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?'.
