Just when you thought the AKB franchise couldn’t get any bigger, along comes another sister group.
The AKB empire has stretched its tentacles all over the Japanese archipelago and even to Jakarta in Indonesia.
And now the “idols you can meet” concept finally arrives up in the colder climes of Hokkaido, Japan’s large northern island. Next spring there will be SPR48, the new sister group in Sapporo, Hokkaido’s capital city.
This is according to the AKB boss, Yasushi Akimoto, the 56-year-old honcho who the government wants to represent everything “Cool Japan” can offer to the foreign world. The veteran producer, who married one of his young idol charges a few decades ago, confirmed another 48 underage girls on the music industry.
There are already many other sister groups. SKE48 was the first and is based in Nagoya. NMB48 is in Osaka while HKT48 is in Fukuoka. Overseas there is JKT48 in Jakarta and SNH48 in Shanghai. Nogizaka46 is not an official sister group but is managed by the same agency.
The “adult AKB” sister group SDN48 (“Saturday night 48″) closed down in 2012. It wasn’t so successful, perhaps because the appeal of the idol groups rests in their being sexy and “innocent” at the same time — a tricky balance to pull off. By making the girls more overtly sexual, it ultimately ended up being just another Gravure idol group in a very competitive industry.
Will the SPR48 young girls warm up the chilly otaku of Hokkaido? Or will it flop before the winter ice has melted?
