faded_lace | Entries tagged with meta is fun!

( Cut for negative opinions on the J&A management and general long-winded hypothesizing )

In other news, TGIF~ I'm going to try to get lots of sleep and get pumped for The Music Day tomorrow~ I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Chinen Yuri, Inoo Kei, Nakajima Yuto, Takaki Yuya//Pet Shop Love Motion

Because I just want to address this and get it out of the way and out of my life, here's what I was moaning about yesterday:

Nakajima Kento, Kikuchi Fuma, and Sato Shori of Sexy Zone have been announced as the supporters for the 2015 FIVB Volleyball World Cup (source). Yes, that does have the implications that you think it has-- they're apparently in the place of what should have been the new 2015 volleyball debut.

In case this isn't something that's common knowledge, just a little history on the volleyball debut: It's a tradition that started in 1995 with V6 and has happened every four years since then. The FIVB World Cup is a big deal Olympics qualifier volleyball event that happens in Japan every four years, and since 1995, Johnny's has been supplying the popular media "support group" and song for this event. V6 was followed by Arashi (1999), then NEWS (2003), then Hey! Say! JUMP (2007), and finally Sexy Zone (2011).

Up until this year, the FIVB Volleyball World Cup has always happened in November. This means that all the volleyball debuts have been announced in September and their debut single dropped in November. For that reason, we celebrate these groups' anniversary in September even though their debut date is actually in November. I don't really understand this tradition (debut is debut imho), but either way, end of September and mid November are the key time periods in (almost) every volleyball debut. This is something that's gone on for the past 20 years now.

However, this year, for reasons unknown to me, the FIVB Volleyball World Cup has been pushed up to August. That would mean, for a new group to be supporting it, the debut announcement would have to happen at the end of June and their debut would be in August. That's a whole three months earlier than every single volleyball debut for the past 20 years.

But for reasons also unknown to me, instead, the front three members of Sexy Zone have been announced as the supporters of this year's world cup. This breaks with 20 years of Johnny's tradition and is, for a variety of reasons, pretty surprising and alarming to me. First of all, Johnny's tradition is pretty good. I like Johnny's for a reason-- that it's Johnny's. Them changing their formulas and breaking long-standing, important traditions is not something that particularly comforts me or makes me happy. Second, the volleyball debut is a big deal, and an important chance for juniors. Not knowing when it will happen or if it will happen at all is highly concerning. And of course, third, all those Sexy Zone-related issues. But that's another matter for another post that I am almost certainly not going to make.

Still, perhaps it's a personal flaw or perhaps it's because we all want to find some sense of security in the craziness that is Johnny's, but it's all I can do to give a few options of what may happen from here. Note that in the past 20 years, there have been some changes in the pattern of the volleyball debut, so this does not necessarily signify the end of an important tradition.

Therefore, with no further ado, my hypotheses for what might happen:
① A support group may be announced in June at Johnny's West's Kobe shows (for a Julie group) or at a yet-unannounced Sexy Zone, Kis-My-Ft2, or ABC-Z performance in June (for an Iijima group). Having two supporters, one from a previous volleyball unit, is not unheard of; Sakurai Sho was a supporter along with Hey! Say! JUMP in 2007.
↳ ⓐ Therefore, a new group may debut on an expedited timeline of June → August and present along with the Sexy Zone members, perhaps with Sexy Zone's presence to draw interest for the new group.
↳ ⓑ An alternate theory is that, like NEWS, the new group may be a Junior unit, perhaps presented as secondary backers to the Sexy Zone members. NEWS so far is the only volleyball support group that was considered a Junior unit at the time of the FIVB World Cup, but that doesn't necessarily rule out something similar happening again, with a debut following in the year after.
↳ ⓒ A third option is that Sexy Zone's participation may be an out-and-out lie, as with Johnny's strange fake announcement of ABC-xyZ back in 2011.

② The agency may be choosing to keep the new group on the same timeline, September → November, regardless of support opportunities. The FIVB World Cup itself has little to do with the debut besides it being the supposed reason; Johnny's debuts non-volleyball groups with equal frequency, so there's no actual legitimate necessity for the "volleyball debut" to actually be a debut with relation to volleyball. It may still follow the same formula (the timeline, the age gap, the "fresh" members… see my post here, and then the following two here and here for more details) but simply be unrelated to this year's World Cup.

③ The agency may choose to have the group support the 2016 summer Olympics instead, either having them debut in the same September → November time frame, or perhaps pushing back the debut into 2016. This would be odd to me, but I don't necessarily think it's impossible. It might also fall into the same category as option ②, if the group were to debut in November and then just happen to do the support for the Olympics.

④ Perhaps there will be no volleyball debut at all, and Johnny's will, once again, completely thwart my continued attempts to understand it.

Frankly, I don't see how the agency could possibly benefit from breaking with tradition. The volleyball unit is a carefully and very intelligently concocted formula: it creates interest from a wide range of fans with members with a wide age spectrum, it draws the support of Junior fans while still keeping them paying for Junior events as well by splitting up popular Junior units and leaving some popular Juniors behind to continue to head up the Junior fandom, and it captivates fans for a long period of time to watch the completely new group come together, form a bond, and grow. This method has been a great success in the past (considering Arashi is a volleyball unit), and is, in my opinion, an integral part of contemporary Johnny's as a subcategory of popular entertainment. I really can't imagine how not having such a debut at all could be seen as a positive from a marketing or image-branding standpoint.

But at the end of the day, I don't work for Johnny's, and I can't really make any statements with certainty. So for the time being, I'm just going to leave it with this and hope for the best.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//Forever

I saw this floating around and decided why the hell not. XD Time to do something positive with my life! It was fun and nice to think about something good for the first time in a while! On top of that, the sun was shining, the weather was pretty warm for February, and I my health seems pretty okay! Not to mention the JUMP DVD comes out on Wednesday~ I'm happy! Look at that XD

Choose 5 OTPs without looking at the questions behind the cut first, then tag friends to do the same.

My Five OTPS
1) Jinguji Yuuta x Nakamura Reia (Johnny's Jr.)
2) Yaotome Hikaru x Inoo Kei (Hey! Say! JUMP)
3) Yamada Ryosuke x Chinen Yuri (Hey! Say! JUMP)
4) Matsukura Hokuto x Kikuchi Fuma (Johnny's Jr. / Sexy Zone)
5) Matsumoto Jun x Aiba Masaki (Arashi)

( Meme under here! )

Now off to make more chocolates! All my Valentine's Day stuff this year is super late, oops XD;

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//Ready Go

Earlier this week, a paper that Inoo co-authored got put up on an internet scholarly resource database called CiNii (it seems to be like the Japanese version of jstor), and this has sparked a lot of discussion as to if Inoo was in graduate school, or how he got such a paper posted. The paper is posted here; you can see that Inoo is listed with the subtitle of "graduate school" beneath his name. Assuming from this that he was or is in graduate school seems rational, and even sparked the confusion and surprise of various Japanese fans on Twitter (the second link there clarifies later that Inoo isn't a graduate student as far as the fan knows, but was just working in a graduate lab), but actually, while I can't prove for a fact that he doesn't go, I can prove that his work on this paper was not as a graduate student.

Inoo has mentioned before that he chose to take his senior lab on earthquake reconstruction in his 10,000 character interview (you can read a translation here), but a little digging around reveals that specifically, he did his lab here, with this particular professor. I'm not going to translate it all word for word because frankly, I don't have the energy right now, but on the website, it says that the lab is for 4th year college students and graduate students. So while the lab is associated primarily with the graduate school it also is open to 4th year students, which is when Inoo participated. As far as I can tell, Meiji University was either not allowed to use Inoo's name anywhere, or they didn't want his events getting attacked by yarakashi, because his name isn't listed pretty much anywhere, and, in fact, events that I have proof he attended aren't even listed on the website. I found two slip-ups, the first of which is on the schedule-- if you scroll down to the 2011年度 section (which means the 2011-2012 school year), the event on 2月28日（火）(2/28, Tuesday) lists Inoo's name. This was the beginning of the project that he worked on for the whole next year, a study about elementary and junior high schools in Iwate prefecture in relation to the earthquake. In the Japanese school schedule, February 2012 was right at the end of Inoo's 3rd year of college, so he took part in this lab mostly in the next year, 2012年度, or the 2012-2013 school year, which was his fourth year.

Unfortunately, since his name/events he attended aren't listed, I can't give that much more information, but in relation to this project, I found him in two news sources, by some miracle. The first is this news article, which doesn't mention him by name but (accidentally?) posted his photo for a brief time. A bunch of fans screencapped it, but by now, his photo has been removed from any remaining news sources, which leads me to believe that the press didn't realize one of the students was a Johnny |D; But either way, it talks about how on May 19th, 2012, Inoo went to Iwate with one other student and the professor, Yamamoto, to interview students in a survey they were doing. This trip isn't listed on the lab's schedule website (others to the same town in Iwate are listed), which, like I said above, makes me think that they didn't list anything with Inoo so that fans wouldn't stalk him.

The other place I can find him named is this article, which talks about his lab's group taking a trip to talk about post-earthquake development in Germany. It lists that three graduate students and eight 4th year college students, including Inoo (you can contol+F 伊野尾慧), for a total of 11 students, going on the trip. This is posted on the Meiji Graduate School page, because, as mentioned before, the lab seems to be more affiliated with the graduate school than the undergraduate architecture department (it seems like the undergrads are more research assistants?), but when the same article was posted on the Meiji undergraduate architecture department's site here, Inoo's name was removed and instead it lists 10 names "etc" for a total of 11 students. XD;;; Seemingly, the graduate school didn't get the notice that they were supposed to remove Inoo's name.

So then that brings us back to the paper that was posted on the CiNii database. It doesn't say it in the English, but in the Japanese, it says that the paper was published in relation to its presentation at the 2013 Japan Architecture Academic Conference. The conference happened from August 30th to September 1st, 2013, which means that Inoo was already graduated, and its existence on the schedule on the Yamamoto Lab website leads me to believe that Inoo didn't go, but on the conference's website, it says the submission deadline was April 4th of the same year, just a week after Inoo graduated. So it seems logical that the paper he helped write would have been submitted at that time. While, without either being enrolled in a Japanese university or paying, I can't access the actual articles, if you search "2013年度日本建築学会大会都市計画" on the CiNii database ("2013 Japan Architecture Academic Conference Urban Planning"-- Inoo's paper was in the urban planning section) you can see other papers submitted in the same publication; many of them are works by students who participated in the conference, and at least some percentage of them appear to be college students despite being listed as graduate students. I tried to see if Inoo himself participated in the conference, but I can't find any proof that he was in Hokkaido, where the conference happened, in late August/early September 2013, so I can only assume that, since he had already graduated, he didn't go.

And… on top of all that, it was never any secret that Inoo went to college, or where he went. It was common knowledge that he studied architecture at Meiji University. Why would it be a secret that he went to graduate school, if he was going to go? Just recently on Little Tokyo Live, he talked about how he had graduated with an architecture degree. If he was doing grad school, why wouldn't he have said he was in grad school?

And besides, Inoo has said before (sorry, I'm too tired to dig up the articles now; the problem with reading Japanese is that I read things in magazines and then forget which magazine from my huge shelf of magazines it was in) that he was really glad to be done, and the other members have talked, too, about how happy he was to be done. I saw him with my own eyes at the Johnny's World Kanshasai back in March 2013, and his demeanor was so different than it had been. And I think, more than anything, what sticks with me is what he said in his 10,000 word article. This is my own translation below-- I wanted to translate what he said in my own best expression of his feelings:

ーYou went on to college after you debuted, huh.
Yeah. I said that high school never really agreed with me and I never really adjusted to it, right? I always thought there was no point in going to high school, and there was no point in graduating. But then my mom said to me, "Is that really so?" Wasn't it true that if I graduated high school, I'd have the qualifications to get into college? Since that's how it was, I started to think, maybe I should try out going to college in order so that I could feel like there was some meaning to graduating high school. I guess I decided sometime around the end of my second year of high school.

ーYou didn't get the feeling that, in going to college, your work and your classes might end up half-assed or done carelessly?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's because I was constantly in state of indecision. There were times when I thought that deciding to go to university was a really bad choice. But I also thought that there were good sides to it, like being able to meet a wide variety people, and being able to view my job from the point of view of a university student.

ーThat is to say, that one that was your base was…?
My base was first and foremost being an idol . Even though it's difficult (laugh).

This interview was done after he had already graduated, which means that these were his feelings about college after he was done. It's not that he didn't really feel it before he went, but then went and discovered that really what he wanted was to continue education… he appreciated that he went, but being an idol has always been what he wants in the end.

So in conclusion, I'm not so much of a stalker that I can say with conviction that he isn't in grad school and never went, but I do feel that it's highly unlikely!

…wow am I a weirdo. I'm sorry for all this. x___x;

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//AinoArika

Some of you may remember this delightful example of how I'm nerdy to a crazy level back in August 2013. For those of you who don't, if you're interested in my analysis of Johnny's debuts for the past ten years or so, particularly volleyball debuts, please check it out! For those of you who think I'm crazy… please scroll past this post altogether |D;;; This is going to be another long and crazy one.

At any rate, I did another prediction a half-year later, here. My plan was to keep doing them at half-year intervals, but due to a variety of circumstances both in the world of Juniors (which has been pretty much lacking in information between the Gamushara Sexy Natsu Matsuri this summer and now, considering very few juniors with the correct qualities for volleyball debut were in Dream Boys) and in my personal life, things have gotten a little late. I'm sorry! I'm going to go ahead and do my 1-year prediction now, a little late (it's about a year before the actual debut, rather than the announcement), and then my half-year prediction in April, and, if all goes well, a 1-month-before prediction near the middle of August.

Of course, things have changed since last January, so I'm going to throw in a reminder of the ~Golden Rules~ before we begin:

General:
☆ Non-volleyball debuts are always Junior units first
→(Kanjani8, KAT-TUN, Kis-My-Ft2, ABC-Z, Johnny's West✝)
☆ Volleyball debuts are never Junior units first (Arashi, NEWS, Hey! Say! JUMP, Sexy Zone)
☆ Volleyball groups must break up a four-member junior unit
→(MAIN, 4tops, Ya-ya-yah, B.I.Shadow)✝✝

Volleyball Debuts:
☆ Volleyball groups have a large age range
☆ Volleyball groups have a descending average age over the years✞
☆ Volleyball groups either have 5 or 9-10 members at debut
☆ Volleyball groups usually include a few "fresh" juniors.

Footnotes:
✝ Since I originally wrote my post last August, Johnny's West has debuted, becoming the first group to have a non-volleyball debut without first being a junior group. However, since it was the combination of two preexisting junior groups and one member who'd been working with them for some time, it's safe to say that they regardless have a sense of unity at debut that volleyball units, who often have members completely new to the agency, do not.
✝✝ I am aware that Sexy Boyz has continue to fluctuate and change over the past year and may or may not count as a 4-member unit, however, for all intents and purposes, I don't think there's any alternative 4-member unit to be considered. I'll address this more later.
✞ There was one upward age jump between Arashi and NEWS. While the general trend is descent, I don't think that it's out of the question for this year's group's average age to be above that of Sexy Zone at debut.

And now, onto the late 2014 prediction:

☆ Iwahashi Genki (1996.12.17 - age 18 in 2015.9) ex 4-member
☆ Jinguji Yuta (1997.10.30 - age 17 in 2015.9) ex 4-member
☆ Ⓐ
☆ Ⓑ
☆ Inoue Mizuki (2000.10.30 - age 14 in 2015.9)
☆ Kaneda Yosei (2001.3.22 - age 14 in 2015.9)
☆ Kawasaki Koki (2002.7.30 - age 13 in 2015.9)
☆ Toyoda Rikuto (2004.1.27 - age 12 in 2015.9)
☆ "fresh member" (2004~2005 - age 11 in 2015.9)

Ⓐ
★ ➀ Nakamura Reia (1997.4.2 - age 18 in 2015.9)
★ ➁ Matsukura Kaito (1997.11.14 - age 17 in 2015.9)
Ⓑ
★ ➀ Takahashi Fu (1998.5.8 - age 17 in 2015.9)
★ ➁ Matsuda Genta (1999.4.19 - age 16 in 2015.9)

Number of members: 9
Average age: 14.8~14.6
Number of members from a 4-member Junior unit: 2
Age of oldest at debut: 18
Age of youngest at debut: 11
Number of "Fresh" members: 1

Obviously, this is more complicated than previous predictions and needs explaining. These are a few clarifications on my thought process in making this list:

① If it's not clear, basically, right now, I think there are two sets of options for two of the spots in the group, so there's two choices for Ⓐ, the older of the two spots, and two choices for Ⓑ, the younger of the two spots. The main factor that lead to this decision is that I'm not sure where Sexy Boyz stands. Sexy Boyz/Sexy Show could count as one four-member unit, which would make Matsukura Kaito and Matsuda Genta ineligible for this volleyball debut. But it might also not count-- it's been very off-and-on, and mostly seems like an "excuse" for all the crap that's currently going on with Sexy Zone. Even after the Matsuri, permutations of Jinguji / Genki / Miyachika / Kishi / Aran have been announced as Sexy Boyz, leading me to believe that maybe, Matsukura and Genta might be able to debut with this group after all. If you asked me, out of the "set ➀" and "set ➁" that I have listed above, which seems like the more likely, I guess I'd say "set ➁" due to the fact that they've been more heavily pushed recently, but it's pretty hard to tell at this point.

② There have been various speculations raised about the current strong push with Nagase Ren, Hirano Sho, and Takahashi Kaito. While Takahashi Kaito was mentioned in my previous prediction as a possibility if he weren't slated for 2020 (which was still a thing at that time), his current strong affiliation with Kansai Juniors is leading me to believe that perhaps he won't be included after all. Why wouldn't Kansai Juniors be included? There are a couple of factors to consider here:
→ Kansai Juniors have only once ever been included in a volleyball debut, and it ended in disaster; there are currently no members active in volleyball units who were ever Kansai Juniors.
→ If Nagase and Hirano were to be debuted now, Kansai Juniors would be in trouble, completely lacking "front" popular members. It is my belief that Hirano and Nagase are being so strongly pushed right now to fill the gap left by BAD and 7West, who had been the most famous and most popular Kansai Juniors for quite some time. I know several (former?) Kansai Juniors fans who now only focus on Johnny's West, meaning that if Kansai Juniors does't gain new popular members to fill the gap, they'll lose fans. I believe that Nagase and Hirano (with Takahashi Kaito) are being pushed to fill that gap. Therefore, it would not make sense, and in fact be detrimental to Kansai Juniors, to have Nagase and Hirano debut at this point with the volleyball unit.
→ While Takahashi Kaito is not a Kansai Junior, his current grouping with them leads me to believe that he may too be too strongly associated with Kansai Juniors to be included in the debut this time, but that's a more tentative decision. If I had to place Takahashi Kaito into this lineup, it would be instead of Takahashi Fu, as the "Ⓑ" choice for "set ➀" as listed above.

③ As mentioned before, Kishi Yuta will be too old for the volleyball debut and Morimoto Shintaro seems too associated with older Juniors at this point in time to be considered. Kuramoto Kaoru has left Johnny's since my previous lineup. I've added Inoue Mizuki instead of Hashimoto Ryo, because I haven't seen much of Hashimoto Ryo recently, and Inoue Mizuki is often featured in stage shows such as ABC-Za and Dream Boys. However, Inoue might be switchable for Hashimoto.

④ If they decided to add one more member and make it ten, Inoue will be bumped to the ani-gumi and they can add another "fresh" Junior. I'm a little hesitant about the fact that there's only one fresh member, but considering Sexy Zone was more than 50% fresh members, I suppose that sort of balances it out. Either way, if Inoue's position is bumped to the ani-gumi, he might be replaced with Tamamoto Fumito, who is born in 1999, since another young fresh member would bring down the average age. This would also divide the ani and otouto-gumi a little more cleanly.

⑤ If for some reason they decided to have less members (this is unprecedented, but not out of the question), Inoue would probably be the easiest to cut, also, because he's in the middle, and it would bring the otouto-gumi down to 4 to be evenly split with the ani-gumi.

⑥ Historically speaking, the "fresh" member should be someone with a famous parent who has lived abroad for the last 5 years at least. If someone like that crops up, please let me know. |D;;;

…I think that's about all! If you made it this far, otsukare!! Please feel free to ask questions or discuss in the comments! I know I'm a total nerd about this stuff, but if anyone else wants to discuss, I'm always happy to.

Also, I'll probably be posting the questions to the Myojo Junior Ranking again this year, like I did last year. I know it's a bit late-- I've already submitted my ballot-- but I figured it was fun discussing last year, so there might be some people interested again this year. ^^

In the meantime, happy Friday!

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//AinoArika

Like I said in my last post, I'm going to write full reports, but since someone on twitter so kindly made these charts, I'm going to go ahead and post them along with some thoughts about the final results.

( Japanese glossary )

So first up, we have a chart of the final results:

(you can find the original chart posted here!)

From the chart, you can see that in terms of shows won by the audience alone, Sha had a ridiculous number more than the rest of the teams. Eleven shows! If they had ranked by that, Sha would have had a landslide win. Obviously, Johnny's had to rig it to keep the competition
"exciting," but it's a little disappointed that those amazing scores never came to anything.

And then, if you look, Mu is in last place despite having the same number of decibels in total as Team Ra, in first place. So despite the way the scores turned out, they actually had as much support as Team Ra did. It just goes to show that the scoring for the show really didn't reflect the actual support that the guys were getting.

But you can see even more in detail if you look at the detailed results in the next table:

(you can find the original chart posted here! You can click on the photo I posted to see it bigger.)

First of all, in this graphic version, it's really easy to see how much Sha creamed Ga and Ra. Neither Ga nor Ra won even one show against Sha in terms of the audience decibels. The only team that Sha was evenly matched with was Mu, who seem to have been combined victims of chance (which team had more fans in the audience which day, which fans were closer to the mic) and of either Johnny's rigging or the juniors respecting more the senpai who are older than them-- Yasui told the audience that the Juniors were to make it impartial since we all have favourites who we think are cool, but it's not exactly like the Juniors are impartial, either. They all have admired senpai, and some of the older ones are peers with members of Team Mu and Team Sha. Of course they'd vote for the older teams.

You can also make note here that Team Mu had the highest scoring decibel level of the whole run in the first show, 111 db. The lowest score of the whole show was by Team Ga, 95 db.

But then, I was curious to see by how much each team had won in terms of decibels in each show, so I went ahead and made a few more charts:

This is a chart of the decibel difference between the winning team and the losing team for each show. The decibel value is coloured to match the colour of the winning team. You can see from this chart that, by in large, Sha and Mu beat Ga and Ra by much higher numbers than Ga and Ra beat Sha and Mu. Sha and Mu seemed to have been more evenly matched, and Ga and Ra also seemed to be more evenly matched.

But just to make it easier to see, I averaged everything here:

On the left, we have each team's average score in decibels against a certain other team. You'll notice that Mu and Sha's tend to be higher than Ra and Ga's. On the right, we have the average number more points each team had than the other teams in matches where that team won. Mu and Sha tended to win by more than Ra and Ga did.

I know this probably seems like beating a dead horse, but my point in posting is not to show that any team was "better" than another, but rather to show that the scoring was sort of a randomly-decided way to rank them, and that, in the end, it didn't necessarily measure the amount of support each team was getting. Yes, I know it was a popularity contest at best and a haphazard mess at worst, but it really makes me sad to think about the boys thinking they're big failures when really, they were very well received. I wish I could send all this data to them, but since I can't, I'm sharing it here on my journal.

I still need to write shiritori tonight, oops. x__x; This is just another piece of proof that I'm a huge, obsessive nerd when it comes to fandom.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Sexy Zone//GAME

Well, I was going to make a more meaningful post today, but… stuff happened XD And now I'm watching old JJL with

yomimashou and

9kinds. |D; We already watched Sexy Zone channel from two weeks ago (I can't find the one from this week D:) and Gamushara (which has this glory *__*) from last week, and now we're catching

9kinds up on stuff she missed when she wasn't a Sexy Girl/Junior fan yet~ We finished the Pyjama Party episodes and are going to watch the summer specials next~

( cut for Jinguji/Reia feels in the Pyjama Party episode of JJL~ )

However… despite my lack of having anything to show for myself today, I am halfway through a fic, and now it's my turn in Shiritori, so I'll hopefully have something tomorrow! Hopefully I'll get inspired by tonights Gamushara~

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Sexy Zone//Lady Diamond

So apparently this is a thing. And I'm stoked! I guess it's a replacement for Johnny's Junior Land? But hey, who cares, because Reia is in the cast list. For the first time in... a really long time? But more than that (or at least of equal value, but still Reia-related) is just who's on the cast list. Let's take a look...

出演者
■ジャニーズＪｒ.
（ジェシー/岩橋玄樹/神宮寺勇太/髙橋海人/松村北斗/中村嶺亜/安井謙太郎　他）
Cast:
■ Johnny's Jr.
(Jesse /Iwahashi Genki /Jinguji Yuta /Takahashi Kaito /Matsumura Hokuto /Nakamura Reia /Yasui Kentaro, others)

So let's see. That's Hokuto and Jesse, one other representative of the older group (no clue why not two but I'm guessing the Bakaleya guys have too much life going on and Hagiya wasn't worth mentioning?), two Sexy Boyz, and... what's that now? TWO FROM REIA3???

That's right! It looks like Reia3 (as I'm calling them until Johnny's gets off their ass and gives them a real group name) ranked as being of equal importance to Sexy Boyz. J.J.Express, anyone? In other words, I really feel like this supports the hypothesis I made here. With Sexy Boyz filling the spot of the necessarily 4-member junior unit and Reia in a spot where he's not threatened by Jinguji and Genki's popularity and can shine in his own right, for once, I'm actually genuinely feeling... almost optimistic about this. I know that in Johnny's, it's best to always keep one's hopes at a bare minimum, but... well... if nothing else, I'm going to silently cheer for Reia.

However, what I'm less thrilled about is that apparently, there's not going to be any fanclub balloting for Gamushara J's Party 2. What is that supposed to mean, exactly? That the fanclub being "under construction" currently has finally gotten in the way of ballots? But Junior fanclub members can still ballot for stageplays and Sexy Zone's new tour. That Johnny's is trying to come closer to being like AKB and is giving everyone a shot at tickets? That really just goes against everything that Johnny's has ever been, and while honestly, I was already planning on buying my tickets secondhand, anyway... it sets my teeth on edge just a little. Sometimes shit in Johnny's just means Johnny's can't get their crap together, but sometimes it means something more, and things like this will always make me anxious.

Does anyone know what faction TV Asahi is? I know they're airing a drama with Ohno soon, but besides that, all I can think of offhand that they show is Music Station, which is pretty neutral in my experience...?

...and I've been trying not to say anything about this because wank will be wank, but I do have to say I'm happy Ijima is taking a hit by Jin leaving Johnny's~ Suck it, Ijima.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Sexy Zone//Soba ni iru yo

So I promised new thoughts on 2015, and so here I am with new thoughts on 2015. XD Maybe no one likes predictions as much as I do, but I'm having fun with this, so... humour me. XD;

As you may remember, I did a really detailed analysis of previous Johnny's volleyball support debuts here. However, since August, some new details have come to light, the main of which are:
✄ 2020 has not been as temporary as I was hoping
✄ A four member incarnation of the Junior unit formerly known as Sexy Boyz has emerged and is seeming more stable with Jinguji Yuta, Kishi Yuta, Iwahashi Genki, and Miyachika Kaito.
✄ I've seen Kaneda Yousei approximately everywhere
✄ Inoue Mizuki, who's usually opposite him, was slated for 2020.

Taking into account that they're supposedly announcing the full member list for 2020 at the end of Johnny's 2020 World, I'm going to make a new prediction based on the past criteria (breaking up the four member group, average age that's lower or at least comparable to the one from the previous year, including "fresh" juniors) and the fact that it seems like it should be a big group year rather than a small group year. And so, presenting my just-under-2-years-in-advance new 2015 dream team:

☆ Iwahashi Genki (1996.12.17) ex 4-member
☆ Nakamura Reia (1997.4.2)
☆ Jinguji Yuta (1997.10.30) ex 4-member
☆ Takahashi Fu (1998.5.8)
☆ Kuramoto Kaoru (2000.9.23)
☆ Kaneda Yosei (2001.3.22)
☆ "fresh member" (2003~2005)
☆ "fresh member" (2003~2005)

Number of members: 8
Average age: 15-15¼
Number of members from a 4-member Junior unit: 2
Age of oldest at debut: 18
Age of youngest at debut: 10-11
Number of "Fresh" members: 2

Things to remember:
✄ As I said above, the continuation of 2020 had a big impact on this; MatsuMatsu conbi seems undoubtedly out.
✄ Kishi Yuta will definitely be too old in 2015 to debut with a volleyball unit
✄ Reia is currently being featured with Kakuta Yusei and Takahashi Kaito because they can skate, but Kakuta Yusei is far too old and Takahashi Kaito is slated for 2020.
✄ Kuramoto Kaoru might be interchangeable for Hashimoto Ryo, who's the same age. Tamamoto Fumito is too old, but Haba Yuki is another possible choice.
✄ Morimoto Shintaro could be switched out for Reia, but at this point, I find it unlikely that he'd be isolated from the juniors with whom he's usually associated.
✄ The average age might be brought down by adding one or two more members, but it would also make breaking it into ani and otouto-gumi a little more difficult.
✄ If they want a smaller group, cutting Fu is the most reasonable option; he's the least pushed currently and it would reasonably bring down the average age.

So... that's it for now, folks! I probably will make at least one more prediction before the actual debut happens, but this is my current thoughts for now! And... I'm sorry I'm so weird. |D

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Sexy Zone//Sexy Zone

High School/College/JET Programme doukyuusei

9kinds is coming to visit me in a week! And so now it is time to be an adult and clean All The Things. Which is sort of terrifying, because since no inspection is done in Kiryu when one JET moves out and another JET moves in, my apartment was absolutely disgusting after probably 15 years of tenants completely ignoring any sort of cleanliness, and so despite my attempts to clean it up, it's been incredibly hard to maintain (especially while having any sort of life). But I'm excited! I haven't seen her in half a year, which has been lonely.

DID I MENTION THAT I'M SEEING JOHNNY'S WORLD FROM THE FIRST ROW. It's just beginning to sink in now exactly what that means. How did this happen?! It's crazy. Also, real talk... if anyone on my flist is going between the 8th and the 14th, please let me know how it was? I hated last year's (and with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 people, everyone I've talked to who went agreed that it was pretty bad), and I'm really hoping this year's will suck less, but I want to be prepared before I'm sitting smack dab in the front row where all the guys can see me, you know, holding back tears of laughter when Yabu breaks out into My Heart Will Go On or something.

Also, only one day until Chinen is no longer a teenager. Brb tears forever. WHAT HAPPENED??

And last but not least before I go clean, I forgot that I never posted the full answers to my Myojo Junior Ranking. I sent my ballot in a while ago and am fully confident that it will have essentially no effect on the outcome, but WHATEVER. If you're curious as to what I voted for, it's here!

( 2013 Annual Myojo Junior Ranking )

Some of those were hard because I wanted to choose many people, and some were hard because no one really seemed to fit the bill, but there you go. Feel free to ask me why I chose some of the names I chose, and I'll be happy to discuss! I like discussion!

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//JUMP Around the World

Okay, so as promised, here's the complete list of 52 categories for the 20th annual Myojo Junior ranking! Anyone who's a junior is in; I'm pretty sure Nakayama Yuma is out. Myojo asks for a name and a reason, so of course, if you want to give a reason, feel free! I don't usually write reasons for all 52 because sometimes I don't really have a reason or don't want to write "because he's a nice person" several times in a row, though. XD; So... yeah! Let's have a discussion. Comment answering whichever ones you want, and we can discuss and argue/agree? :D?

( 20th Annual Myojo Junior Ranking )

So there you have it! It's a bit long, but I'm looking forward to seeing what people chose! Even if you just want to answer one or two, I'll be happy to chat about it :3 I haven't finished mine yet, but... I'm working on it. XD;;

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Sexy Zone//We can be one

Okay, so, we all love to predict debuts, right? ...or maybe that's just me. But either way, as unpredictable as Johnny's is, one thing that we can basically be sure of is that there will be a volleyball debut every four years. But beyond that, there are a lot of general trends that I've figured out in regards to volleyball debuts, and so I decided it was time for me to compile all my research in one place with the end goal in mind of predicting the 2015 FIVB World Cup Support Group.

But... even if you don't give a crap about the 2015 volleyball debut, I think it's pretty interesting to check out. I'm starting with Arashi just because 1) Arashi is the first group I know anything about and 2) since V6 was the first group, the form seemingly hadn't quite been established yet and it doesn't follow the same trends as the next four groups. So... if you're interested to see the fruits of my research, check below the cut!

( ジャニーズ研究 )

( And... my prediction for the 2015 volleyball debut! )

If you made it this far... congrats! And sorry I wrote so much @___@; This shows just how much of a total nerd I am, but I had fun making this post XD;;; And if you have thoughts about the 2015 debut, or any of this... let me know? I'm interested to see what other people thing!

... and now I'm going to go collapse. That post took me like 5 hours to make. XD;

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//Dreams come true

jumping to my dream

a hey! say! jump pimp post

( ♫〜東の空へと〜♫ )

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Hey! Say! JUMP//Ultra Music Power

So, I've been planning on writing this for a long time, and I finally got it done! I won't apologize, and I hope you give it a chance, but do read the warnings before you read! I don't want anyone to be upset; that said, the contents are all meta and nothing explicit. At the very least, please don't judge me! There have been worse pairings out there, right?

「親みたい！」
or, how I learned to stop worrying and enjoy an obscure pairing with a sizable age difference
[a Sakurai Sho x Chinen Yuri pairing manifesto]

Warnings: This essay contains discussion surrounding a person who would be considered underage in the home country, state, and/or province of many of the readers, although potentially not Japan, as the age of consent, as far as I can tell, is 13. Additionally, there are vague spoilers for VS Arashi and D no Arashi and Hey! Say! JUMP's debut concert.

( 「like a parent」 )

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Hey!Say!JUMP//Ultra Music Power

So. I hear this a lot on the internet. "Those yaoi fangirls and their disgusting misogyny." And maybe I'm missing something, but what?

( In the end, can't we all respect one another while producing interesting and worthwhile fanworks? )

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Arashi//Cry for You

In the past few days, I have discovered the best, most beautiful RPS pairing in the whole world ever.

Washio Noboru/Sano Mizuki.

...Since probably everyone reading this is wondering what the hell I'm smoking, I'm going to start on a slightly backwards note and mention the reasons why this doesn't not make sense. Or rather, why this is perfectly reasonable in the world of RPS. XD;;; Let's compare to an extremely popular RPS fandom, TeniMyu:
① Many popular TeniMyu pairings are based entirely off of the pairing the characters play. For example, many Shirota/Aiba fans I have encountered primarily ship Tezuka/Fuji, and have clearly stated that this is the reason why they ship Shirota and Aiba. As in, unrelated to the actors' behaviour backstage or out of character.
② Many popular TeniMyu pairings are based entirely off of backstage material from one or two musicals, without any blog references or continued interaction to the knowledge of the viewer. For example, Saitou/Ruito was a popular pairing, and while the two spent a lot of time together in various musicals, they don't appear on one another's blogs, nor do we have any hard evidence that they spend time together outside of musicals.
③ TeniMyu is a much larger, much more fanservice-oriented fandom than *pnish*. I'm just going to leave that statement hanging. XD;
(Not that I'm criticizing TeniMyu fandom! I'm just using these paradigms as an example to prove that I'm not coming entirely out of left field here, and that this isn't as much of a stretch as it might seem.)

So, keeping all those things in mind , please read on! :D

( I promise I'm not crazy! )

And that's really it. XD; I know I'm bizarre, but I'm actually quite enthralled with this, so don't be surprised if I put out fic. ♥ I just want Wasshi to be happy and have somebody to love~

And, of course, I'd love to hear any thoughts on this beautiful essay (if you can even call it that... XD;;;)! I'd prefer, naturally, if you didn't comment PURELY to tell me that I'm a crazy bitch, but if you have any thoughts on what I've written or any questions of where I come up with this stuff... discussion makes the world go 'round :D

...I should probably go to bed now. XD;;;

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Washio Noboru//Tabidachi

I'm doing some memes because I haven't contributed to society in a really long time and I figured that this is the sort of meme that it's interesting to read other people's responses too. So it's sort of like contributing to society (okay stfu).

Anyway, you can do both or just one, but I'm asking that you don't do every single letter on the first one (especially if you're going to do the second one too) because these things take time and I'm still kind of brain dead from working.

Meme 1: Choose your weapon
a) Write one or two sentences about a character you write that I also write/fangirl. Use no names, just pronouns. I will try to guess who it is.

b) Comment to this post with a subject for a top five (ships, songs, books, etc) you would like to see my answer. Be as specific or as broad as you'd like.

c) Name a character I write and I'll tell you how s/he lost ~~her/~~his virginity.

d) Come up with the craziest theory you can think of for any of my fandoms, and I will explain why it makes perfect sense and is in fact probably true.

Meme 2:
Give me one of my own stories, and a timestamp sometime in the future after the end of the story, or sometime in the past before the story started, and I'll write you at least a hundred words of what happened then, whether it's five minutes before the story started or ten years in the future.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Kato Kazuki//Koori no Sekai

This is a tangent on an issue which, as a Prince of Tennis writer, I come across a lot.

The thing is, most characters in Prince of Tennis call one another by their last names. So far as I know, in fact, Silver Pair are the only ones who shift in their name-calling as they grow closer over the course of the series. This is a little bit weird to me in some instances (for example; Oishi calls Eiji "Eiji." First name, no honourific. So it seems like, weird beyond words to me that Eiji calls Oishi "Oishi" and not "Shuuichirou.") Sure, it makes sense a lot of the time, but when it comes to writing pairings, well... what is one to do?

I've seen just about everything done before in fics that I've read, from both being called by last name in narration to both being called by first name in narration, regardless of what the characters think of and call one another. I've seen character switch what names they use over the course of a relationship in a fic, and characters having, in a fic, been dating for years and still calling one another by last name. I don't know what to go with... It's just an interesting debate. I've been really conservative in the past... so I'm making a resolution to try to break out of the box. XD;;;; Yosh!

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Oishi Shuuichirou and Kikumaru Eiji//Type wa D!

I feel mushy right now. I just read a lot of well-written fanfiction, which probably has something to do with it, but like... I dunno. Like emo-scene-in-a-chick-flick mushy. There's an unbelievable view from my window right now; it was raining hard and abruptly stopped, the sun is really bright mid sky to the west, and behind the silhouette of the Great Hall and the clock tower, the sky is brilliant blue. The campus is still overshadowed with rain clouds; on the cherry trees right outside my window, hints of pink are blossoming at the tips of the branches. When I sit on the window seat, I feel like I am in one of those emo scenes, only I have nothing, really, to be emo about. It's sad when I envy anime characters for particular elements of their lives. In the words of our own dear Atobe-sama, "suteki na romansu shitai..."

You know, I have a lot of favourite characters in Prince of Tennis, but, I've realized, Gakuto really is my very favourite. There's just something about him that I love deeply from the bottom of my heart; I empathize with him, on some level. There's something about his brashness, his hot-temperedness... I don't know. I love Atobe because he's fabulous, I love Ryoma because he's a snotty little brat, I love Eiji because he's sweet and insecure, I love Mizuki because he's a conniving bitch... But honestly, there's just something about sweet, stupid little Gakuto that I love the most.

I mean... I haven't been in fandom long enough to know if I fit in with others' ideas a lot (and Gakuto isn't so popular, so far as I can tell, to begin with), but my headcanon for Gakuto has shaped up rather distinctly as of recently, and my personal Gakuto needs to be needed. Like Hazel, I guess, if you want to draw the comparison to my Saiyuki love (and now that I think about it, it's a little disturbing, really), there's just something about the pathetic ones that I like. But, then again, that's just my personal headcanon. I kind of like the fact that, with Prince of Tennis, you have a lot of room for headcanon, really. I mean, I love Minekura to bits, and she's so talented and amazing and in Saiyuki, there is and there isn't and it's up to the reader to discern and she drops so many subtle hints and the characters are who they are, and I love analyzing Minekura's manga like the lit nerd I am. But there's something appealing about Konomi's boys, in that, there's just so many of them, not all of them can be delved into in canon. With characters like Gakuto (or most rivals, honestly) you have a lot of room for interpretation. Konomi gives you the character bios and that's it, you're on your own. And though I love lit, I love being creative, I think, even more.

( My headcanon for Gakuto, for those who care to look )

Outside of my fandom-related ramblings... this weekend, I'm heading back to good old DE for a weekend of DDC stress! Scary volunteered me to work backstage without asking first, and so I'll be doing the spawn-of-Scary-Mary act this weekend (I think I need a nickname, too, but nothing rhymes or alliterates nicely...) I want the chance to write... I just want to write a lot this weekend. I have to work on various school-related things, but I'd like to pound out at least one more bit of OTJN as well as a one-shot, at least... I don't know if it'll happen, but. And being around the studio or the theatre makes me want to dance, and to start working on Make You Free, specifically... Alas.

...I really want to cosplay Gakuto sometime. I mean, I'm really excited to (possibly? Have we decided on this?) be Mizuki this summer, don't get me wrong. I just really want to be Gakuto someday. And, I mean, by normal person standards, I'm flexible, and I'm short, so... how could I go wrong? XD;

Uh... in other news, in Japanese today, Tiina announced that we were like the Ichinen Trio... and somehow, she became Horio, I became Kachiro, and a very tired, unobliging

britkit27 became Katsuo. XD;;; We were singing Kounai Ranking and stuff. XD;;; We're so cool.

Lastly, this song is entirely filled with Royal Pair. Seriously,

britkit27, how can you not see it?

Current Mood: introspective
Current Music: Kato Kazuki//Koori no Sekai

I'll be the first to admit, it'd been like forever and a half since I've written a proper "20 things" fic. That meme went around back sometime between 2005 and 2006 or something, and I did write a few for Fullmetal Alchemist back a good 2 and a half years ago, and since then, I've written quite a few variations (I find five a comfortable number in that I can write in greater detail but still have the distinct divisions of a numbered fic, but, being who I am, I also tend to stray into colours and timelines and other distinctions rather than numbers, as well). But, fishing around the internet for various Prince of Tennis things (why am I always so far behind fads? And liking Prince of Tennis now just makes me feel so old...) I stumbled upon this list of 20 Things fics for Prince of Tennis. I read the ones I cared to read, and have come to a conclusion:

There really is a "good" way and a "bad" way to write 20 Things fics. There were stories written by excellent writers in which the pieces in themselves were excellent to read, there were stories where the characters were extremely well characterized such that I was almost open-mouthed at the level of understanding, but that didn't flow as a 20 Things fic, and it was sad, really. And there were really poorly written ones with typos and poor characterization and uninteresting styles, but that flowed as 20 Things fics, and somehow, it works better. I mean, it's all a matter of opinion, of course, but in this very specific way of writing, there are some general rules that I, personally, think apply.

I also feel bad for people who wrote for a popular character and there are multiples. Tezuka had like six, none of which I bothered to read. Mizuki had two, both of which had high points, but I think I get won over by gayness too easily. The less gay of the two was, in my personally opinion, the better written story. There was only one for Eiji, which was well written but included Eiji having sex with a girl, which left a rather strange aftertaste, and one for Golden Pair for which the first line was something along the lines of "Golden Pair aren't actually dating." Oishi had one okay one, but I don't think anyone did them justice.

...I'm going off on a tangent.

The point of this post is, I really want to write a 20 Things fic now. Thing is, I don't know who to write for. I'd love to do Mizuki, but I don't know how I could really get past being swayed by the two I read. Any input is welcome, but this is not my agreement to write one for any character anyone suggests, because the nature of a 20 Things fic is to be introspective, and if I don't get them, I'm not going to stumble around in the dark and make a fool out of myself.

... I'm really hungry.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: Aiba Hiroki and KENN//Run Run Run!

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素直な気持ち伝えるのさ

膨らむ気持ちは止まらない

Entries tagged with meta is fun!

ramblings on the subgroups for JUMPing CAR

on the recent FIVB Volleyball World Cup supporters announcement

OTP meme!

On Inoo's fourth year graduate-level lab, and his feelings on school

2015 predictions, part 3!

More on the Gamushara! Sexy Natsu Matsuri results

Johnny's Junior Land~

"gamushara" is definitely one word for it...

2015 predictions, part 2

quick post before all the cleaning

Junior rankings!

ジャニーズ研究

☆ ~hey! say! jump pimp post~ ☆

親みたい！• a Sho/Chinen pairing manifesto

[a rant]

an rps pairing manifesto of epic proportions!

Meme

Names

Rambling; views, Princes of Tennis, headcanon, this weekend

20 Things Fics