Mika, Key, and Naomi are best friends and they all want to win the J-Idol Audition talent show. But when they win, only Mika is offered to debut! Will their friendship be able to withstand her solo stardom? This is volume 1 of the J-Pop Idol manga series.

"If you don't know me, that's okay. There were many days I didn't know who I was either..." My name is Chiharu Morita. Of course, that is the name on this blog, so that is who I am. The Chiharu you know is only a shadow. Yes, I was in a group called Butterfly Tops. Now I am a composer, the person responsible for some of the pop songs you hear on the radio. Those aren't the reasons you know me, though. You know me because of YUMI. The woman who comes into your living room every night on dramas, music shows, and radio request lines. The most famous woman in the country. Yumi, as you may know, is my childhood friend. We graduated high school and went to audition for a new girl group they were creating. The rest is history. For you, anyway. For me, I still breathe this every day. Because I love Yumi. I have since I was a young girl too stupid to know the words for what I felt. This is my confession. This is the story of not only me, but Yumi too. Of how we left our town and became household names. Of how I fell in love with her and did everything in my power to protect her from the evil in this world. I did not always succeed. I will not rest until you know the truth. All the lies the agencies and labels tried to make us spew will be known. Maybe this will mean the end of what career I have left. But if I don't tell this story, I won't know who I am anymore. I want to be more than "the girl who loved Yumi," and yet it's the only identity I can ever remember having. For better or worse, let us begin. Set in contemporary Japan, "LOVE, YUMI" is the epic journey one woman embarks on to complete the impossible: to save her best friend and the woman she loves from a brutal, all-consuming pop culture world. Contains every situation that entails.

This is the most complete and compelling account of idols and celebrity in Japanese media culture to date. Engaging with the study of media, gender and celebrity, and sensitive to history and the contemporary scene, these interdisciplinary essays cover male and female idols, production and consumption, industrial structures and fan movements.

Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed Aya and her twin brother Aki thought they were going to a celebration of their sixteenth birthday at their grandfather's home, but the funeral-like atmosphere tips them off that something's not right. Their "birthday present" turns out to be a mummified hand--the power of which forces an awakening within Aya, and painful wounds all over Aki's body! Grandfather Mikage announces that Aki will be heir to the Mikage fortune, and Aya must die! But Aya has allies in the athletic cook and martial artist Yûhi, and the attractive, mysterious Tôya. But can even two handsome and resourceful guys save Aya when it's her own power that's out of control? -- VIZ Media

Why did he have to say "Hello" when it could only ever end with a "Goodbye"? Lucinda Of all the summer dance programs in the world, Lee Minhyuk enrolled in mine. I was in New York; he was from Seoul. I may have only been thirteen, but I'd fallen in love with him from "Hullo." For three years, we had seen each other at a handful of dance programs or written each other a dozen letters. This was the summer I was going to tell him. Sure, there were usually 7,000 miles between us, but I had a plan... Minhyuk My dream was to become a K-Pop idol. I was going to audition with my best friends, join the same agency, and debut together. I'd only gone to New York to get some more dance experience, but I'd met her and I couldn't help but fall in love. Then I got accepted into Atlantis Entertainment. With my dream of being an idol in my grasp, the only thing I needed to do was let go of the beautiful American girl I loved. At least it was a sure bet she didn't feel the same way about me...

Since the late 1960s a ubiquitous feature of popular culture in Japan has been the "idol," an attractive young actor packaged and promoted as an adolescent role model and exploited for marketing. This book offers ethnographic case studies on the symbolic qualities of idols and how they relate to the conceptualization of self among adolescents.

Chiro-chan is a world-class idol...at least, to Sakiko Manaka, your run-of-the-mill hard-core idol fan. So when Chiro—real name Chihiro—ends up sitting next to her in school, Sakiko's world is turned upside-down, and all her brain cells vanish. After all, how can she concentrate when her absolute fav is just inches away?! But she needs to be on her A-game, because she may not be the only one who is totally gaga for Chihiro...

Tucked away down an anonymous alleyway in the shadow of Tokyo’s skyscrapers, you will find the Mystery Café. Push open the door and take a seat at the counter: here, the eccentric owner offers not only his fine cuisine, but also his services as a detective...

This book makes a case for the synergetic union between reality TV and the music industry. It delves into technological change in popular music, and the role of music reality TV and social media in the pop production process. It challenges the current scholarship which does not adequately distinguish the economic significance of these developments.

This book investigates transcultural consumption of three iconic figures ù the middle-aged Japanese female fandom of actor Bae Yong-Joon, the Western online cult fandom of the thriller film Oldboy, and the Singaporean fandom of the pop-star Rain. Through these three specific but hybrid context, the author develops the concepts of soft masculinity, as well as global and postmodern variants of masculine cultural impacts. In the concluding chapter, the author also discusses recently emerging versatile masculinity within the transcultural pop production paradigm represented by K-pop idol boy bands.