AKB48: How I came to love them.

So I’ve finished watching the 4^th Senbatsu Election. And boy, what a rollercoaster of emotions I’ve felt watching that 4-hour-ish streaming event. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. Going on tokyohive and comment like crazy on their page with the fans while anxiously waiting for the ranking to begin, complaining alongside them when a member did not get the ranking that they deserved, crying when the members were crying out of joy for the ranking they received, being amused when a member pulled a bitchface because they weren’t happy with what they got (I’m looking at you, Takajo) and clapping and crying again when Mariko made her epic speech about the senior passing their seed to their younger members.

Normally when I see a Senbatsu Election on tokyohive I ignored it (mostly because I wasn’t a fan of them), then finally decided to read it a few days after the actual election, nodded that Maeda grabbed the number one spot again and moved on with my life. But I’ve been moody these past few weeks, and seeing as I’ve followed the majority of the episodes and snippets of AKB enough to know half of the members (or at least their faces) during my semester break because I have nothing to do, I’ve succumbed to watching the streaming event of the election.

I never I could have this much emotional affection for a group that I could not cared less a few months, and I’m not usually one to hold so much emotional attachment for a group, especially not a J-Pop group as bubblegum pop and mainstream as AKB48. I guess my sudden love and respect for them stemmed from the fact that I’ve been going through emotional withdrawal, from my results, my doubts in regards to my studies and my overall life in university. I’ll get more to that later.

The first time I came across AKB48 was a random click on youtube, and then stumbling across one of their singles, Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou. It had subtitles, so I understood what the song was about. That song was instant love for me, because I was in high school at the time, and was bullied by a nasty girl and this song helped me through some tough times. Yet I could not get into them, because I didn’t understand their appeal despite the fact that I was also into Morning Musume at the time, and it was the time when I started listening to K-Pop. Even though both Morning Musume and AKB48 are idol groups and aimed towards wotas, Morning Musume (the old one with the 4^th gen à 9^th gen) still had half of the members who can actually sing and bring awesome stage performances and bring in fangirls like me. Arguably, AKB lip-sync half of their performances. I know the appeal of idol groups isn’t whether they can sing live or not, but it’s pretty obvious that only a couple of these members out of the 48++ can sing.

But that wasn’t the point. Idols are idols. They are made to be adored, talented or not. Aki-P created a girlgroup that wasn’t perfect, the exact imagery of what J-pop is about, ‘jack of all trades, master of none’, and that’s exactly where idols in the J-music industry have done right and K-pop still needs to understand, even though I’ve been a fan of it for years. Seeing AKBingo made me realize while they still keep everything behind closed doors in favour of ‘saving face’, there’s still plenty of rivalry and cattiness that goes on. Anyone who watches the game segment on AKBingo, where they played the game Shoujiki Shouji, would know what I’m talking about. As a girl, I find this much more relatable to watch as compared to seeing girlgroups in K-Pop on a variety, especially when it’s notorious for being scripted and idols In Korea always felt like they’re walking on thin ice because just one single unfavorable comment can be blown out of proportion.

It wasn’t this year that I realized my love for AKB had heightened, and to be exact during my semester break. You’d think that after watching Heavy Rotation I’d be turned off, but I didn’t. It wasn’t because all 48++ members were superbly talented, or these grand supermodels or the fact that their fanservice was turned up to eleven. It’s because these girls are everyday girls that you see on the street. When I followed them through their documentaries, their performances and their variety shows I came to realize that these girls work so hard to be where they are, yet some people do not give them a time of day. And in some ways, whenever I see these girls crying and pouring their hearts and souls into being an idol, I pictured myself striving so hard to be a journalist.

Not gonna lie, I’ve been feeling under the weather because of my struggles to public speaking, having a crappy partner for my project and recently my result. I'm already in my third year, and seeing as my CGPA dropped it was disheartening. All that amount of effort I put into studying seemed so wasted, because no matter how smart I think I am at this subject, how hard or how much I prayed for a perfect grade, I will never be satisfied because I always felt as though I could never reach the exact result that I wanted. And then when I heard that my friends also did not have the results that they wanted, I cried, because the guilt that I was being unsatisfied with my own result while my friends were held back was overwhelming. I couldn’t decided whether I was sad for myself or my friends. I wasn’t thankful, yet I was still sad because it still wasn’t the result that I wanted. There were so many emotions.

So when I saw the Senbatsu Election, and how much they cried when the members found out they were set back a few ranks, and then having Matsui Jurina beat out Rena when Rena had been steadily topping over Jurina. The whole experience of watching it live, hearing their thankful speeches and their woeful tears at not being able to rank higher, was absolutely moving to me, because it mirrored how I felt, or feel. Because the efforts that you put out will not match the results you wanted. Life just doesn’t work that way. And yet no matter what you should never give up. Because these are everyday girls, and spending amount of energy performing on theatres, going to lessons while still finding the time to go to school made me realize that I actually have a lot of growing up to do.

I know K-Pop idols work just as hard, becoming trainees for years and not even knowing when to debut. And when you finally debut you will have to face tons of antifans, eagle-eyed netizens who will constantly find even the littlest thing that’s wrong with you. Yet the one reason why I still find myself peeved when it comes to K-Pop is that they, the society itself strive so hard for perfection that certain things just comes off fake and manufactured. AKB might’ve been idols, and they certainly are not perfect, but that’s the exact reason why they seem so appealing to a lot of fans. I’ve reached a stage where I know not everyone in AKB48 are talented, but merely hard workers.

Anyways, I’m glad I took the time to learn a lot of things about AKB during my break. I’m not going to go ahead and say they saved my life or something, because that’s ridiculous. But I will go ahead and say that as a girl, they became sort of my inspiration. I'm sad that Maeda had to go, since she was my oshimen, but I supposed she wanted to move on. Here’s my all-time favourite song by them, Ponytail to Shushu.