Shopping Guide
An artist can’t perform without an audience, that much is a given. But in the case of idols, the fans are essential in helping the artist grow, network, and put on a good show.
Idols need their fans just as much as the fans need their idols, maybe even more so. Sure, the units bring the noise, but it’s the audience that supplies the cheers, networking and excitement.
Over the weekend of June 22, fans assembled en masse to show the crowd how to have a good time at Next Stage, a free concert series as part of the @Jam idol festival held at Diver City, the Tokyo Bay area shopping center. As families and curious onlookers took shade in the shadow of the life-size Gundam replica, the dedicated enthusiasts surged the stage heedless of the harsh midday sun.
Otagei dance
With over 20 acts spread across two days, each unit needed a catchy gimmick to stand out – or even better, a super-fan. Enter the Top Otaku, or TO for short. They’re easy to spot: Look for the gang sporting custom t-shirts, then isolate the one decorated with the most idol signatures. The TO navigates a fleet of handmade banners straight into the action, leading the calls and chants. Foot traffic slows down around them; this cheer captain has a different kind of charisma than the girls on stage, and pedestrians end up joining the merry crew. A unit won’t get very far without a TO.
Each prefecture in Japan is famous for its indigenous delicacies. Likewise, regional idols all have a unique local flavor waiting to be exported. The TO acts as the unofficial regional representative to facilitate entertainment trade. This grassroots network is exactly what flew a group such as Anna S down to Tokyo from Hokkaido. And while carting a gaggle of school girls cross-country for a free concert seems like a guaranteed way to lose money, it’s actually a smart investment.
Bellring Shojo Heart merch booth
The exposure provided by outdoor gigs and fests is a golden PR opportunity, especially for less established acts. Innocent bystanders will stop by for a group they would brush off otherwise, and then perhaps poke around the merchandise booths afterwards. Merch is sold by the idols themselves, giving you a chance to talk to them face-to-face. CDs, towels, and t-shirts are par for the course. But everyone is shelling out for cheki, instant camera photos taken with unit members and the fan, then signed with personalized messages. Good luck making that connection with your favorite artist.
Izuko Neko
Sometimes fans can be too exuberant for their own good. Solo act Izuko Neko chose to guide this exuberance into something constructive. The bridges in her songs still invite chants, except one that chains together the names of cat breeds to stay in line with her mewing backing track. Turning an idol trope into something lyrical is one of her ways of connecting to her fans.
Izuko Neko says she’s for music lovers, not idol fans. Early in her career, she was snubbed by the otaku crowd, only to be embraced by rock bands and experimental artists for her spacey sound grounded with driving rhythms. This hipster street cred moved her into the same geek-chic category as Dempagumi.inc or Mariko Goto, one where she connects to the audience as an aspiring Akihabara idol without losing her “cool”-underground vibe. Her stage persona has been sculpted by fan feedback, though some resist such influence on principle.
Bellring Shojo Heart
The girls of Bellring Shojo Heart go their own way. Fans sneak in props, including festival masks, beach balls, and bubble-blowing machine guns, that Bellring confiscates to work into their improv show. If anything, the audience is there to entertain the artist, not the other way around. But the unit’s mystique owes itself to the hard line drawn between the gimmicks they think of themselves, and the gimmicks the fans orchestrate.
This doesn’t mean that Bellring avoids audience interaction. Their greatest fear is leaving the cozy nest of small clubs they frequent for large, impersonal concert halls, which are normally the dream destinations for any other idol group. The podium stages at stadiums would take them out of the fans’ reach, both physically and emotionally. High-five drive-bys are hardly practical when you’re standing five feet above the crowd. Then again, Bellring is hardly practical either.
Armed with crow wings and cap guns, the coquettish menace circles the stage until the sound engineer sets off a bomb that blasts them into an early grave. With Bellring, “kill your idols” means murdering genre conventions. Their music is somewhat reminiscent of Group Sounds – a kind of late-1960s garage rock inspired by the early Beatles – wrapped in a layer of psychedelic organ samples that send shivers down your spine.
Boys and Men
Speaking of breaking genre conventions, there’s no law stipulating that idols must be female. Boys and Men, as their name suggests, is an all-male unit straight out of Nagoya that favors scowls and perfect hair over smiles and pigtails. Their predominant fanbase is, surprise surprise, female. But the loudest cheers came from the otaku guys on the sidelines. It doesn’t matter if the acts are little sisters or big brothers, idol fans just want to have fun.
Granted, it’s not easy for a concert neophyte to join in with the chants, hand waves, and glowstick flourishes. There are patterns to learn, like trying to master a dance martial-art form. In a city such as Nagoya suffering from an idol deficiency, Boys and Men had to cultivate its fanbase from the ground up and teach them how to enjoy the music. At the same time, the unit itself is still learning the ropes of the entertainment industry and tweaking their rapport according to the audience reaction. Like most successful acts, the taaaawo have developed a codependent relationship. The fans identify with the group; the group identity comes from the fans.
There’s more to the scene than simply being a groupie. It turns out you don’t need to like the artists – or even the music itself – to be part of the community. At @Jam, and any other venue where the audience reaches critical mass, the fans have garnered fans of their own.
Source: MTV 81
Source article written by David Kracker
