Quote:
Originally Posted by sa547
Good Lord, have you people forgotten how Tsutomo Miyazaki nearly destroyed anime?
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I guess I missed the part in the story about Minegishi committing several murders after shaving her head.
What on earth does the Miyazaki case have to do with these events? Do you think an AKB48 girl having a boyfriend, or heaven forbid even sleeping with him, is somehow going to "destroy" AKB48, idol singers, or the J-Pop industry?
The only encouraging bit from the BBC's report is that even some of the fans have started to speak out against this nonsense. Rules limiting the behavior of the underage girls in these groups for their own protection is one thing. Telling adult women in their twenties that they can't even date so as "not to shatter their fans' illusions," as the BBC story put it, is another thing entirely. The fans need to grow up, and the organization needs to become less patriarchal.
And, no, I don't think it matters if their professional persona is based on cuteness. How someone appears on stage and how they live their lives are two separate worlds. I'm reminded of the divergence between the on-screen and off-screen personas of Lucky*Channel's "navigator,"
Kogami Akira, "cute as a button and pure as snow" as she describes herself. Right.