How did you discover AKB48?

I'm a big anime fan and I got really obsessed with The Idolmaster when it started airing. I played the PSP games, downloaded all the music, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, etc. I started watching some dance covers of the songs and many of the users also danced to AKB/H!P songs. I really liked some of the songs, but I thought AKB had way too many names to learn, so I got into H!P first. Being the anime fan I am, I also watched both seasons of AKB0048 when they aired. After the second season finished airing, I decided I needed more AKB in my life, and the rest was history

 

Many years ago i started to be interested in Asian culture. If i remember i was also a big fan of Asian music, especially Korean. At that time (i think in about 2008) Girl's Generation were really good and they had different and better style than today. And i thought it wasn't be bad to start learn some new language. So i was chosing between Korean, Japanese and Chinese language. But it won Japanese and i started to be interested in Japan more and more and i moved from Korean music to Japanese. First group that fall into my eyes was Morning Musume, i really loved it and i was also making some karaoke videos for theirs PVs and so. Then I tried to look for other interesting japanese idol groups. And i found one live concert video. And i was like wow, there are so many interesting girls. So i found the group name is AKB48 and since that i fell in love with AKB48 tho i didn't tried to remember their names at that time. Since that time, i'm still big fan of them

 

It was really random.. I was subscribed to the r/japanesegameshows subreddit and "BIMYO" was posted. (The AKB48 Show with the sketches only.) It wasn't THAT great to be honest but I thought some of the episodes were funny. I thought Ichikawa Miori(the lemon girl) was really funny in her sketches so in a weird way she probably was my earliest Oshimen. It was that classroom sketch where she drew with a black marker all over the teachers face.
Of course from then on I went on a massive bender of variety and AKB48 shows, documentaries etc. Like many new fans I constantly switched Oshimen. What i've come to realize now is that at the time I was pretty unbiased in terms of which idol was popular, who was in senbatsu, elections and so on which is interesting to me. If you have no concept of who other fans favor or like, I think the members you actually find interesting can be different. (Also if most of what you look at is variety shows) The members that I liked were fairly unpopular ones which I only realize now.

Anyways.. I got bit hard by the Oshima Yuko bug. Like... Basically only watching AKBINGO at this point from Gouza's channel and she just nails everything she's in honestly. Now it's been like 2-3 months and i'm JUST getting into the music, which is probably blasphemy to say here but it's just the way it's been for me. I think something that makes AKB48 appeal to so many people is the amount of interesting members, variety, drama, sister groups, dance and content. Even if you don't like it all you'll always find something interesting for you.

I'm basically checking Myaidol.com 4 times a day for new Ebi Calcio! episodes so i'm really hooked right now ^^

 

In 2012 Wreck it ralph came out saw it on tv during the credits Sugar rush played looked up the video on youtube I found out that they were AKB48 started googleing them then saw episodes of AKBingo when I first started to like them I like Acchan then latter on I started to notices Sea chan thought she was cuter then Acchan now shes my Oshi

 

It happened few years ago. In most cases, people fell in love with/discovered AKB 48 first and later fell in love with/discovered their oshi. But i discovered my oshi first. I hadn't known Yukirin/AKB48/idol group at all before randomly seeing her gravure photos on the internet. Getting amazed by her look, i decided to do more research about her. Then i learned that her name is Yuki Kashiwagi and she belongs to an idol group called AKB48. I though she was only a model, not a singer or a member of an idol group (or should i say girlband because at that time i didn't know what idol group is). Little by little, i started knowing more and more about Yukirin and AKB48.

We, overseas fans, have one thing in common: discovering AKB48 randomly. Most inventions were discovered by their inventor randomly, so was AKB48. Thanks to the twist of fate

 

through their sister group (JKT48) and then I know AKB48.
since I'm an overseas fan, I feel so sad because never been able to see AKB members
but then next month there will be a concert of JKT48 and AKB48 together. So I think like "there's my chance to see" AKB member who'll come.

I hope Ricchan will come tho..
and Paruru.
and Yukirin.

 

I was browsing mangas and saw AKB49. I guess the unusual name captured my attention hahaha. Started reading it, then researching about the group. Loved Beginner. Liked Tomochin and a few singles of the group. Loved Temodemo no Namida then realized that Yukirin is the prettiest girl in the group. BAM!

 

I think Nyaa Nyaa is the prettest in the group

 

i discovered from another forum who discussed about Ohori Megumi story on AKB48 at the time (about her solo debut) and then i falling in love with her LOL

 

Well I joined the party late. I didn't really get into them until about 2 or 3 years ago. I love anime and so I'd gotten interested in Jpop after years of listening to opening songs from my favourite shows. One day when I was looking up another idol group on youtube 'Heavy Rotation' came up as a recommended video. I loved the song but with so many people I couldn't keep track of anybody and so after a few replays over the next few weeks I kind of forgot about them. But a couple of years later I watched AKB0048 and I gave them another go. I'd heard more of their songs and picked up a few names to look out for and had something to work with and that's where the fun began! Still, I can't believe I overlooked them for nearly 2 years. Now I start getting withdrawals if I don't get my AKB fix each day.

 

I also joined the party pretty late lol. Sorry this is going to be a bit long. For me it actually all started with Miichan's scandal. I remember seeing an article somewhere about Miichan's scandal and video that was posted. I had no idea who the group was at that point but after reading that article about the scandal, I began searching for pictures of Miichan and looking AKB48 up on youtube, which at the time the first video that came up was the Heavy Rotation video. I remember hating that video and thinking it was way too sexualized (I Still think this actually..). Also most of the pictures that came up for Miichan were gravure pictures which combined with the Heavy Rotation video had me convinced that AKB48 was just this superficial group meant to sexualize girls for male fans.

I absolutely hated them for a good while and at the time I was really into K-pop so I kept thinking K-pop is so much better than them. Then one day a while later, I don't know what made me think about them but I decided to search them again on youtube to see if they had any new videos come up. I was prepared to be disgusted but instead that is when I found the Koi Suru Fortune Cookie video. I thought it was a nice change from the last video I had seen and I couldn't get the song out of my head. I kept going back and watching the video a bunch of times until finally I caved and actually downloaded the single. I also started watching old episodes of Akbingo so from there it just kind of snowballed into this huge thing lol. I got all of their music and watched all of the variety shows and documentaries. I love them now and I realized that there is a lot more to the group then just gravure. I'm still kind of uncomfortable with the gravure and heavy rotation video but I guess thats just a part of the culture that I'll just have to live with.

Before I had really delved into their huge catalog of music, I watched so many old episodes of Akbingo on youtube so I learned the original members first and only recently have I really learned who the new members are on each team. So even though I wasn't around for the original Kami 7, I still learned them first. Its kind of a good thing and a bad thing because I got to see the best of them but I didn't have to go through any hard Graduations, except for Takamina, this is gonna be the first graduation where I really care for a member and know what to expect. Even though Yuko is my oshi, I was too new of a fan to really know what was going on or care too much during her graduation.

I really only got onto stage48 a couple of days before Mae Shika Mukanee was released. I wish I had found AKB48 and given them a chance way earlier.

 

Here's my story in a nutshell:

I fell in love with Japan after starting university in 2006. At first I loved dramas, and the first one I watched was Tokyo Friends (with Otsuka Ai and Eita)... (now that I've seen hundreds of dramas, I really know it was pretty bad lol, but at the time I loved it!)

I thought the lead actress was good at singing and really cute, so for the first time in my life I started listening to Japanese music (and to this day, behind the 48 group, Otsuka Ai is my favorite Japanese musician).

Anyway... in 2007 my roommate, who was Japanese, told me about this group called AKB which had a LOT of members, which frankly confused me lol. I remember listening to Yuuhi wo Miteiru ka? and thinking this sounds awesome. But I just filed in the back of my mind and didn't think about it for a while.

In 2008 I spent the year studying abroad in Tokyo (best year of my life lol), and that is when I really and truly fell in love with AKB. My mentor (each group of students had a Japanese 'mentor' from our host university) and I became close friends, and he really, REALLY, loved AKB. I told him I'd heard a little about them, but I wasn't so familiar.

Long story short, he introduced me to a lot of their music, tv shows, and pictures. He talked about them so much I became really interested in them lol.

And the rest is history

 

They were in Hawaii two years ago for a photo shoot. Passed out right on the beach. Crazy fan ever since. Mirukii's my oshi.

 

Man your so lucky

 

As a person who's a self proclaimed Fabulist and one who believes that learning the history of a story is the best way to know about someone, prepare thyself for a story.

Here's an excerpt from The Legend of 55Cyanides:

THE TV ERA:

Spoiler

Back in '99 where I had TV and no computer, the household was fortunate to have a channel (now defunct) called the International Channel. This channel would try to appeal to the masses who were of ethnic background in the US, showing popular tv shows from Europe, South America, Asia, etc.

On Sunday (a couple of weeks before my birthday), a show popped up and while I didn't understand the language, it was about music, the most universal of them all. The show? Music Champ Hey x 3, hosted by the popular manzai duo, Downtown. It was something I never heard before, and at a young age (12 years old), it was very impressionable to me. It was an end of the year special, where they would show their best guest performances in their show history, which I discovered something special, which I never heard the genre before.

MORNING MUSUME (or MUSEUM at the time, since I was dumb and couldn't read, which friends could argue I am still today).

I was hooked. Their music, infectious. Their performance, full of joy and emotion.

It wasn't 1-2 years where I had a computer AND internet, so up until those weeks, I would just watch every Sunday for Music Champ, and enjoy as much music as I can. In fact, I still do have VHS recordings at home, which I believe were about 4-5 tapes of 8 hours long each? So about 32-40 hours, so about 64-80 episodes?

It was only the beginning of a great time

THE INTERNET ERA

Spoiler

As I began to use the internet, I started to search about Morning Musume. At first, it was only the simple biographies and perhaps some WAV files that geocities or angelfire (shudders) would host. I'm talking about the websites that have terrible graphics with the AwEsOmE sPelLiNg AnD tYpe FoNt (shudders again). It wasn't long though when I found out I'm not the only one who's interested in this genre (Never had people physically to talk to about this), and that's when I discover IRC chat.

There, I would join a channel dedicated to Morning Musume. It was a rich history but it all became defunct after many server shifts and I believe when I moved to College, I was already out of the information loop for about 1-2 years. I became a wandering warrior, just learning as much as I could without bothering much. Until 2006

THE REBIRTH ERA

Spoiler

My sophomore year in college, on a whim, I decided to hit the old IRC and for amusement, I decided to sign on to the old channel, which I knew was defunct. However, on the log-in screen, as the amount of users were unsurprisingly empty, the welcome screen told me where a new server and channel was. I decided to log in.

Logged in, I couldn't believe my eyes. While it was only 10-25% of the members from the old site, it was still the same old crew, and boy did they remember me. It was great talking to the old crew, and apparently I missed on a lot. Morning Musume news and singles. It was great. And then it happened:

LEGENDARY YOUTUBE LINK

Spoiler

One of my friends (everybody in the channel I've been friends with for almost 10 years now, and had the fortune of actually meeting most of them), asked me if i heard of this group and gave me a youtube link. The link? AKB48's Skirt no Hirari performance on Music Station. My friend was HYPPPEEE about them. From just a youtube link, I nodded my head and acknowledge them, but since I didn't know much, I couldn't derive an opinion about them. Then he asked me for my address, so he can send a couple of dvds of them. I said sure.

1 week later, it was 2 dvds. What was it? Their first concert, the normal AND the shuffle version.

I shrugged my shoulders, and popped in the DVD, as I began my workout (you'd be surprise how well Idol music and training goes hand in hand). My god...

It was...STUPENDOUS. Great performance. So many people but yet, each member had their distinguishable features in which I can remember. I need to learn more. As a Fabulist...I need more knowledge.

AFTERMATH

Spoiler

It's been about 9 years now, and while I do not have as much knowledge yet with the newer generation as with the older generation, I'm still holding strong. It's a wonder how the pursuit of knowledge can lead someone to an awesome path: learning about a new music genre, learning about a specific sub genre of that music genre, learning about a specific group, and so on and so forth.

I am fortunate enough to see them in NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, and WASHINGTON DC, and I'm hoping to perhaps see them in their Mother Land. Hell maybe a handshake or two.

 

3 years ago I saw Heavy Rotations on Youtube and I was hooked

 

I discovered about Akb48 thanks to a random mayuyu video on youtube. I did not know who she was at the time but I thought she had a good looking face (I'm a sucker for pretty faces of both male and female). I then search on videos of Mayuyu on youtube and this led me to akbingo. It was not long before I discovered other members of Akb48 and I begin to like the group as a whole.
Sadly, I think discovered akb48 a bit too late as members such as Yuko Oshima, Atsuko Meada and Tomomi Itano had already graduated in the present and the youtube videos I've watched were not recent and were probably a year or older.

 

I probably commented here already but whatever haha

I was into K-Pop but things started to get quite boring after some years. I started to search music from other countries, and Japan popped out. AKB48 sounded really confusing to me, and their music was just terrible in my opinion. I even sent some songs to my friends saying like "omg, look at this! How can someone like this song?" haha Occasionally I got into Japanese artists that sounded more like western music/K-Pop, like Namie Amuro and Koda Kumi. AKB48 was still in my head - I liked the whole concept of the group (I remember just randomly clicking on links on Wiki48, until I saw the Umechan page. I just liked her for some reason.), but I was just not into their songs. I kind of "wanted" to like AKB48. Beginner (And the SDN48 songs) at least sounded "less worst" than the other singles, so it was a start. Anyway, I started to watch things from AKB48, and I remember watching a very funny TV show with Takamina. One day I watched the "Bird" performance with Sayanee and then things got more interesting. I got hooked with stage performances and from there on, the addiction haha Watching stage performances I knew new members (I remember Marinchan performing Arashi no Yoru ni wa on the KKS stage, the 13th gen debut...) and great songs. At the beginning I was a complete noob, back when Kaze wa Fuiteiru was released I didn't even knew the difference between Mayuyu and Kitarie haha But things went on and now I know pretty much everyone without much effort. I also got used to the cute idol songs, also because I started to know more idol groups. And now I have the weirdest music taste ever But, even today, I still like stage performances a lot and Umechan, Takamina, Sayanee and SDN48 are still special to me

 

I agree with you 100% about the graduated members you mentioned add to that list Mariko Shinoda, Sayaka Akimoto and its like the heart and sole is partly gone from AKB48, the new music is still very good but the personalities seem lacking. I do like Jurina Matsui she seems to have some flair and individuality.

 

You just have to give the new girls a chance. I know when I was very new to this group, I was stuck watching old stuff with the original members and would get annoyed even hearing about the newer girls. Though when I got the chance to get to know some of them a bit, I realised there were really some interesting girls among them who are just as unique and dedicated as the older members, which restored my faith in the future of AKB. Of course it will never be the same, but that's how this group works. You have different eras which all have their own flavour, it's impossible to keep anything the same forever.