I felt a bit crazy. A week ago, I was at a concert. The day before, at a fan event. And on the 23rd of December, I'll be meeting Apink face to face in Osaka. I felt quite overwhelmed, really, especially considering that one of the idols will be handing me a Christmas card. To think that I haven't gotten a card from anybody in years...and this year, I'll be getting it from an Apink. It was overwhelming.
The coupon I got from the album. I actually wanted Chorong...but I got Hayoung instead. I pulled a random Hayoung photo during the fan event, and for the coupon I got Hayoung. I think I pulled her for just about every single fan merchandise I got ever since. Not that I really care - I've always thought Hayoung maknae is the true visual of Apink. She was stunning in person, and the photos obviously did not do any justice.
The event was held in Osaka ATC, about 1.5 hours from Kyoto.
There was a morning and afternoon session. I slept in so I went in the afternoon.
There were about 150 people at the fan-meet. The fanbase was an interesting mix of high school girls, women in their late twenties, early twenties guys like myself, and quite a few uncle fans. The male-to-female ratio was about 40/60. I was a bit surprised to see so many females. A few were fanclub members and wore pink T-shirts. Still there were several cute girls who dressed up as pandas.
The Apink fanbase in a nutshell.
To be honest, Apink is about five years too old for the cutesy pink concept.
There's something oddly satisfying though, about seeing Eunji in a pink dress...
It was my first fan-meet ever. I was so shocked at how crazy some of the fans were. At least a dozen bought a whole stack of albums so they could stock up on coupons. There was a lot of coupon trading going on to (Chorong was probably the most popular, Namjoo the least). People had photo albums filled with the pictures of their idols. And the weird thing was that they weren't uncle fans. They were well-dressed girls who look completely normal until they flipped out their idol stuff.
They then announced that there was a super special secret event you get invited to, if you bought every single album (which was almost 30k yen) To be honest, that felt really, really greedy from them. It was a cash grab from them and I felt really turned off by it. I mean, I guess album sales are important, but doing it at a fan-event was just kind of shameless. It turns out that you get rewarded with some photos and snacks, and that's it. It really wasn't a very pleasant feeling.
The girls came in while the fans waited. Eunji looked very happy, waving and smiling, but everyone else looked exhausted. Hayoung smiled a little but Chorong and the others had blank faces. Naeun looked very sad and 'off'. But what was really heartbreaking was that Namjoo was on a wheelchair. She'd hurt her ankle a couple days ago at the Seoul concert. But she's here anyway. Cries of 'Namjoo-chan ganbare!' came from the crowd. I don't understanding why she still has to work.
Hayoung: こんにちわ!メリークリスマス~ どぞ~ (hands me the card, tired smile)
Me: こんにちわ!えと。。。ハヨンちゃん。。。可愛い~
Hayoung: (giggles) ありがとございます!バイバイ~
Me: ありがとございます。。。
Hayoung: (waves)
Anyways, the actual handing-out of the Christmas cards was as efficient as it was industrial. You get in lines (the idols are in the booths), and under supervision you remove all your belongings. No photos, no touching (obviously) and you get about five seconds each. So I felt a lot less like a fan and a lot more like a cow being pushed into the slaughterhouse. I guess that's what happens when you leave it to the people who invented Tokyo assembly lines to organize fan-meets.
And it was over, just like that. What an anti-climatic end to a whole week that revolved around idols. I left not really knowing what to feel. Not exactly disappointed. But rather a feeling of emptiness. The whole thing felt so incredibly corporate (a bit exploitative, even) and it was really uncomfortable. If anything, I actually respect the idols so much more. I can't imagine being in a career where I have to pretend to be cute to entice fifty year-old men to spend money. Nor can I imagine coming to work in a wheelchair, with a broken ankle, and having to put up with such a crazy schedule.
And even despite all this, I felt kind of happy. I was alone in a foreign country, and there's something perversely magical about being handed a Christmas card from a beautiful woman. If anything, I understand idols a lot more now. Maybe I wasn't just the only person who felt this way. Maybe everyone, especially the uncle fans, feel the same way. It's just supply and demand, really. The fans demand some sort of emotional connection, and the idols supplied it at a hefty fee. That's just life.
Still, I really don't mean to say anything negative. I love Apink as much as before, if not more. They did their job well, and I really respect them a lot more than before. It saddened me too that I'll probably never get to see them in person again. Will Apink still be around in two years time? Will I still be into this thing? I guess I'll answer these questions then. Maybe this is as far as I'm gonna go. Maybe, in the end, I just wasn't that much of a fan, and you know, I think that's okay.