2 posts tagged “natsumi abe”

It's funny how random personality traits can have a huge impact on your fandom experience. The ones that I've discovered influencing my Hello! Project fandoms are possessiveness and jealousy in particular. I am an incredibly possessive/jealous person, and this post will take a look at how these qualities have effected my fandom...

Most fans I know actually like spending time with people who share the same favourite member as them. However, that has never been the case with me. I've never really had other Nacchi fans as friends and even now if I talk to one, I feel like I've been put into a competition that I don't want to participate in. I'm not really competitive at all, so having to constantly try to keep up with the other fans might actually make me want to give up altogether and not even try to be a "good" fan. It's just too much pressure. Additionally, I just simply cannot share. Nothing annoys me more than if some other fan starts the "____ is mine!!" "___ steals ____ from shirenu!!" kind of argument with me, even if only as a joke. I guess you could say that I have no sense of humour when it comes to this. I think I fear that someone might actually take my precious idol away from me, even if there is no way that could possibly happen. It's an illogical way of thinking, but I can't really help it.

I get along the best with people who like the same members as I do, but whose top favourite is not the same as mine.

I'd like to say something about my H!P Egg fandom, too. When I first got into Eggs, it was so refreshing that nobody seemed to know a thing about them and I felt like I was the only person on earth (well, outside of Japan) who cared. For a little while they were all mine, my own, my precioussss. But my actions that followed this seemed to contradict the possessive side of my personality. I kept trying to tell people more about the Eggs, post their pictures, share information. I've made a fansite to them, a gallery; I've put lots of effort into making people notice them more than before. Basically, I wanted the Eggs to become more known, more popular... And I still do. However, there have been times when someone has posted some Egg-related picture or piece of news before me and I've felt like crap because of it - I've felt like I'm not doing my job properly or that I'm "losing power" if someone posts something before I do. This is NOT the kind of fan I want to be - I want to be the kind of person who can smile and think "wow, I'm so lucky that I don't have to juggle these Eggs all by myself anymore". I want to be able to appreciate and respect the work of others instead of feeling like "these strangers are trying to take over my territory". I am going to be an absolute mess if I keep feeling this way because a.) there are over 20 Eggs, I will really need help in the future to keep up with everyone's career, and b.) more Eggs ARE going to debut and become more popular, which means I will have to learn to share.

So my jealous & possessive personality effects my H!P Egg fandom, but I really want that to change. Luckily I already feel incredibly happy when I see random people say good things about Eggs, like "oh that Egg in Ongaku Gatas is really cute", or "could you post more pics of Sayaka? She's my favourite". These kinds of comments are why I do what I do in the end. It's not because I want to be The Ultimate Best Egg Fan. It's because I want others to become The Ultimate Best Fans of different Eggs. Because I'm daredemodaisuki when it comes to Eggs (which means that I love them all), I want others to choose their favourite Egg and treasure her. I can't give each girl the special attention she deserves because I'm too busy loving 20 other girls at the same time.

Perhaps I have got into Eggs so much because being a daredemodaisuki type of fan suits me the best. If I don't have a #1 favourite member, I won't have to compete with anyone. (I only need to learn that I can't always be the fastest to post something.) It makes me so happy to see someone declare they now have a favourite Egg, or pretty much say anything remotely positive about them. I hope they will become more popular soon. Ongaku Gatas is a good start.

Well, I think that was as brutally honest as I could make it... Heh.

I've been delaying writing this because the one who's up next is my favourite Hello! Project member, Natsumi Abe.

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Nacchi is just cuteness all over. As a member of Morning Musume's first generation she has been in Hello! Project for 10 years now. 10 years worth brain-numbing cuteness... But some bad times are included in that, as well.

Ah, I don't even know where to begin...

The thing is, I love Nacchi a lot and she is special to me. But at the same time I'm not one of those fans who live in a fantasy thinking that their favourite idols are perfect/flawless/only release good music, and so on. There are some things I avoid thinking about - such as the possibility that she has a boyfriend - but I'm not completely deluded, you know? Sometimes I feel like I'm actually more critical than casual fans when it comes to her. But I'm able to be critical towards her because I know I'd still love her, anyway. And most of the time I keep the criticisms to myself because uh, it's between me and her. Weird, I guess.

One thing that seems to set me apart from a lot of H!P fans with favourite members is that there are actually times when I get bored of my favourite, Nacchi. Well not really bored, but there are times when I'd rather do something else than watch her videos and such. It's just a part of my nature as a fan; the "importance level" of my fandoms will vary and that applies even to Nacchi. But there is no moment when I don't love her. Even at times when I've thought I'm bored of her I may have bumped into her smile somewhere and found myself smiling back, thinking "ah, only Nacchi has this effect on me".

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I believe I fell for Nacchi while watching the movie Pinch Runner where Nacchi had the lead role. It was an unsubbed version and I had started to watch it for Yuuchan (who was my first favourite), but Nacchi just ended up completely charming me... Or that's what I think is what happened, I honestly can't remember. I also have a journal entry somewhere where I mention seeing Nacchi in a dream and thinking I'll fall in love with her. Well, I did. So at first it must have been her adorable character in Pinch Runner that caught my attention, but I quickly started to love everything about her. (What seems funny now, though, is that at first I was completely oblivious to the fact that Nacchi has uh, a bigger chest than an average Japanese girl. I honestly hadn't paid attention until I read someone's comment at some forum pointing it out. It's funny because now her boobs are all over the place! But I've mentioned this change in H!P before, so let's not get too much into it.)

So what is there to like about Nacchi, anyway? First of all, I'd like to mention her goofy personality. Nacchi is very child-like and silly. She tells bad jokes that nobody can understand and she's adorable because of it. This kind of "dorkiness" is something I find very attractive. But she's also a sweetheart who gets attached to other members; it has been said that Nacchi can tell when someone is feeling down, and will try to make them feel better (unfortunately I've forgotten who said that, but it was someone in Morning Musume). Nacchi is in a way very sensitive because when she feels strong friendship from other members or love from the fans she may start to cry. Even after 10 years of stardom I think she still has that humble girl from Hokkaido inside her.

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Besides her personality her looks - beauty, cuteness and sexiness - are what make me hooked on her. All of those three qualities sort of merge together when I see her. Her face is round and very youthful, doll-like even, and she knows how to pull off the cutest expressions. I also find her body-type adorable because she has more meat on her bones than most girls in H!P. That makes her very huggable and soft-looking to me. Sometimes I even look at her fingers or wrists or neck or any random part of her body and think "oh god, only Nacchi can have *insert-body-part-here* that I find adorable". Haha... Oh god, her ears are so cute, seriously...

...Let's move on.

Nacchi is also so beautiful. Her smile is gorgeous and her eyes can be very expressive. She's not someone I'd call especially beautiful the first time I'd see her, but the more I learned about her the more beautiful I started to find her. And the sexiness... Well, Nacchi is just so attractive to me that she's the sexiest member to me in Hello! Project. She could be wearing the ugliest clothes, worst make-up and hairstyle ever, and I'd still be attracted to her. It's just how this fandom is.

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Her voice is loveable to me because it is quite different from any other voices I listen to. She can sound kind of boyish (which is something I find very sexy as a girl) but also very gentle, girly and cute. Nacchi is capable of singing different types of songs by expressing different kinds of feelings in them. I think she takes singing very seriously because I can always sense her effort in doing her best when she's singing on stage. Honestly, I don't think the singing talent she was born with is revolutionary or anything, but she definitely does the best she can with what she has, and her voice is brilliant for certain types of songs. The one that keeps playing in my head right now is Ai hitohira. There are times when I forget how much I love her singing, but eventually I always remember.

I'm afraid to say Nacchi has released a lot of songs I wouldn't listen to more than once if they weren't Nacchi. Composition/arrangement-wise her discography isn't as good to me as it could be, mostly because she releases a lot of ballads and I'm more into upbeat music. But that's ok because I like her voice and that will make up for a lot. Besides, of course there are also songs I genuinely like, even ballads (Sora LIFE GOES ON for example).

Ah, there was a time when it wasn't a lot of fun to be a Nacchi fan: when it turned out she had plagiarized some song lyrics in poems that were published in her essay books and the like. For a few months she disappeared from the face of earth and fans couldn't be sure if she'd ever come back - luckily, she did. Either way, even just because of this incidence it is obvious to me that Nacchi isn't perfect. She makes mistakes, whether by accident or on purpose, it's not important really. In the end it makes her seem more next-door-girl-like to me. It's easier for me to like someone who has more than just a perfect facade.

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