It’s been a long time since I wrote anything in this place, almost a whole year. People say that time flies when you’re having fun, well I musttn’t have been having much as it seems a lot longer ago than that since I was last here. Strange that I should begin on such an apathetic note though as me starting back here has nothing to do with a certain other blog starting in the past few days as I actually planned this the day before I noticed it. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about; don’t worry about it. For those who do, no doubt you don’t believe me.
It’s pretty likely you won’t have read any of the previous entries in this blog and if that is the case and you are a big AKB48 fan then I’ll say right off the bat that you probably aren’t going to like a lot fo the stuff I’m going to say and you’ll probably get offended and get into some sort of hissy fit along the way. Let’s hope not though for both our sakes. Either way it will quickly become apparent that most of my love for AKB is directed towards Takamina.
The only time I’ve ever felt sorry for an idol, still hilarious though.
So what has inspired me to come back then? Well if you have read any of the previous posts on here you’ll quickly notice that my tolerance for many things related to the world of idols and it’s fandom could be somewhat higher than it is. Nothing has changed on that but for the past year my interest in it has also waned considerably, that was due in no small part to AKB acheiving the huge fame they seem to have garnered. It’s strange how things come full circle though as it is the sheer enormity of said fame that has eventually brought me back here once more. I feel compelled to write something on the subject of AKB as seeing other people write about them on the Internet has become an unavoidable part of my life, and despite the fact that I haven’t gathered much knowledge in the last twelve or so months on this subject I still feel I’m in a better position than most to comment on it. Why? Because I’m a bit of an arrogant prick. Not only that, unlike most I can give a (largely) unbiased viewpoint on all things related to AKB which is something that not many fellow fans can seem to do. It’s also fair to say I’ve seen a fair amount of criticsm on the group that in a lot of cases is totally unfounded.
Let me set the record straight though, it would be totally unfair to blame my lack of interest in AKB in recent times completely on the fans, that’s only part of it. The simple fact of the matter is that the music simply isn’t as good anymore either. One year on since the release of A6 and I still don’t have much inspiration to listen to it from start to finish. As any idol fan should know though, it isn’t all about the music, in fact for me that’s only about twenty percent of it, the rest of it being made up with the tv show appearances by the girls and their ridiculous antics. It’s taken me a lot longer than it should have to deduce the fact that I don’t actually have to listen to the music at all to still enjoy groups like AKB48. Watching the stages and then not knowing half the girls is annoying but the only way I’m ever going to learn them is by watching the TV shows.
It’s no surprise to me that people don’t understand my shameless Takamina worship when such ridiculous moments are commonplace.
Another point I could easily bring up here is the fact that the idol community simply isn’t filled with as much goodwill now as it was ten years ago and subtitles for programmes are simply not available as readily as they used to be and my knowledge of Japanese is minimal at best. This isn’t really the group’s fault though and I can’t relaly expect people to sub these shows constantly; in fatc the amount of Hello! Project material that was subbed is really pretty impressive. Thankfully Japan has a pretty basic standard of humour if I say so myself and a lot of the stuff in these shows that is actually funny is the visual stuff as the hilarious one liners aren’t really hilarious at all.
So it’s time to take the plunge and start watching AKBingo unsubtitled and see where that leads me. Of course fi it doesn’t lead me very far then this “revival” will be short lived to say the very least. I’m not especially optimistic nor pessimistic over this though. hopefully I will carry this on though just so anyone that reads this can laugh at my lack of knowledge on AKB’s current affairs.
My mission here isn’t anything especially noble, I am afterall only here to fill my own free time and amuse myself as I have nobody else to discuss these things with, at least not to a level I’d be remotely happy with. More liekly than not I’ll simply showcase random hilarious events I notice on the weekly shows and comment on any music releases that appear alng the way. This sin’t going to be a review site by any means though and it certainly isn’t the place you want to come to in order to catch up on the latest news as I’ll probably be last to hear about it and there will be hundreds of blogs out there that will present it in a much better way.
Since it has been such a long time I think my first real post that really talks about anything in general (sine this one didn’t bother to do that) will be a quick review of everything I’ve missed in the last tweleve months, it’s fair to say there’s a large amount and I have no idea how much detail I’ll be going into until I…..well until I do.
