きずな

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Johnny & Associates vs. w-inds/FLAME/LEAD
[who is better and more successful]

In the world of J-pop, we know basically 2 groups that consists of only guys who have produced several units in order to reach out to the audiences across the world: Johnny's and the WFL. So my question now is: who is better?

Let's have a look at WFL. w-inds. songs are really great and their dances are cool and superb. However, if you look at their fanbase, there is basically very little in Japan. It's majority fanbase are mostly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China and also from Korea, and a few fans from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand as well. Do their hits made it to the Oricon Weekly everytime? They don;t really appear in the top 100 of the yearly charts every year too. Their album sales are much better outside Japan but that doesn;t seem to help them with their internal fanbase as well. This goes the same for LEAD too, as well as FLAME who seems to be slowly fading away.

And when looking at the success of Johnny's. look how successful their records sales are. The Oricon weekly chart is predominatly occupied by them most of the time. SMAP's single 'Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana' (世界に一つだけの花) appears in the yearly chart for 2 years! No 1 in 2003 and No 15 in 2004. The hit 'Seishun Amigo' （青春アミゴ） by one time duo band Shuuji to Akira (修二と彰) also spawned 2 years: No 1 in 2005 and No 3 in 2006. Last year alone, 4 out of 5 artists which occupied the top 5 positions of the Oricon Weekly are from Johnny's; two of which are KAT-TUN with 'Real Face' at No 1 and 'SIGNAL' at No 5. And more Johnny's songs follows as well throughout. They have a very large internal fanbase in Japan as well as external fanbases all around the world who bought their albums, making them the biggest all-male group in Japan. Not only does the main groups such as Tackey & Tsubasa or NEWS always makes the shows; they even have Johnny's Juniors such as Ya-ya-Yah to bring in more fans; they even have the Shounen Club (ザ・少年倶楽部) aired on NHK every Sunday night to feature them. In other words, they are doing all they can to bring in more fans and show off their talent to attract a big crowd.

Thus, it is pretty obvious that Johnny & Associates are the best all-male group ever.

hideaki @ 2:32 AM

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