I Hate These Kinds of Stories

/ Homicidol Maniac

About a month ago, I was excited that Too Young to Fall in Love, Koiwosuruniwa Wakasugiru, was getting a fresh reboot and a chance to bring the pain with backing from real scene insiders. Now, the members are all out, and the alleged reason why isn’t pretty.

First, the statement on the group:

Basically, the re-formed Koiwaka won’t be making their stage debut because all of the members have withdrawn. The reason why isn’t pretty.

A little disclaimer: When Jul first shared this information with me, my intent was to follow up with the members and the producer to at least get statements, but it took a while to get everybody tracked down, and there’s enough stuff on and not on Twitter that we can just lay it out and observe.

Anyway, the now-former Koiwaka member who goes by Ame tweeted this out yesterday (before she changed her handle):

Viz Major and Pukovnik Krv helped out with translating the specifics: The short of Ame’s accusation is that the group’s producer was wasting their time (only recently started training and had no lives) and was attracted to one of the members (Meru), which led to favoritism and, to be diplomatic about it, improper sexual advances; it was difficult to refuse due to his status, but they (the members as a whole) got sick of it and quit.

She’s referring to PEPE, the owner/manager of the Meguro Rockmaykan club that’s hosted a lot of our favorites over the years (including Babymetal!). As of when I’m writing this, he doesn’t have any response tweeted, nor does the Rockmaykan official account. I guess, arguably, the official response is that tweet from the group’s official account.

Other now-ex-members put out messages of their own:

This is Meru:

We have no way of knowing what is or isn’t true, but that all seems to be pretty definitive. Strike another one for the all-too-real bad side of idol, and hope for the best for the people involved.

4 thoughts on “I Hate These Kinds of Stories”

  1. I guess I am glad they all decided to withdraw. These are no reasonable conditions and I am glad Ame is very honest about it.

    Also, I will check out PEPE’s stuff and avoid it with all my might.

    • The problem with this is, the way the live house system works you wouldn’t actually be making any difference. Rockmaykan is a good venue, and as such books a lot of groups. However, the bookings over there basically consist of one “promoter” (usually the producer of one of the idol groups, but sometimes record label guys, managers, or even fans) that pay to rent the venue. As of that point, whether people go or not, the live house owner has got the money. The tickets you buy are divvied up between the promoter (~50% of all tickets sold) and the respective appearing groups (~50% of the tickets of the people who specifically came to see them, hence why they ask at the door who your “meate” is). Drink tickets do go back to the owner, but obviously offset against the bar anyway. Buppan proceeds go entirely to the group you buy merch from.

      So unless all idols make the decision to boycott Rockmaykan (which, let’s be honest, isn’t going to happen) or Meru goes to the police, any proposed boycott won’t hurt him in the slightest and in fact will only hurt the idols.

Comments are closed.