Some Personal Thoughts on Mikitty and Scandals...

Alright, so...last night, in the process of trying to find video of Miki's Aenai performance from the SharamQ 20th Anniversary concert (which, by the way, there seems to be none of...), I came across quite a few blogs from around the time of her scandal. They talked about what Momusu could have become under her leadership, what was to become of GAM, her newfound relationship with this Shouji guy...and it depressed the shit out of me. I suppose now it's time for the obligatory scandal post.

One of the first things I need to get out of the way is, I have always approached H!P as a true blue wota. That's not to say that I pull out my glowsticks and do wotagei along to my concert DVDs, but there's a pretty real relationship that develops between wota and idol (or, should I say, one-sided relationship that develops from wota toward idol), and I've got it in full force. So when, say...someone in wotachat (*cough* pengie *cough*) makes some kind of lewd joke about Miki, it pisses me off. I've stormed out of wotachat on a few different occasions for that reason because, while I know the relationship is not the same (I may be smitten with a girl I'll never meet, but I'm not crazy), the emotions stirred up by that situation are similar to those that would arise if someone started making jokes about my wife or girlfriend, were I to have one. Just to re-emphasize this point, I don't think Fujimoto Miki is my girlfriend. That's stupid. But I still have a strong emotional connection to her as an idol, and it bothers me to see that idol image broken, as selfish and foolish as that is (but really, I'm a wota...would you expect anything else?). I hope that, by putting this post together, I can shed some light on how wotas feel about scandals and so forth. I get pretty tired of bloggers saying "why can't you just be happy for her!?". It's really not that simple.

Now that that's taken care of, back to my situation last night. So I'm wandering google search results, trying to find any traces of some Aenai footage, and I run across some blogs about Miki's scandal last year. While that's always been kind of a sour point for me, it never bothered me much because I wasn't a fan of hers at the time, and she's active now, so I could look past it. Not last night. Reading about all the tabloids that were reporting on her nights at a guy's house, trips to restaurants, weekends at resorts with him...I felt like the boyfriend who had just been dumped, seeing a girl I still had feelings for walking around with another guy. And for wota, that's exactly what it is. Creepy it may be, but filling that void for lonely guys is the function of idols, like it or not.

But back to the issue of scandals...while it truly bothers me to read what little there is to read about Miki's love life, I don't think she should stop dating Shouji Tomoharu. I may be selfish, but I'm not a dick. I cringe at the thought of what her and that guy may be doing behind closed doors, not because it makes me unhappy to think of her enjoying the company of a man in the bedroom (uncomfortable? yes, very - unhappy? not particularly), but because, as a wota, I can't help but feel jealous. She's MY idol...the girl I buy H!P concerts just for her one performance (2002 LOVE IS ALIVE concert DVD...hey, it was cheap), and collect her photobooks, and get excited when I recognize her voice in a song. There's a romantic element to being a wota that never really gets communicated to Western fans, because it's something you can't show through wotagei, or eyecandy posts, or buying merchandise, or anything like that.

Obviously, you can write about it, as I'm attempting to do here (and as others in the j-music blogosphere have done), but even that doesn't communicate what it's like to really have feelings for an idol, and then have those feelings stepped on when you find out that she's been "going behind your back". While terminology like that makes it seems as though I don't care about Miki's feelings, that couldn't be farther from the truth. As much as it hurts to think that Miki exists for anyone but me, I always do my best to put my feelings aside, because I do care about her. This is why I'm so fond of the no-dating policy.

It was blaringly obvious when Miki left H!P that she was ready to stop being an idol and live her life as a normal woman (or at least, as normal as the life of a celebrity can be). Some said that she used her relationship, and the no-dating policy, as a way out, and I'm inclined to agree. If an idol wants to do that, I say let her leave H!P and do so. After quitting Momusu, Miki laid low for a few months and made her way back into the music world with a solo single. She had said in interviews that she always wanted to be an enka singer anyway, so this was a near-ideal situation for her. Knowing that, by leaving H!P, Miki was allowing herself to do what she always wanted to do...it was much easier for me to swallow my wota selfishness and be happy for her.

One of the other things that makes it easier for me to continue enjoying Miki, knowing that she's no longer an idol, was that I didn't like her only as an idol, or as part of H!P. She's a talented vocalist (when songs are in her range... >.>'), a beautiful girl, and a great personality, and those aspects of her didn't go anywhere in the months between her scandal and Okitegami. There's just too many good things about her for me to drop my wota-ism because of some jealousy. Not to say that my jealousy is any less because of it...but the wota-idol relationship is only a small portion of why I like Miki so much. I think any wota who ends up sticking it out through a scandal that ends in their favorite idol leaving H!P would likely be able to say the same thing.

- cfb