Sailor Moon Forum

Quoting my replying post from another forum (it's about this PV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sohrgaj_4Nw):


What do you think about it?

Sex sells.

Such a flat-out response.

Anygays, I read an article about MoMusu (about a year or two ago, but I think it's still valid), and it said that it'd be expectable for its tone to change into a more mature (read: sexy) way since all the "kids" had graduated and the newcomers were all about 18 or 20.

It's the truth, though.


I'm sure it hasn't escaped the attention of those in-charge that this can appeal to consumers outside of Japan as well.

you always don't need sex to sell

I always thought all the sex music videos would go to the Western World musicians...I saw a lot of them during New Years Eve when they were showing the top 100 songs of 2011 (Aria that is)
Now J-pop musicians are doing it too...this is just sad...really sad...thank god I listen to 90s J-pop and only a small number of today's J-pop artists

Sex has always kind of been selling in music since the 80s or 90s I think. It's a common theme for lyrics and image for music and it has been doing that for years.

The only styles of music that I know(so far) that deal with sex in their music are rap, rock, pop, death metal and heavy metal.

Alot of music they do it.

Listen to GG. They usually have clean lyrics.

I don't think J pop is going anywhere, nor do I think that the industry is doomed. The XXX48 groups are catering to a niche. It's like anime - there's the typical fanservice anime, the fujoshi anime, the Gundam-esque anime, the super shounen adverture-y type anime, etc. every season. They're trying to cater to the different types of people out there. Same thing with every other type of music out there - there are singers that cuss, singers that strip, and singers that do none of these things. In other words, there's something and someone for everyone.

The problem isn't that they use sex as a theme in the song &/or its PV at all - as you see in my quote in the OP, the poster I replied to loves sexy stuff himself & is an expert on the gravure industry - but that it's done so cheaply, so unthinkingly, so tastelessly...in a word, so stupidly, if not even disgustingly.


That's always true, of course, but the current worrying trend is that they seem to be not only going mainstream, but gonna dominate the J-pop scene, if not already so - now that's unhealthy, for both J-pop & the nation.

Entertainment always goes in phases. Remember when the Backstreet Boys and 98 degrees were super popular in the US in the late 1990s and it seemed like every other week that some new boy group would form and they'd be pimped out on MTV as the next, greatest thing? Same thing here. Right now, stripping and sexiness is selling big time and so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. A year or two from now, something else will come along, and then everyone else will try to imitate that.

Life imitates art.

Perhaps the nation explores publicly something of a taboo?

I hope it's not gonna turn even worse in the next phase - that's why I formulated the thread title as a question. But my worry doesn't just come from this, but also from other phenomenons I've seen in the industry, & when they're considered together, it really seems that J-pop is now running downhill. Of course, you can always say that everything has ups & downs, which's true - I just hope it could go back up ASAP.


I see desperateness, especially of the industry, tho, & I'm not even talking about the national mentality here.

Just image googled sdn48. How is this group competing with K-pop artists?

They can't, in both their looks & musical/performance skills - that's why they've to resort to (cheap) sexual appeals. However, some right-wing groups (I'd call them the J-Tea-Party ) have staged public protests against K-artists recently, & it really looks ugly to me.

Just watching some music videos. I don't think they should be compared to K-pop artist though.



Just watched BBC recently. I'm surprised K-pop is huge in Japan. I don't think these conservative right-wing groups can win though. The young Japanese have already been brainwashed. Also Korean restaurants have been popping up like mushrooms there. Kind of liked the milk tea bars here.

Edit:
After checking out 4 music vids I like this the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lA9IX7VwBs

As consumers of entertainment, they're mostly concerned about product quality/satisfaction, not nationalism/xenophobia.

[EDIT]

Well, I've joked in the past that J-entertainment & J-porn are the two remaining pillars of the Japanese economy - now they even seem to have merged.

I haven't enjoyed American music since the end of the 1990s. There's been very few 'good' songs that I've really enjoyed and wanted to listen to more than once. I feel that music goes in cycles...there's a wave you might enjoy, and then when that's over, the next wave could seem like a let down. I loved the whole British movement in alternative music in the 1990s. It was a new sound, with good lyrics to keep it going. Didn't like the boy bands of the late 1990s, and I don't like the Justin Bieber-esque stuff now.

I wish there was more exposure to J and K pop in the states. If it isn't on an anime, most people don't know about it...and even then, we're dependent on illegal downloads for the music since Itunes US doesn't have the much of it, or we're forced to buy a Japanese Itunes card so we can buy it legally. I ended up doing that. On my last trip to Japan in 2010, I loved this one song I kept hearing (Tee's "Baby I love you", in case you're curious) and the only feasible way for me to get it was to purchase the Japanese Itunes card and create a Japanese Itunes account. Fortunately, if you buy stuff on foriegn Itunes, you can use it on your US one and sync everything together.

^ There're still many good, quality stuff in J-pop, especially the older ones.

Saying that Kpop is dominating in Japan is kind of an overstatement. Of course there are a few extremely well known and loved groups but there are only a small number of those. There are a large number of Kpop groups in Japan that are considered very obscure there.

I happen to be a humongous AKB48 fan and I also like SDN48. SDN48 is sadly ending in March but I loved most of their songs, they were never extremely popular but sold pretty well. Most people have to understand that they were originally promoted to be the sexy version of AKB48, more mature and sexual idols. From the start every SDN member was over 18 and you have to be over 18 to watch the shows at their theater(now they do some all age shows with toned down dancing and MC). It clearly was never advertised to children or "families" so they should never be compared to Korean groups.

As for AKB48, they are marketed to anyone who will listen, with their super fans being adult males. While they're not even comparable to Kpop groups considering their extremely diffent concepts, they're a much better comparison with them.

All these XXX48 groups in Japan are just a fad that will last maybe 10 years tops, as the producer wants to open one in every major city. Kpop in Japan is also a fad that will only last a few more years.

And there's no downfall in Jpop considering the extremely well CD sales this year. All the top 5 singles of 2011 were AKB48 with them all selling over 1 million copies each and 3 of them sold 1 million copies in one day. That's never a possibility for Kpop stars and is achievable for American singers because they're CDs are sold all around the world, not in just one country.

lol sorry it's so long I must have alot of feelings about this.

^ As you're a fan of them I can totally understand that.

I do have been largely aware of what you said in the preceding post, but the issue I've raised on this thread is essentially a quality issue rather than a monetary revenue one (which does also have fallen dramatically industry-overall in the recent years or even the last decade when compared to those J-pop heydays before it), hence the fact that the XXX48s sell, which they do, is actually in itself the problem.

I'm not saying that they, nor the concepts behind them, are all bad, of course (I've actually linked several of their music clips myself on the page linked in my sig below ), but their recent accelerating slip into the cheap sexual appeal dept. (not just the SDNs, but the AKBs, too!) or even lolicon dept. (such as the HKTs) does look a bit unappetizing/worrying to me & even that gravure idol expert-fan I replied to in the OP quote, as well as some Japanese themselves.

I agree that it's certainly a fad, but like what I've said above, I just hope it wouldn't be a prelude to an even worse one after its demise, but instead a big turnaround renaissance in the J-pop scene.

Why has no one mentioned Koda Kumi yet? She's been doing the whole overtly sexualized thing for nearly 10 years and she's on the top 50 best selling Japanese artists of all time. I don't think being sexually appealing is any indication of the downfall of j-pop. And I think people are being way too conservative about the issue of sexuality.

You also have to understand sales in general have been in decline for some time, especially in Japan. These days, Ayumi Hamasaki still tops charts but she's only selling about 100,000 copies the first week. 10 years ago, she was breaking 1 mill the first week.

As I've already said above, the problem isn't the use of sex as a theme itself, but the way they use it. It has nothing to do w/ how much flesh is exposed either - hypothetically, I'd even have no problem in seeing full nudity on a PV if it's done in a classy, tasteful way, & the artist & PV aren't targeted at (& the artist not affiliated in any way to a group targeted at) a very young or general audience. Koda, whom I also like, & her image are always targeted at a mature, adult audience, & she's never positioned herself as a national idol like the Morning Musume or, currently, the XXX48s.


That's actually what I referred to in my remark about monetary revenue in the preceding post.

Then I clearly need to read better. My apologies



I always thought those idol groups were targeting the otaku crowd: those obsessive basement dweller types that have odd fetishes such as school girls, lolis, and moe. Either way, groups like Morning Musume and AKB48 are a mockery to music. They are nothing more than a product, the girls have no talent, are robots to the industry, have no part in the composition or lyrics, and are swapped out every few years and generally become nothing after that. I wouldn't take either group or groups like them seriously. They're fads built by the industry in an attempt to cash out with the schoolgirl fetish.

But in spite of all of that, the J-pop hierarchy has a lot of real talent at the top (Ayu, Kumi, Namie Amuro, Hikki if she ever comes back from Hiatus, and plenty more) and I don't think it'll be crashing any time soon.

That's also true ("AKB" stands for Akihabara, the sacred site of otaku nowadays & where AKB48 originated - they & their sister groups still perform at their theater there), but they're also targeted at the general public after they've gone mainstream, & in any case the line between otaku culture & youngster culture is blurring fast nowadays, as many aspects of otaku culture have also entered into mainstream culture.


Agreed to all that, but the problem is that, like what I said above, they've now crossed over into the mainstream w/ their members acting in ordinary dramas/movies & appearing on CMs of general products, their merchandise targeted at the whole nation, etc. So it's now concerning w/ the nation instead of just the weirdos, unless the entire nation has become the weirdos.

[EDIT]

Nor do I - I'm just seeing some worrying trends which may or may not turn worse.

There are all sorts of gimmicky groups like this everywhere, though. Soon, they'll fade back into obscurity.

Take the American pop group, The Pussycat Dolls. They were a popular thing maybe 5 years ago. There was no real leader, they were controlled by their label in every aspect, the girls were swapped out every so often, and wore as little as possible on stage without being cited for public indecency. Fast-forward to now, nobody remembers a damn thing about them. AKB48 will end up the same way.

I find this quit sad, especially for Japanese artist who can actually sing, have talent and write their own stuff and aren't the only one ideal of beauty AKB48 shows(light skin, 92 lbs, big eyed) and AKB48 and all their subgroups alot of them have been topping the charts in 2011 so they have made it to mainstream their in commercials. dramas and etc and I read somewhere about their fans alot of them arent just older men but both young boys and girls, and what kind of message is AKB48 sending to them?
and that video you posted Rika-Chicchi I agree it wanst classy sexy at all it was pretty trashy and tasteless


it just suprises me how people can get so many 1's on a music chart yet can't sing and so much recognition when their really not anything

They've got one significant thing I've found different from those we've-seen-all-too-often gimmicky groups you mentioned, tho - even after their demise, which I suspect won't happen anytime soon, they could've already steered J-pop to a direction modeled on them, if not even worse. Many gimmicky groups have also appeared & then disappeared (quickly) in the J-pop scene throughout the decades, but when you see major national press like Asahi Shimbun devoting a whole page discussing the AKB48 phenomenon, & even international press like International Herald Tribune (or Financial Times - can't remember ATM) also analyzing it (in an albeit smaller article space), you know there's some important difference this time.


They've already become national idols representing the country, like Morning Musume in the past, which've now been eclipsed by them, even tho the latter were initially (albeit incorrectly) seen as a copycat/bootleg of the former. Some of their members have also been sent to my country to rally for donations for the Mar. quake/tsunami in northeast Japan last year.


I've to admit that they & their concept do make good business sense, tho, as they're evidently a thriving multimedia business nowadays.

Not to fear. The leading ladies of J-Pop will keep everything in check ^____^;

I hope so, but the AKB girls, as a group, might become the de facto leading ladies of J-pop, if not already so.