I am something of a fan of Babymetal. I do enjoy their music, even though I’m not usually a fan of metal. I think I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into further detail
One thing I have notice (and I may be doing a little bit of this myself, unwittingly; forgive me) is that Youtube reaction channels seem to take off whenever they do a Babymetal reaction. There is this horde of fans that follow people around and give channels probably one or two thousand subscribers almost literally overnight. They like to say they’re “not a cult”, say Nakamoto-san is their “queen”, etc. I get that a lot of it is tongue in cheek, but not all of it.
This is a symptom of an actual problem, in my opinion I’m just using Nakamoto-san as an example, as it extends to many different people, in Japan and beyond. It applies to idols of all sorts, pop stars of all sorts, etc.
People think they love people when they don’t.
I do respect Nakamoto-san. I really do. She is quite a talent, a force to be reckoned with, and Babymetal wouldn’t be the same without her. I respect her accomplishments, and hope she has a long and fruitful career.
But I don’t love her.
I don’t know her enough to love her.
See, I know pretty much nothing about her when she’s not prancing around a stage and belting out music. I know she is… a woman. I’m pretty sure of that fact. I know she’s gotten pretty good at speaking English – her accent in “Kingslayer” is surprisingly good. I know that… she is a singer for the Babymetal band. And that’s it. Maybe she is a nice person – in fact, probably she is a nice person.
But I don’t know that.
So while I respect her accomplishments, I don’t love her. Not at all. Just as I don’t love Takahashi Minami, Sashihara Rino, Takeuchi Miyu, Mizuno Yui, or any of a thousand other people whose accomplishments I greatly respect. You have to be more than a good singer to make me say I love someone. And so far, no idle, no pop star, no movie star, no celebrity at all, has earned that right.
I expect there will be a few people who won’t read past the title of this blog and will attack me. I’ll only say this and otherwise ignore them – they’re the problem.