Marc Cellucci
Pop “idol” groups have been around since the dawn of time, or at least since The Monkees. Time moves forward like the flipping of Tiger Beat pages, and while the groups change, the basic premise of pretty young people lip syncing bubblegum pop remains.
But why have an idol group of five-or-so people, when you can have forty eight of them? That’s the approach that producer Yasushi Akimoto took when forming AKB48, an idol group based in the nerd Mecca of Tokyo’s Akihabara district. More is more, and the sheer number of girls in the group meant that there was an idol to match everyone’s discerning tastes. They blew up, branched out into various regional groups, and conquered the country Shōgun style.
In my line of work, which largely consists of sitting in front of a computer while my waistline expands, I rarely interact with celebrities. But I have had a few pop idol interactions, which I will share with you forthwith.
And My Sound’s Laid Down by the Underground
My first encounter with the world of Japanese idols was with what’s called “underground idols” (chika idoru). This is basically the minor leagues of the idol world. They have agents and do shows, but they are pretty far removed from all the buttery stuff like being on TV and having your face printed on towels.
I was invited to the show by the great Hiroshi Kawaguchi, the composer of soundtracks for SEGA games such as Space Harrier, OutRun, and After Burner. I forget why he was connected with this particular underground group, and I forget the group’s name, but in the interest of having an open mind, I checked out the show.
The first thing that hits you is the smell. The fan base for these poor preteen wannabe idols consists largely of middle aged or older men. When the music starts, they go buck wild, whipping out glow sticks and doing all these crazy dances. The whiff of sweaty old men permeates the entire room, and after a few songs we couldn’t take it anymore and went out to the bar area.
Sadly, but for obvious reasons, the place would not serve alcohol during the show. So we ordered ginger ales, as they were the closest facsimile, and wondered what cruel twist of fate had led us to that moment.
After the show, we went backstage and met the girls, and this is where things really started feeling icky. They all dreamed of becoming famous idols, but were paying their dues in a sweaty room full of fogeys. You could tell they had practiced for this, but the fakeness of their smiles was real. You kind of just wanted to drive them home, tell them to do their homework, and to get ready for school tomorrow.
The Big Leagues
Fast forward a few years, where I was hired by the now defunct Red Queen to create Generation Tank , a game where you use tanks to shoot giant insects. There were grand plans for the IP, and they even made a hyper-violent manga based on it. (The game I made was much tamer.)
Red Queen’s bread and butter was making smartphone games using the AKB48 license. These were simple card games with online play, and the main catch was that you could actually play against the idols themselves. If you were lucky, you’d get matched with one of the idols, who were incentivized to play the game. (What’s funny is that the players tended to intentionally lose to the idols, which shocked the win-at-all-costs American in me.)
When discussing how to promote Generation Tank, Red Queen thought it would be a good idea to get some of the AKB idols on board. I was against this, as the Venn diagram of people who love pop idols and people who want to shoot bugs with an M1 Abrams don’t exactly overlap. But I was overruled, and this led to…
My First Press Conference
The game was almost ready for launch, and Red Queen decided they wanted to hold a press conference starring me, the manga artist, composer Norihiko Hibino (of Metal Gear Solid fame), and in order to have a reason for the cameras to flash, four girls from the AKB squadron.
One of them was Miyuna Kadowaki from STU48, an AKB branch based in Hiroshima. One of her dreams was to become a voice actor, and I’m proud to say that Generation Tank was her first professional voice gig.
The other three were from the AKB48 mothership, and they knew nothing about the game, or games in general. They were just brought there to smile and giggle on stage, which they did in the most professional way possible. I gave a presentation about the game, and people told me I did a good job, but I was edited out of the vast majority of the pictures and videos, so there ya go.
It was here that I got my first taste of the behind-the-scenes life of an AKB48 idol. They are driven to and from events in black vans with tinted windows, and are quickly shuffled in and out by a mob of managers. Each girl had at least one manager by their side at all times, ensuring things went smoothly while also making sure the girls were safe and not in danger of being touched by the unwashed masses.
The managers were all friendly and personable, which stood in stark contrast to some other experiences I’ve had in the entertainment industry (I’m looking at you, Fuji TV, but I’ll tell that story another time). The girls were friendly as well, but they were all business, and were there to do the job and get out.
What stood out to me is how little freedom the idols had. Like the Judas Priest-ian Electric Eye, they were being watched all the time. I understand that fame brings that sort of thing, but most famous people can still walk the streets if they so choose. These girls could not.
We Love Nerds
The next round of marketing for the game was a booth at Tokyo Game Show. This time it was Miyuna and two AKB48 girls, this time including. Nana Okada, who was one of the top idols in the AKB legion, and a total sweetheart. This is where the story in the video at the top happened, and I promise there is no embellishment there. That’s exactly how it went down. You can tell these girls are trained, and are well aware of their target audience.
The Last Dance
My last encounter with AKB is a bit of a sad story. It was a few years later, and I was hired to the board of Red Queen, which had swerved towards online education, and renamed themselves to the unfortunate name of StuDeepL (stew-deep-uhl, a portmanteau of study and deep learning). I was brought on to take over the AKB games, but the money quickly ran dry, and my job became helping transition things to another company that had bought the rights to the games.
Red Queen had been sponsoring some of AKB’s shows, and I took this over as well, and was thrust into being one of the producers of a pop idol concert, something I never thought would happen to me. As part of this, I was backstage watching how the sausage of an AKB show was made, and had to give a thank you speech to the group at the end.
The scene backstage during the show was actually fun to watch. Girls in ridiculous costumes buzzing around, trying to get to their spots or to their next ridiculous costume change. There was a certain electricity both backstage and in the audience, and it was fun to watch the crowd get into things. It had all the glow sticks, but none of the B.O.
The Gilded Cage
My overarching impression of the idol world is that these girls have chosen a really hard path in life. Say you rise up from the underground and make it to the big time. From that point, you have to surrender your freedom, youth, and privacy for a taste of the limelight.
Some people have commented that my older son could maybe make it in the idol biz, as he has the pretty boy looks that would work for that sort of thing. My stance has always been this: if he is interested in that life and wants to pursue it, he should tell me. And then I’ll tell him no.
