hikikomori Kyoukai!”

- Tatsuhiko Takimoto, Welcome to the N.H.K.

Now, you are saying, what does the N.H.K. have to do with anything when AKBingo! runs on Nippon Terebi (NTV)? That’s not the point. The point is, the creature known as “INBOU” (see the blue guys pictured above) is not a happy little mascot, and he will take down whoever stands in his way in order to spread his INBOU throughout the world. It is very unfortunate for Ms. Minegishi that she just happens to closely resemble another rival mascot:

This guy = HERO

The huge buggy eyes. The prominent front teeth. Even Minami herself is a fan of Gachapin and likes to be nicknamed as such. And that is where she made the fatal mistake. INBOU saw her hanging around the TV studio one day, mistook her for the jolly green dinosaur, and …

This does not end well.

So next time someone asks whatever happened to the cute and lovely Minami Minegishi, if she’s ever going to do another photobook, how come she doesn’t appear much on AKBingo anymore (except dressed up as that ridiculous old-fashioned lady who hosts the AKBest 10 segment), did she fall off the face of the earth or something, and is Atsuko Maeda a Big Fat Attention Whore, remember that there is one simple answer:

INBOU DID IT.

KOHAKU UTAGASSEN: Mídia japonesa desconfia que Akiko Wada não aprova a participação dos grupos PERFUME e GIRLS NEXT DOOR no tradicional festival da NHK

[JPOP/KOHAKU UTAGASSEN] Akiko Wada não está contente com a escalação de alguns artistas no Kohaku Utagassen (tradicional evento de final de ano da NHK). Jornalistas acham que a “cherife do entretenimento japonês” (como Wada é conhecida) esteja se referindo aos grupos PERFUME e GIRL NEXT DOOR (via Itai News)

http://shop.mu-mo.net/avx/sv/item1?jsiteid=mumo&seq_exhibit_id=14487&categ_id=

[JPOP/KOHAKU UTAGASSEN] Akiko Wada manda Yukie Nakama (atriz que será uma das apresentadoras do Kohaku Utagassen) decorar todas as falas, e proíbe utilização de “cola” durante evento da NHK.

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20081229-00000020-oric-ent

[INTERNET/AI IIJIMA] Fundador do 2channel (maior fórum virtual do japão e do mundo) fala sobre a morte de Ai Iijima.

http://www.yukawanet.com/sunday/2008/12/post_248.html

[SOCIEDADE] Autoridades japonesas devem implementar nova política para reintegrar “hikikomoris” (portadores de fobia social) ao mercado de trabalho.

http://sankei.jp.msn.com/politics/policy/081229/plc0812290136000-n1.htm

[TV] Gachapin espia os passos de Akina Minami (via ameblo)

http://ameblo.jp/akkinablog/entry-10184016741.html

[TV] Yuusuke Inoue (NON STYLE) se diz assustado com as mudanças em sua carreira de comediante após vencer o M-1 GPX 2008 (via ameba news)
http://nonstyle-inoue.laff.jp/blog/2008/12/post-fcdf.html

[CINEMA] Os comediantes Hosshan e Naomi Watanabe (Beyoncé cover) divulgam versão cinematográfica da série americana “High School Musical”

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20081229-00000001-cine-movi

http://www.disney.co.jp/movies/hsm-movie/index.html

[TELEFONIA/FIM DE ANO] Empresas de telefonia temem pane no sistema causado pelo rush de ligações/transmissão de emails na virada do ano.
http://news.ameba.jp/domestic/2008/12/30337.html

[ALIMENTOS] Para evitar disperdício, escolas ginasiais japonesas começam a adotar um novo sistema de distribuição de merenda.

http://mainichi.jp/life/edu/news/20081229ddm004100007000c.html

[TRANSPORTE] Falha no sistema de controle da Japan Railways paralisa 5 linhas de trem-bala, e afeta o dia de mais de 130 mil passageiros.
http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/3951456/

[MODA] Quüma: nova grife traz roupas adaptadas para as “gordinhas”. A comediante Tomoko Murakami (do trio Morisanchu) é uma das colaboradoras do projeto.

http://www.j-cast.com/other/a01_prtimes/2008/12/25032895.html

[MODA/JPOP] Junichi Okada (V6) participará de projeto editorial/fotográfico da VOGUE japonesa.
http://news.ameba.jp/entertainment/2008/12/30338.html

http://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000009.000000872.html

[CONSUMO/ANIME] Cartão de crédito de Char, mais notável vilão da clássica série Gundam
http://www.gecard.com/cp/char.html

[COMPORTAMENTO] Entrevista com uma hostess de “Kyabakura” (cabaret club): é possível elas se apaixonarem por um cliente?
http://news.ameba.jp/trend-gyao/2008/12/30426.html

[INTERNET/DESIGN] Site mostra os diferentes desenhos utilizados nos bueiros de todo o Japão (em inglês, via Japan Probe)

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20081227p2a00m0na015000c.html?inb=rs

[VIDEO/ESPORTE] Miki Ando e Fuemi Suguri: colisão entre duas das melhores patinadoras japonesas durante treino para o campeonato nacional assusta público (via Omoshiro Media Box)

[2CH/FOTOS] Usuários do fórum 2ch trocam fotos das newscasters mais badaladas da TV japonesa

http://anchor18.blog77.fc2.com/blog-entry-77.html

[2CH/JOGOS] Lista de celebridades que são gamers assumidos
http://miruyo.blog38.fc2.com/blog-entry-752.html

Here i present you the most sleepy and adorable green creature named gachapin.

Gachapin

He mades me giggle when he plays with my new stitches..

check out my new big CUTE stitch.. 

and of course you have to check out my new stitch sock collection.. look at the cute lamb on its thigh! the orange socks cover its ear, legs ! so kawaii-neh…

this limited brown round face stitch is my precious, together with his gf… they look sooooo sweet… don’t you agree?

this particular naughty halloween stitch takes me and my friend efforts in catching it! (those catching kinda of machine)…

if you put the batteries on, it walks around with a music… sooo funny! u can take out his halloween costume and he looks like a normal stitch.

lol.. of course, i don’t just buy only stitch ya…i bought a lot of accessories for my wii… such as DDR mat, wii fit case, new wii game,casings,etc but i just got back home not long ago from flight… gng to Zzz now.. 

esp i caught the flu bug.

this is just a preview..

till next time.. Zzzz..

May I introduce…

GACHAPIN & MUKKU of Japan. Like Bert and Ernie, but Asian. (I prefer Mukku!)

image courtesy of kunispo.net

DOLPH & WULFF of Denmark. Dolph is an overweight Fascist hippo who carries a bat and gets rather hysterical. Dolph is basically my subconscious.

image courtesy of dr.dk

Kawasaki City’s annual penis-celebrating fertility festival, the Kanamara Matsuri took place on Sunday and was as crazy as ever. A highlight was the appearance of Gachachin, a grotesquely mutated phallic version of the popular cuddly character, Gachapin. Gachapin usually looks like this:

…and this is Gachachin:

Truly, deeply warped. He looks like the bad-trip hallucination of Sigmund Freud watching children’s television on mescalin.
I wonder if we can expect to see more of Gachachin in the future?
I, for one, would like to see him do battle against Flesh Gordon.

Gachapin, the sensational character from Ponkikki, the show that even I watched when I was a kid, truly showed himself a kid’s hero at the Air Guitar 2007 Japan Finals. The green creature came in 3rd place and even won a special recognition award.

He played his air guitar along 「ギリギリｃｈｏｐ」by B’z, and he lost to the 1st place winner by .5 points.

He comments: “

I made some mistakes and I’m a little disappointed, but I was SOOOO happy I got an award~. I still have to challenge more and more from now on!

ちょびっと失敗しちゃったので、ちょっぴりくやしいけど、
入賞できて、すっごーくうれしかった～。
これからも、もっともっといろんなチャレンジをしたいなっ！”