A Fan's Worthiness: Proving Our Worth

So I ended the last entry by talking about the different factors which come into play when we pick our favourite idols and how a member's popularity might influence that decision in order to make you blend into, or stand out from the crowd.

I don't think most people go to extreme lengths to stand out and be different. If you stand too far from the crowd you are alone and scream "Hey, look at me! I'm different!". An old Japanese proverb about society goes something like the nail that sticks out gets hammered in. And yet we go to great lengths in order to stand out, ironically enough, I believe, in order to fit in.

Consider that an idol fan has two goals in mind. The primary goal is, naturally, to support the idol by buying their products. Without this simple instinct to give to their idol, the fan is useless. This can clearly be observed in human history in the form of religion and the inherit need of it's followers to give gifts to the being, object or entity that they have come to worship as a god. Many cultures felt that the need to appease their gods by means of animal or human sacrifice, or gifts of wine, food or money. Social norms have changed and animal and human sacrifice is now frowned upon by many of today's cultures and faiths (although still present in certain beliefs) and the need of the people to sacrifice to their gods adapted with the times. Now many Churches, such as in Catholicism, accept gifts to their god in the form of money donations. And now this spiritual desire to give has been passed on into fandom at large - although in the case of this blog we'll continue to focus on idol fandom in particular.

The very word "idol" refers to an image. A picture, or a statue, in ancient times. An indeed, many peoples constructed these idols in the image of their gods in order to have a physical representation of that which they worship. It's no coincidence that the name later applied to the girls we, ourselves, worship. In earlier days of the industry the idols were presented with perfect images. Girls who could do no wrong. They were also presented with more middle-class characters. Beautiful, intelligent, entertaining. These were the perfect women. In recent years that tone has lowered, however, in an attempt to bring them closer to their fans. Noteable is the fact that ignorance and unintelligence is now found to be cute and endearing in idols, something which we can laugh at. However, during the 60s an idol with such an image wouldn't have been allowed, similiar to the way the BBC used to only employ proper-spoken, seemingly intelligent people in order to have a respectable image.

And so we worship these girls, and just as religious followers we feel compelled to give those monetary donations to our gods.

Why? I believe it has something to do with the idea that, in order to feel worthy of blessing and praise from our god, we give unto our god such sacrifices. And as such we have our secondary goal as fans, to prove that we are worthy. Although it's very possible that the primary and secondary goals are interchangable, as they are both tied to one another. We support our idols to prove our worth, and we prove our worth by supporting the idols.

Of course, proving our worth to the idols isn't the only thing we have in mind, but also proving ourselves and, ultimately, showing off to our peers. That is why all those "Post your H!P Collection" threads on various forums prove to be so popular. I, myself, post in Musume-Central's variation of the "Show off your latest purchase" thread whenever I can. I'm sure most of us do something of the sort. This isn't so much about ego, as it is about the desire for peer-approval. The idea is to be accepted. We think that, by showing off how loyal and "pious" we are, we can become accepted as worthy fans by many people. ie, become popular, to put it on blunt terms.

But why is that feeling of acceptance so important to us? Well, to answer that question we must move on from the religious metaphor and context and into Darwinist theory.

In nature evolution is fueled by the idea that the strongest will survive, and the weak will die. This applies not only to the idea that a weaker species will be killed off by a stronger, but also on a more individual level. When the males and females mate, usually males will compete for their partner in whatever way they have evolved to, wether that be a show of beauty or of strength. Either way, the best will procreate and their genetic makeup will continue, and the weaker won't. Darwinism could therefore be taken to argue that the meaning of live is just that. Procreation, passing of genes, and continuation of the species. And, just as the animal kingdom does, humans must "compete" for that right to procreate. Although human competition is far more complex and more depends on the taste and "type" of each individual as to what they regard the ideal partner to be. However, some of the more agreed upon themes are that of wealth and power as a way for members of the same sex to compete for the best of the opposite.

And so, accumulation of wealth and property proving to be a powerful tool for gaining another's approval. It could be argued that the accumulation of an impressive collection of, in this case, H!P merchandise and the subsequent show off of it is a flag and a way to prove that you are a worthy mate. Or a friend. Someone to be respected. Of course, taking it from a Darwin point of view is over simplifying the matter, there are many reasons why one builds a collection and I'm sure that the hopes of meeting and seducing members of the opposite sex (or same sex if that's more you) isn't one of the reasons at all. I'm just putting it forward as a possible explanation as to why we have evolved to feel the need to show our collection off.

One thing is certain however, by showing off the items we own to people who would be interested, we are ultimately trying to impress them to get their approval. That fits with the above Darwin theory.

This has been my two-part analysis on the behaviour of fans and how we try to prove ourselves as fans. Thank you for taking time out to read this. Any thoughts or opinions? Please drop me a comment. I'd be glad to hear your own theories and ideas on the topic.

A Fan's Worthiness: Which Idol?

An interesting topic, to be sure. And something that all fans aspire to be - regardless of the hobby. Just as sports fans will try to prove their worth and show off their knowledge about their chosen team, we wota love a chance to prove just how well versed we are in the charms of our idols and their groups. So well documented, in fact, are the lives of these girls that it's hard not to pick up little bits of information of their lives and their personalities. Of their favourite foods and bands. Of their little quirks and recurring jokes. Gaining a new idol is like buying a brand new product, complete with all it's features and faults - not just for the fans, but for the agencies who sell these products too.

And so, continuing our product analogy in the form of, say, electronics, just how do we pick out a model that suits us from the huge product range? Hello!Project alone have an impressive arsenal of what must be over 50 idols, both retired and current. Then you take the other major organisations, such as that of AKB48 and Johnny's Entertainment, each with incredible aresenals of their own. But this is only a small portion of the market. There are plenty of smaller agencies, idols and such. Since the industry began forming in the 60s, there have been thousands of bright, young idols for fans to choose from. And, unlike regular celebrities who are often locked into a specific industry such as cinema or music, idols are much more versatile in their uses. They can do movies and dramas, animation, music, gravure modelling, television and, in some cases, adult video - each industry bringing in millions each year. For this reason I put it to you that the Japanese Idol industry is, itself, a multi-billion dollar industry in and of itself - and is in fact one of the largest in the world.

It is, however, extremely dependent on the other entertainment industries in Japan. An Idol can still exist with no ties to the music industry, but this industry itself only provides the Idols. Without the others, such as music and film, an idol industry could not exist. Luckily for us, it's existence is an incredibly stable one, and seems to be holding up in the global recession better than most - meaning our idols are safe... at least until no longer profitable.

And so, back to the topic at hand, in such a broad market how do we choose the product we want?

Well this depends entirely on who the 'customer' is, and perhaps just how new to the market they are. For example, a person who doesn't understand photography or the product market for SLR cameras might base their choice on something like resolution - in terms of megapixels. While a decent megapixel count is certainly important for a camera, it's the whole package which is important. Something you can't really put a number on. In much the same way, a newcommer to the Idol industry who, for the sake of arguement, discovered Morning Musume through their music. They are much more likely to base their initial choice of favourite member based on who can sing and whose voice they prefer. Or maybe even just based on looks.

And so, by applying the rules of the music industry alone to the group, you find that deciding on a favourite member is rather easy. You pick the one you think looks and sounds prettiest.

However. If you, like me, have been a fan for a while and have an understanding of the industry, you'll note that it isn't quite as easy as that. In this industry you can't base your choice solely on vocal talent or looks, but also on character, likeability, acting ability, whatever. Most importantly, if you can't understand and relate to your idol then you can't develop that unique wota-idol empathatic bond that is so vital to survival in the world of Idoling, for both the Idol and the fan.

Some people even take an idol's popularity into account. Choosing popular members in order to insure that they have lots of other fans to discuss even the most trivial bits of information about their idol with.  Or some might choose idols who, in their mind, are less popular in an attempt to stand out from the crowd and support an idol that they feel deserves more. It's alot easier to stand out and prove yourself as a fan when there are less people around you to drown out your voice, right?

And that brings me on to the next entry: Proving Ourselves.

Regarding my Yurei series

First off allow me to say this has been a wonderful Halloween. I've enjoyed doing research on and watching the movies that I have been writing about over the past week. Watching these movies is great, but it's writing about them that you really come to appreciate these works of art, I envy people who get to do it as a proffession.

However, I'd like to appologise now for failing to meet the expectations that I had for myself, and had promised to meet. I promised 7 movies, and had planned to deliver. However, as it got closer and closer to the deadline for these releases I found it increasingly difficult to cope. It's a combination of factors, some of which I'm to blame for, and others which were totally outwith my own control, that meant I fell short. I had started several of them too late, which wasn't helped by the fact I fell ill for several days the week before the series were due to start being published and didn't feel up to much but resting.

And then I had to start balancing work with other places, so at some points I was having to watch the movies and write the reviews, and then do my assignments for ICU-Subs at the same time in order to get it finished and not let down the people who are waiting to work on it when I'm finished my role down - which I'm still in the middle of.

In the end I ran out of time. The last one I published, Perfect Blue, was actually completed 3 hours later than I'd hoped to have it published. I had hoped to do two more, including the Ju-on movie featuring Kago Ai, over the last 2 days. But they remain incomplete. These may pop up later sometime in the future, but not having them done when I wanted them to be I'm rather dissapointed in myself.

However, now that the Halloween week is over, my priorities will return to the usual Idol-focused blogging. Keep an eye out for the two last Yurei reviews, but I'm afraid that it may be some time before I get around to completing them now that I don't have a schedule to try keep with them.

Thank you for reading the last five, assuming you did, however. I hope you enjoyed the ones I was able to put out.

Yurei: Perfect Blue

Another movie that isn't actually a Yurei horror, this one is interesting because it is the first, and likely to be the only, animated movie in this series.

Good evening, and welcome to part four of Berryz Kyuuden's horror week, reviewing seven of some of the greatest horror flicks to come out of Japan in the last decade or so. This time we're taking a look into the  1997 psychological mess that is Perfect Blue, directed  by Satoshi Kon and based loosely on a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi.

And when I say "psychological mess", I mean this is one terribly confusing movie. All of the movies I've done up til now have had fairly simple plotlines, even if alot of it remained unexplained to the viewer, this movie is intended to confuse the viewer in order to put them in a similiar situation as the main protagonist who begins to suffer from mental disorder and the movie gets progressively harder and harder to differentiate between what is reality and what is all inside the mind of our 'heroine'.

The movie is also the most relevant one in the series to what this blog is about, as our main character is a young idol named Mima, who is part of a 3-nin group known as CHAM! and decides to leave the group at the start of the movie in order to pursue a career as an actress. Sound familiar?

The movie opens with a CHAM! concert, at which Mima anounces that she will be graduating from the group after the concert, much to the fans dissapointment. However she does reveal that she is to take part in a direct-to-video drama series called "Double Bind". After leaving, she is given a fanletter which says "I'm always watching Mima's room. I put up a link to Mima's room." She gets confused by this, and clearly worried about someone stalking her, peeoping into her small apartment. This isn't helped when she soon recieves a silent call, which only the sound of breathing coming from the other end. Immediately afterwards she recieves an anonymous faxed letter calling her a traitor.

Later, while on set waiting to shoot her scene in her drama, she asks her manager Rumi about what the "Mima's room" fanletter meant, to which she is reassured that it's just a website. Just as the cameras are about to start rolling on her scene, however, one of her managers opens a letter that was intended for Mima which explodes in his hands, causing him injury - though not very severe.

A few days later Rumi pays Mima a visit in order to help her set up a computer and sign up to an ISP at Mima's request - something which Mima has no understanding of, being incredibly computer illiterate (to the point where she is confused by the term "double-click"). After several hours of Rumi teaching her how to use a computer she manages to type the url for Mima's Room into the address and brings up the webpage, and discovers it to be a blog which appears to be written by her, with an uncomoftably large amount of detail in there which is both slightly personal and correct. At first she laughs, but as she reads on she becomes more worried about the possibilty of a stalker.

Mima finally succeeds in getting larger role in her drama, however the role she is given is that of a rape victim in a strip club. Rumi warns her that if she plays the part her reputation as an idol could be irreperably damaged, but she volunteers to play the part regardless - saying that she is now an actress and not an idol. However, the atmosphere and nature of the scene traumatises her when she films it. When she returns home she hallucinates that her fish died and has a breakdown, revealing that she didn't really want to do the scene but was too scared to let everyone down. She sees an image of herself in the mirror, still wearing her CHAM costume talking back to her, but when she throws a pillow at the mirror she comes back to reality and the fish are still alive.

From this point on she becomes progressively madder and madder, and can no longer tell the difference between her business life and her hallucinations. Her life is further complicated when some of the people who change her image to the new, dirty Mima are brutally murdered throughout the movie. Me-Mania, the owner of Mima's Room turns out to be incredibly disillusioned, and possibly insane himself. In fact, it seems to be a madness shared between both Mima and Me-Mania, as Mima's alternate personality, the one who is still a member of CHAM, goes to Me-Mania and convinces him that Mima is actually an imposter.

Mima soon discovers evidence that point to her being the one responsible for the murders, and as she becomes crazier and crazier she starts to doubt her own innocence, and begins to believe that she could be responsible for the murders and unaware of it because it was a different personality responsible.

Soon Me-Mania approaches and attacks Mima with a knife. He claims that she is the imposter and the real Mima has been emailing him telling him that the "imposter" is in the way. So he plans to kill her. But just as he is about to, presumably, rape her first, she grabs a hammer and hits him with it, causing him to collapse. But when Rumi finds her, Mima tells her what happened. However, when they return to where she was attacked, Me-Mania is nowhere to be found.

It then turns out that Rumi is the false diarist, the one running Mima's room who herself has gone totally insane and thinks that she is the real Mima. She attacks Mima for much the same reason that Me-Mania did - noting that he had failed her which coincides with a brief shot showing Me-Mania and Mima's manager both found dead together when she tries to call him. Mima gets stabbed by Rumi, but manages to escape by jumping off her balcony and running away through the city. Mima eventually escapes by pushing Rumi's wig off and she chases it inside a shop window, impaling herself on the glass in the process. She stumbles on to the road and is just about hit by a truck before Mima saves her life, pushing her out of the way.

Rumi is then institutionalised with dissociative personality disorder. Mima, on the other hand, managed so sort her life and goes back to her normal life, continuing as an actress.

I hope that all made sense to you, because I'm only just starting to come to terms with it all now. I've actually seen this movie once before, a couple years ago, this is the second time watching. And this is the kind of movie where much of it doesn't make sense until you see it for the second time. I guess having an understanding of what is happening and what happens later helps you come to terms with what is reality and what isn't. But much of the movie was written with the idea of keeping you confused in mind. The director wanted you too feel like you were the one suffering from this mental disorder, and if you haven't seen the movie before, I imagine you will feel as confused as I did the first time.

Now, to be honest I can't really comment on what the music was like in this movie. There is the concert scene at the start, to which the music sung was decent enough for an idol otaku like me watching, but for most of the movie I was paying more attention to the plot, becuase I was worried if I missed anything I might get totally lost. So if there was any good music, I probably missed it.

Of course, the movie is an 18, and the theme of rape was present, and indeed a pivotal point in the story. So there was the nudity and the rape themes. So the fact that this is an animated movie really paid off there, because I'm sure Japanese censorship laws would have been slightly less forgiving if this was a live action movie, also some of the special effects work really well as animation - cheaper too. But even so, keep in mind that if you plan to watch this movie this halloween, it's not a family movie. You probably shouldn't watch it with your kids or your little sister.

Be sure to chime in again for the next part in the series. It's drawing to a close. We've only two more nights to go, and to be honest with you, I've no idea what I will be watching. However, until next time, goodnight.

Yurei: Uzumaki

Hello and welcome to night four of this serial review of some of the finest Japanese horror movies to grace our screen. This time we'll be looking at another artistic film in which symbolism features prominantly, the movie adaption of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, or Spiral.

Like many of these movies, Spiral soon went on to achieve cult status and garnered quite a following of both fans of the original manga and of film students who regularly analyse the movie's imagery and symbolism and ponder over what these mean. It's an incredible movie that I hadn't actually seen myself until it was suggested to me recently. I didn't really know what to expect, but what I found was incredible.

The movie is set in the small town of Kurozu, which seems to be inhabited by an array of unusual characters. But this only starts to be realised by our protagonist, a high school girl called Kirie, when she see's her boyfriend's father sitting in the street filming the shell of a snail with a video recorder, one of our first instances of the spiral that will later infest this movie like ants. This strange behaviour also seems to worry his son, as evidenced by the fact that he flatly asks her to elope with him, before dismissing the idea just as casually as he brought it up.

This uzumaki theme is fast continued when Kirie returns home that night to her own father, Goshima, who had just won an award for his pottery, and her boyfriend's father sitting discussing it. He ask Goshima to create a spiral-patterned platter for him, calling pottery the highest form of art and clearly fascinated by the rotation of the pottery wheel.

The next day at school Kirie is approached for the second time in two days by a male student who is stalking her, claiming that her boyfriend "is a drag" and that she should date him instead, because people would respect him more if he had a cute girlfriend. As she tries to escape from him, she proceeds onto the staircase - which, by no coincidence, I'm sure, happens to be a spiral - one student throws himself off of, killing himself. Suichi notes his father's obsession with spirals and theorises that the uzumaki was the reason the student died, and that it has taken over the entire town like a curse.

The degree of Suichi's father's obsession soon becomes evidenced when he climbs into a washing machine and is killed inside. His mother faints at the funeral when she notices whirling clouds in the sky which begin to spiral downwards, creating an effect not too dissimiliar from what a tornado looks like as it's forming. The "cyclone" spirals downwards until it hits Dragonfly Pond as Suichi's mother is being ambulanced to hospital.

While in the hospital waiting room Suichi once again tells Kirie that they need to escape the town before it's too late and the uzumaki curse gets to them. The two are then approached by Tamura Ichiro, a reporter who is curious as to why his father died. Suichi shows them the uzumaki tape that he was filming even as he died. But lots of things still remain unexplained, so he asks to keep the tape and continue to do research into the reason why the father killed himself.

The rest of the town all starts to go spiral mad. Suichi's mother develops an extreme phobia to anything uzumaki, as it reminds her of her husband and his odd obsession, and so she destroys any uzumaki she can find, including cutting her own finger tips because of the spiral-shaped fingerprints. When Tamura, who has been doing research on the case, calls them out to Dragonfly Pond to tell them his findings, they are interupted by Kirie's stalker who, distraught by the fact that she still chooses her boyfriend over him, claims "You will never forget me," and runs in front of Tamura's car, killing both in a horrific accident.

Following this Suichi's mother finally cracks when a large millipede sneaks into her room and tries to crawl into her ear and inhabit the spiral-shaped cochlea in the deepest part of the human ear. She then sees a hallucination of her husband who tells her to let him (the millipede) stay with her in that spiral part of the ear. Her spirophobia causes her to grab a shard of the smashed flower-vase, which she used to hit the millipede, and impale herself in the side of the head with it, effectively commiting suicide.

Finally the whole town succumbs to the uzumaki. The giant face of Suichi's father appears in the typhoon clouds, several of the students turn into giant snails and one self-obsessed girl's hair becomes a giant spiral pattern which extends out for several feet against gravity. And then Suichi himself, just as he and Kirie were about to escape, becomes an uzumaki, as his body begins to twist around, he then attacks Kirie and - we assume, killed her in some spiral-themed fashion.

The movie was strange and terrifying. The camera work is incredibly experimental, which obscure close up and angles, and camera motion which on multiple ocasions moves or rotates in a spiral. These all seem to be thrown in there for the sole purpose of making the viewer feel really incomfortable. There are alot of POV shots and alot of really random angles in there that really confuse you, it's not a natural style at all.

The acting is also a little forced and unnatural. Some characters like Suichi is incredibly flat and emotionless, while his father is at the opposite side of the spectrum and acts really weird and exxagerated. The only character in the movie who really comes close to acting naturally is Kirie, and ever she sometimes felt a little unusual. Nothing in this movie seems right or normal, and it's all that which comes together to create this strange, twisted movie - if you'll excuse the pun.

The movie also benefits from the fact that nothing was really explained. We know that the town is becomming obsessed with the uzumaki, and that the "uzumaki curse" is taking over, causing all manner of strange things to happen, but there is no logic or reason involved at all. It's possible that it's all happening in the mind of one of our characters, as the whole thing is certainly nightmare-ish, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

There are a lot of creepy sound effects involved as well. Particularly in the millipede scene. I've got my fair share of phobias when it comes to bugs and insects, so that scene was scary enough without the sound, but when they added that indescribably sound of the creature moving on top, it creeped the hell out of me.

Anyway, another night another movie. Be sure to check back again tommorow night for part five. Until next time, good night.