The new AKB48 2013 iDoll Calendar turns your (least?) favorite ubiquitous otaku idols into dolls, complete with paper kami pantsu (literally, god panties -- a play on how "kami" can mean both "paper" and "god"), which kind of resemble diapers.
On sale from November 30th, the big highlight here is that the ladies have been photographed like they are figurines in a doll's house.
Each calendar set features "customize" seals, so you can change the girls' clothes and outfit, and move them around the image as you wish.
You can cut out large pictures of the girls in their ...
Following the revelation that singer and actor ISSA had been having an affair with AKB48's Yuka Masuda, his finance, actress and model Sachiko "Judy" Fukumoto (30) has announced via Twitter.
This is what ISSA will no longer be getting up close and personal with.
Fukumoto was born in America and brought up in Okinawa, hence her slightly non-Japanese (but very lovely) style.
The affair, which cost Yuka Masuda her job in AKB48, presumably can continue now and ISSA can console himself with Yuka's younger ...
One of the hotter members of AKB48 (a group full, with the notable exceptions of Rie Kitahara and Haruna Kojima, of essentially banal looking girls stuffed down us unfortunate Japanese's throats daily with frequently sickening consequences), Yuka Masuda, has been forced to quit her "illustrious" career after it was revealed she was sleeping another minor celebrity, ISSA.
The couple met while working together in a musical earlier in the autumn.
Her agency continues to deny her relationship with ISSA but she has as good as admitted her abhorrent sin of having sex by announcing her sudden ...
The facade of the ultra-management suffocating the scores of young girls populating super business music group AKB48 is collapsing even more.
Sexy Rumi Yonezawa, who left the group in 2012 after pictures with a guy leaked on her private Twitter account as well as posts admitting she had a boyfriend and was even looking for a sex friend.
Rumi has since started her new career as an actress. This December she will be starring in a movie as a call girl. She has come a long way since joining the AKB girls in 2007!
"My time at AKB was tough. It's a group that is always working. The ...
In the latest example of their marketing stunts, AKB48 and their busy corporate strategists have teamed up with pinball gambling chain Kyoraku to produce a special AKB48 pachinko machine.
It will stream 12 of the pop band's "songs" to brain-dead gamblers while they whittle what little money the economy allows them down the tube of the infamous bottomless pit that is pachinko.
The pachinko machine is being promoted by "Team Surprise", a cross-team mix of AKB slaves formed just for lucky Kyoraku. Hell, it even includes exiled hottie Rino Sashihara, now languishing in ...
One of the Japanese tabloids is currently running pics apparently of former AKB48 idol Atsuko Maeda looking drunk, dishevelled and generally not very cute.
She is with some guy (apparently an actor) in rather dubious circumstances, and is even seemingly photographed being carried to a waiting car possibly without any underwear on.
Tabloids are not famed for their integrity or honesty, so we cannot vouch for the veracity of the details, but we do like a juicy scandal when we sense ...
The end of the year might still be months away but the merchandising machine knows no time limits for AKB48, whose new official 2013 calendar promises to include "god panties".
Needless to say, these are not real Japanese used panties but some sort of strange underwear advertised as both "eco" and "erotic". They are even made of paper!
The lucky purchasers of the Akiba ladies' newest product will also be rewarded with a clear plastic file, a poster and some "live" photos of random members.
Reservations to get a copy start on October 31st.
Needless to say, this is being ...
Just when you think Yasushi Akimoto and his minions cannot go any further... they do.
AKB48's latest sell-out, a TV commercial for Puccho, sees them dancing to the sounds of their own "music" as they eat the product being advertised. But, this being AKB, nothing is simple and everything is queasy.
The heads of the young girls are pasted in the Most Obvious Photoshopping of the Year Award-winning style onto the bodies of dancing children. Yes, children. This time there is no mistake.
We simply cannot fathom what ad agency chicanery came up with the concept that the ...
After police predicted an unprecedented amount of fans would gather, the last chance to "meet" Atsuko Maeda while she is still a member of terrible pop "music" band AKB48 has been cancelled at the last moment.
On August 20th some five hundred thousand people were in Ginza to watch the victory parade of Japan's returning Olympians (despite many of them putting in slightly mediocre performances). Not sure if half a million were expected to witness pre-solo career Atsuko head to her swan song concert at the AKB theater in Akihabara, but apparently public safety fears prompted a change in ...
Another one bites the dust. Yuko Sugamoto from HKT48, the Fukuoka spin-off of AKB48, has announced she is quitting. It is an open secret that this is due to her management finding out about a "relationship" she had, including possibly drinking and smoking with a fan.
However, the official line is that all she did was exchange email addresses and answer a mail... which hardly seems taboo-breaking to us.
Japanese girls are just not allowed to have relationships if they are in an idol group. Heaven forbid that reality infringe on the "pure" fantasy that their management have crafted so ...
