i want to add a disclaimer that this is not a “pitting kpop and jpop against each other” kind of post. I just recently have been going thru this shift so I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced it or something similar!!
I’m a longtime kpop fan and have been since 2013. The past couple years as kpop has become more and more popular in western circles, I’ve been shifting with the new groups and changes that come about. But I (and I know others, based off posts i’ve seen lately) have felt kind of turned-off to kpop recently due to how intense the international fandom space has become. Everything has felt like a competition, groups fans all hate each other, the importance on streams… I didn’t think too much on this until I accidentally started getting into jpop groups (HANA, Snow Man, etc) this year and it brought back so much nostalgia that i realized I’d been missing from kpop lately.
The smaller international fan space has been really nice, it feels like when I was 15 and just getting into exo, digging through livejournal on my own for fansub content 😭. And while i know, i know, curate your own fan spaces for kpop, I do find it hard to drown out peoples negative opinions and still interact with group content. I find that opinions are also not as combatted and attacked because there’s a) simply less ifans to read them and b) there’s still at least some sense of politeness in the tight-knit fandom communities. I’m also enjoying less emphasis on things like perfect visuals and vocals/performances all the time.
Now, with fashion week, i’ve noticed that a lot of the japanese groups are attending shows and doing more international schedules!! What I wanted to ask is, has anyone been experiencing a similar shift? Is it possible jpop could come back as a popular genre/stanning space, influenced by k-pop’s growth this time? It seems like certain groups are definitely growing, and doing more and more overlap with kpop events (for example, snow man is going to perform at the music bank intl festival in japan as a special guest!).
I know filo-pop is also experiencing growth, and I’d love to know more about the fandom experience there too!
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