Beckii Schoolgirl Superstar : Japanese Idol
Tue 2010/08/17 23:22 JST
Suprised this hasn't been posted already, unless I missed it, but recently there was a program on about a girl from the UK/English island The Isle of Man. The show was on one of the BBC Channels (One of the main English channels in the UK), and is about a girl who became some massive idol in Japan. I'd never even heard of her. Interesting watch, and shines a little bit of light about Japanes culture upon normal people, nothing new to us really, though. I imagine many on here will know who she is. I don't and im from the same country -.-
Link to Youtube movie, as not sure if everyone will be able to watch it on the actual website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGsUykdNtAA
Enjoy!
I watched this last night on BBC iPlayer. She comes across as a pretty normal kid if a little vacuous and naive.
..She is only 14, give her a LITTLE break :P Although on camera she did seem a little...I dunno...batty.
..Although I suppose it's still better than going around knifing people.
Well that's more or less what I meant, and fair enough she's 14. What a weird situation for her to be in though :P
as i told my sister yesterday after watching this prog, that could have been u but u just had to give up japanese lesson and take football as a hobby - now she's injured.
it was so funny when she met that sumo wrestler and that thai boxing camp dressed as marisa from touhou lol, she must have thought what is that man doing dressed as a witch, am i dorothy....
her parents have to thank torrents, anime, youtube, and ... THE INTERWEBS!!
hehe now she can afford any anime and manga merchandise she ones xD;
good for her!
enjoy it while u still can, beckii. i think i've seen her vids earlier this year. move over, emma watson :3
Fair play to her and her family, it'll pay for her college, but I'll be amazed if it goes any further than that. Internet fame doesn't convert into very much long term real money.
Her single died without a trace (autotune can only do so much) so she'll probably have 1 season of convention sing-a-longs and that'll be that.
Any longer and the hardcore otaku would start to screw with her head anyway.
Agreed, internet fame doesn't last too long.
But in the event that it does, she'll start to realize that most of her fans aren't exactly.........normal.
She wont make enough for her college tbh, talked to someone in the industry before, the people who wrote the songs and the producer will get most of the money, the singer will get very little from each album she sell. lastly, from well informed sources shes apparently gotten an UK manager which is abit weird, since tbh, she wont sell a single album in the UK since we got have this idol fad within the country...
Some of the things she talked about in that show was rather rude to the japanese people and her own fanbase (which isnt a good idea, lol). shes 14 and naive as hell and she doesnt know what kind of industry shes getting into...
for example, Aya Hirano recently mentioned on a late night TV show and breifly mentioned about how she likes to date older guys, just this little comment got her fans fueled with pure rage and its everywhere on 2chan, her albums getting burnt and smashed, pictures and posters of her getting drawn on...(Source: http://kotaku.com/5606155/voice-actress-pisses-off-otaku)
she's 14, I cant wait till when shes older (if she can keep her fame up that is) and she might end up in JAVs like some REALLY famous idols like Ai Kago(ex Morning Mosume girl, very popular, touched a ciggy + going out with a middle age man = career downhill and now, shes in JAV)
I thought it was hilarious when she received a huuuuge box full of instant noodles as a gift from her #1 fan. Her Dad seemed to really want to make the most out of it - setting money goals for the first year and everything - although the amounts weren't actually very high. It was pretty weird watching the other girls realise that most of their viewers were middle aged men.
I enjoyed the documentary and I say Good Luck to her, you never know... :)
Maybe this'll make her mature up and actually try to pursue a career in singing/dancing, who knows.
However a darker side of me says otherwise....
I can't help but feel bad for Beckii. She's a kid and the otaku fanbase that follows isn't exactly rational. That article from kotaku really brings up some points that are disturbing, especially when applied to Beckii.
"She's an idol. And idols are not supposed to be normal girls, but an unattainable ideal." No one is perfect, certainly not at 14. Nor should they be!
I hope for her sake her parents get wise to some of the downsides of pushing their daughter into that and back off it. She's going to date (like every normal girl) at some point, and god forbid the fans find out. Some people are delusional and will flip out over it, I'm sure. She should be able to live without that kind of pressure at that age. That's just not a normal way to grow up. If she were 10 years older and making these choices I'd find it less worrisome, but she's a little girl.
It's interesting to see in the documentary that her father at first is very protective (as he's a policeman), but then transitions into a money hungry father. Evident in the line that roughly went like, "we would like to bring in the money for us, I mean for her."
Only on BCC would they have bullying occuring on the show itself.
I agree with those in the post that say her fame will soon die out, as do most internet fame that don't make it to world scale.
Cool, internet fame! :D
She should really be think carefully of what she's getting herself into lol.
Those old men out there may not want just to be a FAN. muhuhuhhu~
Good luck to her career though, maybe she should start producing her own songs?
Mind you, I haven't seen the Documentary on iPlayer. And I here "Naive" thrown about...
I knew who she was, but didn't remember the name right away, remembered her from Danny's post mainly, my mum had to prompt me and tell me it was on XD, she only watched cos she met someone from the Isle of Man the week before, one of the parents of a kid who goes to the same school or something.
They could have made Japan come off alot worse than they did. So I am glad. Why use the dubbed Haruhi though... its painful XD
When she first got noticed, since I was already in Japan, I heard about her. She did some commercials I saw. I thought it was disturbing then, and I think it is disturbing now. And t speaks more to the darkside of internet meme power than it says much about Beckii. I don't really think she's exceptional. No insult meant, at 14, she should be average. Because I see no way this ends except badly.
That's what I thought too, really. I couldn't see WHAT she did exactly to become so big...she just copied MANY others...Just seems more like a "I recognise you!!" type of thing. But somehow she gets in Magazines and all sorts. Strange...
Beckii dai kirai~ D':