AKB48’s latest “general election” sees sex scandal idol Rino Sashihara leading the pack even as the group’s creepy otaku fans have succeeded in driving their sales to record levels.
HKT48’s 20-year-old Rino Sashihara, best known for being caught having sex with one of her fans in a scandal which if anything seems to have only increased her popularity, seizing the top spot in the 5th AKB48 “general election”
According to Oricon sales figures, their new “Sayonara Crawl” single has just shipped a record 2.3 million copies, beating out their previous high of 2 million.
Not surprisingly their outstanding musical excellence has provoked much admiration online:
“2 million new CDs for the trash.”
“2.3 million frisbees.”
“They are not selling CDs, they are selling hand-shaking event tickets!”
“AKB shinrikyo.”
“This lot frankly seem to be going out of fashion.”
“Doesn’t stop them selling though.”
“For all the CDs they sell as many people lose all interest in music.”
“They really ought to switch to charting the number of buyers rather than the number of CDs sold.”
“A lot of garbage to be getting rid of.”
“How much energy will it take to dispose of this lot?”
“It’s a mystery who buys this stuff…”
“Japanese music charts are now almost completely dominated by idol groups rather than actual music, it’s pretty amazing really.”
“This single is awful. Who’d buy this? How many real buyers do they have?”
“I reckon it’s a ratio of 5 discs to 1 buyer.”
“I think even without the tickets they have plenty of good songs and would sell nicely. Although the haters are going to get me for saying that.”
“Rino is doing rather well thanks to the scandal it seems.”
“If you guys hate AKB48 that much, just vote for her and you’ll soon finish them off.”
“Remember, it’s only the otaku voting on the first day with all their mass-purchased tickets. The light-weights will vote later and that may change the result.”
“As if there are any light-weight fans who would actually vote in something like this.”
“Wait, didn’t Rino quit AKB48 and join some other group, so how can you vote for her?”
“You can vote for any of their sister groups.”
“I can’t believe she is in first…”
“All the people who pre-ordered just put in their votes so it’s possible.”
“She has 28k votes to the number 2’s 15k after the first day. There is no way that lead is going to be reversed guys.”
“There are over 2 million in total, it may still change!”
“There has been huge inflation in the number of votes in these elections, the winner in the first had 4k votes, the fourth had 110k.”
A glimpse into just how these sales figures are being sustained (as it likely not through the quality of their music, or through 2% of Japan’s population buying a copy each) – one fan has been bragging about spending 1.9 million yen on discs for the event, paying cash on delivery just to rub it in on the poor courier:
With this AKB48 fans are cementing their reputation as the creepiest around:
“What are you doing, Japan?”
“The poor courier must have been trembling on his way out after accepting that…”
“I once spent 300,000 on them at a convenience store but he has me beat.”
“You are just a trainee fan!”
“What are these guys doing? What you do with the money you earn is your business, but this is completely wasteful.”
“Why cash on delivery?”
“You could buy a car for that. Still, it is his choice.”
“So these boxes all contain the same CD? I’m speechless…”
“This must have emptied out the delivery truck.”
“I suppose it is better than spending it on Puzzle & Dragons…”
“At least that produces no mountain of garbage.”
“Dumping all those CDs looks like a hassle.”
“The last election:
“Abnormal.”
“This is basically a religion.”
“It is not possible to understand these people.”
“I wonder how badly they will regret doing this in 5 or 10 years.”
“He could open a music store. It would only stock one CD, though…”
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what i wanna know is, where the hell are this people getting all the moneys to buy this stuff
grandparent insurance check
It's "only" about 18500 in dollars, they might be taking a loan or something...
On sale : opened CDs , 10Y each :D
Rino's latest batch of fans have an NTR fetish, guaranteed.
NTR? She slept with a fan. Obviously now they all have a chance! Rino is the symbol of otaku hope!
It's doubtful she was deflowered by that guy, so she has some experience. Those creepy fans might think: "hey, that one guy did her. If I buy enough CDs and shake her hand, she'll use her hand to shake something else. I'll whip her some cream..."
Maybe people thought the same about Hirano Aya... if only I played an instrument, I could join her "band"
Well, glad that being openly human didn't destroy her carrier.
But this is the same crowd that threadened voice actors for having relationships?
Yeah, that would have been such a waste of 350 minerals
Well, she did it with one of her fans, so now they all have that glitter of false hope of gettting with ger in the back of thier heads, if she had gotten with some unknown "cool" guy or a boyfriend, then it would have been different.
These fans should craft swords, shields and armor out of all those CDs. They certainly have the means.
And then they'll all meet offline and have epic CD armor and weapon fights.
what will they do with all that CDS...make them a bed and sleep on it??
CD fort!
Laughed so hard at the last sentence.
These guys must be fucked in the head, but where do they even get this money from??
The image of the delivery guy unloading the boxes all 'what the fuck, what the fuck' is hilarious to me though. He'll be telling that story to his grandkids.
Where do they get the money from? They're single. Single guys always have money cause they don't have a girl who steals it from you.
Well that was a dumb comment. I'm pretty sure buying boxes and boxes of the same damn CD on multiple occassions (not to mention all the merchandise) robs you of a lot more money than any woman (or man, they pull this money-leeching shit too, you know) could if she tried.
VIRGIN DETECTED
True.
I aggre with shuubi. Most women ARE money leeching cunts.
buy 10, 11th is for free
And that mentality is basically the reason why you will never get laid/have sex (unless you speed some money on a hooker).
Why would he spend it on hookers, there are games and shit to be had, ya fool.
CD to be had you mean.
He works at Mc.D. the money come from those fake food!
How can they have a job? Or are their parents giving them the money?
So no matter what he does, the money will be wasted regardless?
No, even as single, it takes huge amount of money, seriously.
These creepy guys and otaku, many dont ven have jobs pal, how in the fuck do they get it.
I wonder if the courier was worried about getting robbed after accepting that cash.
I know Japan has a low crime rate well at least a low reported crime rate but there still is crime.
The equivalent of $19,000 even a cop may think about having you make a coerced donation.
In cases like this, and in fact after much smaller deliveries, it's protocol for the courier to return immediately to the distribution center which is rarely more than 1000 meters in any direction.
It's common for identical convenience store chains, etc. to operate up to 5 stores per square 1000 meters, and product deliverers are the same, and far less prominently advertised. You won't know in many cases that a truck is delivering for a certain company, or where the distro center is. And we only know the contents of the boxes in the above picture because the article says so. Why would a robber/mugger know? He would need to act very, very fast to capitalize on the very small window to steal the $19,000 equivalent from the courier, but also would only know the contents of the delivery and the time it took place by knowing everything about the BUYER. And in fact if a delivery truck were robbed, the implication(s) would be that the thief was or worked in collusion with the buyer, and police would not find anything odd about the fact a courier was carrying huge sums of money. The Japanese mafia and street thugs do frequently do deals in "broad daylight" where at any given time, true police might randomly discover massive piles of cash being transferred between locations, but there would not be any specific crime involved, it's just organized crime doing the same sort of thing that couriers and convenience stores do. It's all one big well oiled machine, or an ant farm. Likely as not, if a courier were robbed it'd be a breakdown of that machine on a scale that would have organized crime figuring out which jackoff did it and dealing with things that that way. The cops here... yeeks.
Not that you wanted such a lengthy and earnest reply, but for interest: Japan is of course a cash culture. My wife once changed $24,000 USD from yen and was surprised that the "forrin view" is that this is risky. The sadder reality is that the "forrin view" is that crime happens randomly and viciously, that EVERYONE is at risk all the time, you're just as much at risk of being stabbed to death for $5 and $500,000 if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nobody knows where that place or time is, so NEVER CARRY CASH. Japan simply doesn't think this way, especially not when doing business within Japan with fellow Japanese.
same here i laughted soo hard and i was driking a coca cola and it hurst ass heeeell when it pases trought my nose, damn men this guys are worst than seiyuus fans
i know it is ok to invest in gold, but investing in AKB cd's???.....
You can buy one CD for 10 euro (11 dollars, 1000 yen, 9 pounds) and at least get your money back for the voting ticket, get an extra 10-3000 euro depending on whose picture you get, and then get handshake a member and can sell back the CD for like 50 cent/2 euro, depending on the total sales.
Who wouldn't invest in AKB cds?
You've opened my eyes, sir.
Lady Gaga could hug a fat fan and say thank you.
anon 22:43 told the truth. depending on what trading photo you get, the value of it online on auction sites is enough to get back a decent part of what you spent with the cds. as soon as you're buying a shitload of cds, inevitably you'll get some valuable photos.
Well he could take all that cardboard/plastic to a recycling center, maybe get some pocket change.
depending on the plastic in cds, you could extrude it and sell it to people with 3d printers.
its what im considering doing
5-8$ a kg, once extruded comes to 30-40$ a kg and you get the recipient to pick up the shipping.
and that is..the power of merchandising.Hook,line and sinker for the creepiest school of fishes and quite deadly too.
Pic 2, wallpaper says 指 (finger) all over, and I can't help but think where I'd like to stick my finger...
Wait, 48 is relevant again? ???????????
this is their best selling single ever. they never stopped being relevant. they never dropped below 1 million sales for each single.
This is a business model that should be unsustainable under normal circumstances. And yet it succeeds, because a fool and his money are soon parted.
Seriously, doesn't he have better things to do with his money? Makes me wonder what kind of soul-crushing yet lucrative job he must have to shut him out of life.
Ah yes, Japan's creepy obsession with under age girls. Second only to Japan's very creepy obsession of "2d over 3d".
Can you even read the words "20-year-old" that appear in this very article?
The Land of the Rising Creepy Obsession.
I find the age of consent in japan to be quite awesome.
And a mysterious wind blows there clothes off!!!
Those pictures would make a great reference for artists looking to draw different hairstyles.
I wonder if they have rules for that, too. "No, new girl, you can't have twintails with a side part, that's taken already. You can, I believe, have center-part twintails, but only if you forgo hair decs. Let me check my flowchart."
I keep reading Rino as Rhino. Made the headline even more disturbing.
Sankaku headlines are always deliberate. Gotta love that.