Episode 57: What’s your H!P ratio?

My guest for this episode was Ellie, the girl group fan. We discussed a wide range of topics loosely centering around the question of what happens when K-Pop meets J-Pop.

The conflict between the two sides of international Asian pop fandom was encapsulated this week with an incident that popped off after we recorded: TikToks from a foreign indie J-Pop idol group calling themselves Sorb3t started spreading among anglosphere K-Pop fans, who simply did not understand what they were watching. (A particular point of contention was the (correct) Japanese pronunciation of ストロベリー (lit. “strawberry,” an English loan word.))

Unfortunately, conflicts like this will become more and more common as we get closer and closer to something I’ll call the Idol Singularity™ , a concept I float towards the end of the episode. As Japanese groups like Jo1 start appearing on MNET and AKB48 debuts on Weverse, it seems to me that for better or worse we’re creeping closer and closer to having a single, global idol market. It’s not just mistranslations (something we discuss in the episode) and cultural misunderstandings. Watch the beginning of this video of Japanese idol group NiziU performing in Korea and you’ll see what appear to be two Japanese fans hiding their faces with their uchiwa. Filming faces of fans is something common in K-Pop but much less normalized in Japanese media.

And thanks to the pathetic state of what I’ll call “K-Pop journalism” (along with the joke that is “K-Pop Academia”) and the lack of access to Japanese materials in English, idol fans outside of Asia are given little to no help in navigating these very real cultural differences.

Some of the things we discuss in the episode are:

• The Sailor Moon cosplay video set to “Gee”

• An article on “influencer houses” in LA.

• The Produce 101 vote rigging scandal and fan theories…

• The idea of the single-company trainee “survival show” dates back at least as far as 2006 with BigBang and BIGBANG The Beginning. What made the Produce series (and now the Planet series) so compelling was the mashup of trainees from various companies along with debuted idols from various groups.

• Rocket Punch, featuring Takahashi Juri, ex-AKB48.

• Le Sserafim, featuring two former members of the Produce 48 group Iz*One: Miyawaki Sakura, also ex-HKT-48, and Kim Chae-won

• Hikaru from Kep1er (the Girls Planet 999 group), who is the CL stan.

• Yuki (ex-Judy and Mary) is still queen of squeaky voices.

• ZeroBaseOne and the Chinese slang for seme and uke. The member who is a former BL actor is Kim Ji-Woong and he recently collaborated with the openly gay idol, Holland. And the video where the creator predicted almost the entire lineup after watching one episode.

• The article from the New York Times about Korean women forced into prostitution for American soldiers and an older article about Japanese women facing the same fate in Japan after World War 2. There is also the issue of the Lai Dai Han in Vietnam, bride trafficking across the region (including Korea), and so on...

• I theorize in the episode that a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment among newer K-Pop fans who have absolutely no ties to Asia stems from the infamous “BTS White Paper Project.” Feel free to read it yourself and decide whether or not it was a good idea to fuel the flames of the backlash against the group.

• The sadly deleted but gleefully dunked on tweet about “Japanese bitches.”

• The very cute picture of BlackPink’s Lisa and Billie Eilish.

• The group I couldn’t remember the name of was Psychic Fever and they’re great!

• Hybe and their Voice AI technology.

• AKB48 and the “virtual member”. (AKB48 paved the way!)

• The NGT48 incident… and fallout of the incident.

• YouTube channel of Super-idol Sashihara Rino

• And the SHINee vs BBC Sherlock controversy on Tumblr.

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The songs played are:

1. “TT” by Twice (Official MV)

2. “Butter” by BTS (Official MV)

3. “Love Machine” by Morning Musume (Official MV)

4. “Gee” by Girls Generation (Official MV feat. Minho!)

5. “Flash” by X1 (RIP) (Official MV)

6. “Shaba Daba Do” by Michishige Sayumi (Official MV)

7. “Sakuranbo” by Junsu (I love this cover!)

8. “Ｗ●ＲＫ” by millennium parade × 椎名林檎 (Official MV)

9. “Imitation Rain” by SixTones (Live on First Take; one of the best vocal J-Pop idol groups!)

10. “Romeo + Juliette” by SHINee

11. “A Late Bloomer” by ANGERME (Official MV)

12. “Cheetah” by Jackson Wang (Official MV)

13. “Delicious” by Snow Man

14. “Let’s Music” by Sexy Zone (Official MV)

15. “How You Like That” by BlackPink (Official MV)

16. “Fantastic Baby” by BigBang (Live in Osaka 2016)

17. “Ring Ding Dong” by SHINee (Official MV)

18. “View” by SHINee (Official MV)

19. “Twinkle Twinkle A.B.C-Z” by A.B.C-Z (Official MV)

20. “Attention” by NewJeans (Official MV)

21. “Sherlock (Clue + Note)” (Official MV)