How did I actually get here?
Well, in my case, i arrived in this fandom via the popular 'Anime and Manga Method'.
When I was in my final year at primary school, aged 11, my friend told me about some cartoon she had been watching on one of the million channels she could watch on her family's new Sky box (I still don't have satellite TV. It's a waste of money if you ask me). That cartoon was, in fact, the 'magical girl' anime series 'Tokyo Mew Mew' (known to us at the time as Mew Mew Power).
I tracked down the series on the Internet and watched all 52 episodes in an amazingly short space of time. The two of us would talk about the series almost constantly and spent a fair amount of time drawing our own 'mew-mews'. I then received the first two volumes of the manga for Christmas and read all 7 volumes and the spin-off 'Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode'. My interest in anime then branched of into the Studio Ghibli films, what I like to call 'shiny hair anime' (Clannad, Air, Ef) and silly comedy series (Lucky Star, School Rumble, Negima, K-on). It wasn't long before I became interested in the music behind these series.
ELISA's Euphoric Field, one of my favourite anime themes.
In 2008, while surfing the Internet, I ended up a Wikipedia page that was a list of female Japanese pop singers. Being named Katherine I zoomed down the page straight to K. I clicked on the name 'Kusumi Koharu' purely because it sounded cool. I saw her song 'Koi Kana' on youtube, did a quick google image search and thought no more of it. I do however remember telling my dad how this Koharu girl was only 12 when she debuted; the same age as I was at the time. I also remember saying it was kind of weird how there was pictures of her in a swimsuit on google. Poor guy must have been pretty confused. Ah, the joys of having a single father.
It wasn't until 2009 when I was looking for J-pop to listen to that I came across Koharu again. This was when I saw her as part of the group Morning Musume in the then-current single 'Nanchatte Renai'. That song and music video gave me a rather good impression of the group and I am glad I started with that fairly sedate (but brilliant) single. Koharu, of course, stayed in my mind, as did Takahashi Ai, and before long I became a fan of the group.
Other artists and groups I heard in those early days were Hamasaki Ayumi, Hirano Aya, Utada Hikaru, AKB48, Berryz Koubou, C-ute and SPEED. However, naturally, it wasn't always love at first site like it was with Nanchatte Renai. For example, even now I can't see the apparently huge appeal of Utada. (I have a feeling that statement may result in my brutal murder.)
I wonder how everyone else arrived in the world of J-music. Maybe through friends or relatives? A trip to Japan? An interest in other aspects of the language or culture? If you have the time why not leave a comment telling us how you got here.
Coming up next is a follow-up post titled 'Why did we stay?'.
Morning Musume can make anyone love J-pop haha. Because we both had almost the same fate, I thought I would share my story with ya! I had Korean friends since I was 8 years old and my one korean friend watched Inuyasha and listened to J-pop. I was over at her house and she asked me, "Do you wanna watch , "Inuyasha"?" At first I was like, "WTF is Inuyasha?". She went on to explain and and we watched it. The music in Inuyasha was so amazing- featuring both Utada and Ayumi; I instantly had to learn more about the music. And as time went on I forgot about the music and just watched the show. Until one fateful year (when I was 12). Naruto came on and then the rest is history really. Anime's really can make someone love the J-pop genre, in my opinion (my very first girl group I listened to was C-ute - which lead me to Hello!Project in 2006). Now I'm 19 and a major Otaku in the world of J-pop and K-pop haha~
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your experiences! It is interesting seeing how other people got intersted in Jpop.
DeleteI've never seen Inuyasha but it looks pretty decent.
C-ute seems like a good place to have started! :D
Looking back I sometimes think that it could have occurred in so many other ways than it did although both of my parents were born here in Hawaii and not in Japan as some of my older uncles and aunts were and I remember when I was really little going to my grandma's house every New years and all of the family gathered around the television to watch the Kouhaku, my Grandma's favorite was Itsuki Hiroshi because he reminded her of my father a bit but somehow the music then didn't quite register with me but it's still funny now that I sometimes will hear older enka songs and know them so well from those long ago days....then there's my mom who loved both Saijo Hideki and Go Hiromi and she actually attended a Saijo Hideki concert here in Honolulu in her youth but she never would play their songs until much later so that didn't hook me either.
ReplyDeleteFast forward to me at I think it was 14 or 15 and me channel surfing looking for something interesting to watch and there it was....episode 5 of the drama "Aishiteiru to itte kure" (Say You Love Me) starring Toyokawa Etsushi and Tokiwa Takako. I hadn't experienced anything like that until then and it was soooo not like our American t.v. dramas and it fascinated me that it would end in just a few episodes and unlike our soap operas wouldn't go on like forever. The characters and the story hooked me that night and then there was the theme song by Dreams Come True "Love Love Love" so I sooooo needed that song/single as with each ensuing episode it just gets to you even more.....drama theme songs are so so important to a dramas existence really I think and it enhances so much the memory you have of the story and characters even as you begin to relate them to the song itself...it truly becomes iconic in your collective mind. I ordered the single at our local record store which had an import section for Japanese music and when it arrived it was the first time I saw an 8" CD single import single!!! They're really great looking when you case them in outer jewel cases which were custom made back then and you could get them in large packs. From there I would begin watching various anime which also featured catchy theme songs and it inevitably all leads to J~Pop....Tenchi Muyo! led me to Orikasa Ai and Yokoyama Chisa both seiyuu who also have J~pop style albums too. A friend then turned me onto Mr.Children with their album "Atomic Heart" and it was pure love~♥....it was like my heritage asking where have you been? I was still in my early teens so I began working after school as my parents wanted me to learn to earn on my own in order to support my new found hobby. I was cleaning classrooms then and it helped me to purchase much of my early collection. So in a nutshell (sorry this comment is ridiculously long xD) Japanese dramas led to J~pop along with anime and it gave me in retrospect a whole new found appreciation of my heritage and the history of the culture, people and music. Who would have thought it? A drama when all around me my family was already deeply immersed...it just took me till me early teens to take notice and learn all about what I had been missing.
Wow, that comment is a post in itself!! I am seriously impressed that you wrote so much!
DeleteYour story is really interesting. It seems you were discovering something that was so close, yet just out of reach all this time. It is strange how such little things can have such large consequences!