A 16-year-old girl from just north of Tokyo, Aimi Eguchi, is now the biggest pop sensation in Japan. Teenagers just can't get enough of their new flawless pop idol either.
But wait a minute, is Aimi Eguchi even real?
[W]hat if a virtual person was passed off as real? Or what if a real person was thought to be virtual? That's exactly what is happening in Japan. Located in Japan's geek heaven Akihabara, AKB48 is the country's most popular female pop group ... Its latest member is Aimi Eguchi, who has rocketed from obscurity to become the poster girl for a Japanese ice candy, Ice no Mi.
Cynical as ever, Japanese netizens have been quick to pounce, noting that Eguchi's photos appear to be doctored ... so doctored that netizens are drawing comparisons between them and photos that appear on bait-and-switch Korean massage parlors.
Netizens believe that Eguchi's appearance is a composite of the most popular AKB48 girls—real girls that appear in the Aisu no Mi ad.
Eguchi does appear to be somewhat stiff in the commercial, and her mouth movements appear off. But maybe she's nervous. Or maybe it's because she was created in a hard drive to sell this snack. As one Netizen notes, her first name "Aimi" (愛実) could be a wordplay on "Aisu no Mi" (アイスの実). The name of the song AKB48 sing in the snack commercial is "Aisu no Kuchizuke" or "Ice Kiss".
Believers say Eguchi is real, pointing to her profile listing on the official AKB48 site, and bat away cynical notions that she was created simply to drum up publicity. "Hollywood can't even create CG this good," wrote one individual.
Japan has created virtual idols in the past, such as Kyoko Date in the late 1990s and, more recently, Miku Hatsune. With Kyoto Date, there was an effort to pass her off as "real"—though everybody knew she was a computer creation. Uncanny Valley territory, it wasn't. With Aimi Eguchi, those clear distinctions are being blurred.
In what should be no surprise (coming out of the shallow pop culture), Aimi Eguchi is a computer-generated fake.
Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation
To thousands of Japanese teenagers she was the ultimate pop idol.
With picture-perfect teeth and hair, shiny, flawless skin and a sweet singing voice, Aimi Eguchi embodied everything that teenage girls wished for.
However, dig a little deeper, and not everything was quite as it seemed.
Miss Eguchi, who told fans on her website that she was a normal 16-year-old from Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo who enjoyed track and field sports, was anything but.
In fact, she was not human at all - but a clever computer-generated composite of six other members of the popular girl band AKB 48.
Miss Eguchi was also part of a wily marketing campaign, created by a confectionery company that had hired the band to front an advertisement for one of their chocolates.
HT - Japanese Pop Star Not Real, Computer Composite
Fake virtual pop stars are hardly unique to Japan. Remember the made-for-TV band The Monkees? How about something more recent, like Hannah Montana or Lemonade Mouth? And if we only could forget that seemingly endless list of manufactured "boy bands" ...
There is so much wrong with the music industry that I wouldn't even know where to begin. Perhaps fostering artistic expression instead of pumping out formulaic product might do them some good. Anyways, enjoy the following video by another virtual band, the Gorillaz.
Fake popstars. Fake politicians. Our world is becoming one big illusion.
The Making of a Popstar is a post from: The Classic Liberal Blog