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akb48

Otaku band AKB48 morphs into $200M business

What if the vice president of your university were a genius producer who had put together an insanely successful pop group of 90 singers and then approved the creation of identical doll versions of them?

Weird? Not for Kyoto University of Art and Design and Yasushi Akimoto, the Steve Jobs of otaku (supergeeks) in Japan. The school just hosted a hit exhibition of dolls based on the gals in the band he produces, AKB48.

At 90 members, AKB48 is the Guinness-certified world's largest pop band. Its members are all females in their teens and early twenties, and all its bubble-gum singles top the charts on the day of their release.

The music is, shall we say, an aquired taste; it sounds like arcade game tunes drenched in a massive one-part vocal harmony. Yet intense otaku fandom has lifted the hydra-headed, miniskirted band to the highest levels of Japanese acceptability. It's even acting as Japan's unofficial representative in China. … Read more

Fans surprised to learn Japanese pop idol isn't real

Japanese geekdom was reportedly shocked of late to learn that the newest member of AKB48, an all-girl idol band with a rotating roster of fresh teen faces, isn't human.

According to her official profile, Aimi Eguchi is a 16-year-old from Saitama, north of Tokyo. Her looks might have earned her the prominent spot in confectioner Ezaki Glico's ad for Ice no Mi candy balls (see below)--if only she weren't a computer-generated composite.

Eguchi's appearance caused a stir among fanboys, and she even appeared in Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy. But their excitement soured when Glico confirmed she's fake, according to a Channel News Asia report.

Her face was fashioned from the features of six other band members, as you can see in this video.

I'm not a fan of AKB-47 or its 60-odd human members, and I was astounded to see grown men lining up to see them perform at a theater in Akihabara, Tokyo. Still, I have to give credit to Eguchi's creators for the verisimilitude of their work. … Read more