Man, it was a long story...
It actually started from 2008, where I first knew the word 'AKB48' from a news. At first, I thought "Oh, another MoMusu, but with much more members in one group...", but I still have no interest at all with them, since I've never into idols (at that time, I was really into Tokusatsu), so I decided to ignore them and go on with life...
Then, at the end of 2009, where Kamen Rider W starts airing, I found Queen & Elizabeth in episode 7, but still not really interested to find who they really are in real life. But some people in a forum told me that those two are from a currently popular idol group, AKB48, and showed me a video where Queen's actress played a game with Suzuka Morita (I knew her from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger where she played as Hanaori Kotoha/ShinkenYellow). That video is actually from AKBINGO!'s AKB vs Idoling!!! episode where they played the legendary Tarinai48 game, and at that time I thought that the show was quite interesting, but still not enough to make me learn more about the group, although from that video at least I learned that the one who acted as Queen is Itano Tomomi, and the other one acted as Elizabeth is Kasai Tomomi.
Then, at the summer of 2010, I was quite interested with Sasaki Nozomi, where at that time she's really popular and got to appear in a LOT of shows, commercials and magazines. Then one day, I downloaded a full scan Young Jump magazine where Sasaki Nozomi made an appearance in that edition (and she had a lot of gorgeous shots in it), and when I got into some page, I once again found AKB48 members, in a form of poster with three members in bikinis. I could instantly recognize one of them as Itano Tomomi, while the other one is Oshima Yuko. But what stole my attention the most is the last girl standing in the middle, since she looked way different from the other two, way much cuter, charming, and looked hawt as well (sorry for Tomochin and Yuko fans, but that's what I was thinking at that time, or in other words, 'the first impression'). Then I read her name, it's.... Maeda Atsuko.
So I decided to find out more about her, but not yet with the group. The second thing I learnt is that she had appeared in quite a lot of dramas, and I love japanese dramas, so I decided to try to watch some dramas she appeared in (Shiori to Shimiko no Kaiki Jikenbo, Swan no Baka, and Taiyou to Umi no Kyoshitsu), all of them ranging from crazy, silly, to awesome. Being amazed more and more, I tried to learn more about her, until I knew that Maeda Atsuko (at that time I also learnt that she's apparently called Acchan) was the ace/frontgirl of AKB48 since its inauguration, and AKB48 is currently a BIG DEAL in Japan.
September 2010 : So finally, I decided to find out what's so good about that huge group, and decided to try some of their songs/PVs. I started my search with YouTube, and found the AKB48 Official Youtube Channel. Then, I tried the first one listed on the playlist, and it was.... Heavy Rotation. My first impression is totally WTFWTFWTFWTF, since it's my first time watching such a PV, but then I remembered that it's Japan, where 'anything could happen so get used to it', and calmed down a bit. The song's really cute and catchy, though. Done with Heavy Rotation, I decided to pick some more PVs randomly from the search results in YouTube. They were BINGO!, Aitakatta, Kimi no Koto ga Suki dakara, and RIVER. Fortunately, all of them wins my heart. So that's how I started getting into AKB48 up till now...