I comfess that after a year of apathy, after countless times resisting Amp's attempts at converting me, after many months of me thinking I don't care about jpop anymore, as of this past Saturday I am an AKB48 fan. WUT?!?
I was getting ready for a friend's wedding, and was going to use his parents' equipment to DJ said wedding, so I had iTunes open up to get a bit used to using it, and Aitakatta came up on shuffle. I didn't even know I had any AKB48 on my computer, but apparently I did. I said as much in the IRC chat and that got Amp going on his latest attempt to convert me.
Maybe it was nerves from the upcoming wedding, maybe it was me being in the right kind of mood musically, maybe it was the fact that the first thing he linked was the Korekara Wonderland PV and Yukirin caught my eye for the first time, but I found myself actually wanting more. I was digging the music too, which I hadn't in my previous casual encounters with AKB.
A dozen or so PVs and a 4 hour concert later, here I am, in the AKBar. Starting to learn names too, I know about 10 or so right now, and I'm currently studying: