erilaz wrote:Tokyo Idols is playing at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival next month. I’ve bought my ticket for the Sunday screening.
http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websale ... d919a3c410
I just got home from seeing this. Obviously it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about the Japanese idol phenomenon, but I thought it did a decent job of presenting the subject to an audience that (for the most part) probably knew little or nothing about it. I thought it was a pretty balanced depiction without any blatantly negative agenda, though some reviews that I read seemed to think otherwise. With no narrator and a limited number of onscreen captions to give some background and identify the people in the film, it let the idols, their fans, and sometimes the idols' parents do most of the talking. They also had a handful of media and academic talking heads (including Hyadain) giving their views. One male sociologist and one female journalist provided most of the negative comments about the idol industry and especially the fans. Will most American viewers come away from the film thinking that middle-aged, male, idol otaku are perverted, pathetic losers, despite the film's even-handed treatment? Well, yeah. But what else would you expect?
As for the dramatis personae, none of the H!P girls appear in the documentary, though we do get a few shots of an Up Up Girls (仮) handshake event. Most of the film focuses on solo idol Hiiragi Rio and her 43-year-old super-fan Koji, but we also get bits on Yuka from P.IDL, Amu from Harajuku Monogatari, Yuzu from Amore Carina, and Ōshima Ryōka from AKB48 (not so much her as her wota).
Here's an intelligent article about the film, including an informative interview with director Miyake Kyōko:
http://moveablefest.com/moveable_fest/2 ... idols.html
