This time it's not fake.
After blogging a few days ago about the obviously fake "fan" who claimed to have spent $310,000 on AKB48 CDs, the internet has responded.
Now the real stuff is here, a deluge of cringing photos of boxes and piles of actual AKB48 CDs.
The fans buy bulk loads of CDs in order to extract the "votes" you can get from each CD. These can then be used in the "election", which is currently happening (and which Rino Sashihara looks set to win again, despite not even being a member of AKB48 any more).
This practice is encouraged by the AKB48 money men, who of course ...
As we know, AKB4 hottie Haruna Kojima is a face (and body) of Japanese lingerie brand Peach John.
The latest exploitative ad campaign features Haruna -- officially, according to the AKB rules, a virgin -- getting frigid in the ice. She freezes a foreign guy trying to make advances on her.
In the end, Haruna is seduced by a dashing foreigner who takes off her clothes. She then goes off arm-in-arm with the gaijin, no doubt to break some of those AKB rules on no sex before graduating.
The whole ad is a sort of pastiche of the Disney movie Frozen, which has been a phenomenal ...
It's election time and we don't mean for a new prime minister. It's AKB48 "General Election" time.
But with the biggest stars (no more Mariko Shinoda, Yuko Oshima or Atsuko Maeda) already out of the world's most populous music group, AKB48's star is beginning to wane and recent album sales have been lower.
In the annual general election, fans can buy votes -- yes, vote-rigging is legal in the music industry in Japan -- that come with CDs. This encourages the crazies to go, well, crazy.
One fan of minor member Juri Takahashi has allegedly gone so far as to purchase ¥31,502,400's ...
Our luscious lady this week is the young Mariya Nagao (永尾まりや). Born in 1994 in Kanagawa Prefecture, the twenty-year-old idol is a member of AKB48's K Team. I know, we are breaking our own rule of "no AKB idols are truly hot" but, hey, you live and learn.
Given her lowly rank in the AKB universe, Mariya isn't going to be hitting the big time for a while, but that doesn't stop her cute charms from working magic on our hearts... and other areas of the ...
A 55-year-old man interested only in money and exploiting scantily-clad teenagers in his quest to empty the wallets of naive otaku and corporations with tastes bad enough to agree to advertising campaigns featuring his minions -- Yasushi Akimoto, the producer behind AKB48 and all its spinoffs.
This is a man whose only goal is to make his company's bank account richer, no matter what depths he plumbs.
This is a man who still claims to be making "music" despite his constant pandering to the lowest denominator in the AKB48 music videos and ad campaigns (nothing wrong with porn, of course, ...
It was announced at a press conference yesterday (March 4th) that idol super group AKB48 is now recruiting a new member. Nothing new in that. The difference is that the new girl will be over 30!
For a limited time only (April 12th to August 31st), the new 30-plus girl will join the youthful ranks of Japan's largest money-spinning musical machine.
Applications for the Otona AKB48 Auditions (Adult AKB48 Auditions) are now open and close on March 28th. Anyone can apply as long as they are over 30; you can be married or single, professional or a total amateur.
So do you think we can ...
If you're a AKB48 fan, you are probably a vulnerable individual with money to burn and an appetite for over-priced merchandise.
And if you know someone like that or come into contact with them -- be warned. They may just steal your money.
As we know, otaku fans idol groups are famously willing to put themselves into serious debt in order to purchase thousands of CDs.
But this is taking things to almost mafia levels.
Kyoto police are now set to prosecute six men, all aged 20, who stole information from other people's credit cards so that they could buy nearly 500 CDs by the group ...
Every New Year in Japan much of the nation tunes into the five-hour singing show Kohaku Uta Gassen. This year featured the recently remarried (to yet another foreigner!) Ayumi Hamasaki as well as now regulars AKB48, who appeared as all 110 singers.
But there was a surprise for AKB fans. Yuko Oshima made the shock announcement that she would be graduating.
The twenty-five-year-old is a veteran from the Akiba idol group and is the latest in the most popular members to announce her departure. So far, only Atsuko Maeda has really been able to forge a post-AKB career.
Yuko didn't ...
Haruna Kojima, the 25-year-old AKB48 idol who we believe is the only major AKB girl with anything worth talking about, has released her first photo book "Kojiharu".
Just in time for Christmas, the book features a selection of hot images, not least one in which Haruna is doing her best to promote the AKB tradition of the te-bura -- or "hand bra".
AKB girls have a habit of doing this kind of shot, though at least this time there is no child involved.
Here are some luscious snaps from behind the scenes.
And just to prove how nice ...
We've been sitting on this story for a few days to see how it would pad out. And it just keeps on getting better and better.
The tabloid Shukan Bunshun has been publishing a series of photos of AKB48 manager Tomonobu Togasaki smoking (legal) drugs and meeting girls at love hotels.
Togasaki is photographed smoking H Zone 12th, a legal stimulant, in a stairwell of a posh bar in central Tokyo.
Though it is not suggested -- yet! -- that 40-year-old Togasaki has been grooming the hundreds of idols and wannabe idols he manages or auditions for his own sexual predilections, the tabloid has ...
