Argh!! Seriously, WTF? Brain broken....

[Cain]

http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/japans-newest-popstar-outed-as-cgi-creation/

Aimi Eguchi, the latest star of the popular girl band AKB 48, told fans on her website that she was a normal 16-year-old from Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo who enjoyed track and field sports. Her cute features made her a fan favorite and quickly created a buzz. She soon took center stage in this candy commercial.


Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation
By VC | June 24th, 2011 | Category: Latest News | 153 comments

Aimi Eguchi, the latest star of the popular girl band AKB 48, told fans on her website that she was a normal 16-year-old from Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo who enjoyed track and field sports. Her cute features made her a fan favorite and quickly created a buzz. She soon took center stage in this candy commercial.

Miss Eguchi blogged that her goal is "to become a new idol like never before by taking the best parts of my AKB big sisters". This was true, but in a creepy-Frankenstein kind of way.

Turns out that Aimi Eguchi is in fact a composite CGI creation using the body parts of the other 7 band members.

"Her less than organic origins were exposed when fans of the band became suspicious about the appearance of its newest member, remarking that she bore a striking similarity to some of her band-mates. While it is not unusual for new faces to join AKB – the band has 48 members with older girls often being replaced by newcomers when they "graduate" onto modelling and acting – something was obviously amiss.

    And there were other clues. Her birthday – February 11 – is the date of the founding in 1922 of confectioner Ezaki Glico and rearranging the letters of her name in Japanese spells out the company's name.

    Soon, Ezaki Glico was forced to come clean and admit that the nation's newest pop sensation was a fake. It turned out that Miss Eguchi had been born from a computer programme and piece together from the best features of six of the band members. In fact, she had borrowed the the eyes of Atsuko Maeda, the mouth of Mariko Shinoda and the nose of Tomomi Itano. Her singing voice came straight from the vocal chords of Yukari Sasaki."
    - The Telegraph

I thought they were taking the piss.  But if they are, they've hoodwinked the Telegraph, at the very least.

I literally have no reaction to this.  I have no frame of reference here.

[Doktor Howl]

Ivan Stang hollered about this shit 30 years ago, Cain.

And we didn't listen.

[Lord Cataplanga]

They are now halfway between Hatsune Miku and Simone.

[Telarus]

I saw this. Hit me outta left field, but I've seen Ghost in the Shell so had some frame of reference.

I was telling Liv as we were watching through Tron 2 that Jeff Bridges will probably be our first post-mortem active-celebrity. Disney's already got all of that mo-cap data, facial textures, etc, etc, and the end of the movie totally spoilered the sequel in production.








...........which they will make even if he's dead.

[Laughin Jude]

Holy shit! It's the plot of Megazone 23!

I hate to be the one to break it to you guys, but we may actually be living inside a spaceship designed to simulate 1980's Japan.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't even actually care if our celebrities are real or computer-generated.

It's the writers that matter, either way.

[Faust]

I can't wait to see Marlon Brando acting again 

[Triple Zero]

It's basically ghostwriting, but moreso?

The Gorillaz were a bunch of cartoon characters, Daft Punk might be robots for all I know, and a shitload of mainstream pop artists only exist for the videoclip since they neither write their songs, nor really sing (autotune) them.

How real is any of that shit?

[Faust]

It's basically ghostwriting, but moreso?

The Gorillaz were a bunch of cartoon characters, Daft Punk might be robots for all I know, and a shitload of mainstream pop artists only exist for the videoclip since they neither write their songs, nor really sing (autotune) them.

How real is any of that shit?

The gorrilaz is a concept though, they have had musicians playing the roles of actors all through the plastic beach, it never intentionally misleads or tries to pawn off as a real identity.
The Cylon in the jpop band was a product passed off as a musician.

[Elder Iptuous]

did they incorporate her, so she has legal personhood?

[P3nT4gR4m]

They've been manufacturing pop acts for decades now. This is simply the logical next step.

[Triple Zero]

It's basically ghostwriting, but moreso?

The Gorillaz were a bunch of cartoon characters, Daft Punk might be robots for all I know, and a shitload of mainstream pop artists only exist for the videoclip since they neither write their songs, nor really sing (autotune) them.

How real is any of that shit?

The gorrilaz is a concept though, they have had musicians playing the roles of actors all through the plastic beach, it never intentionally misleads or tries to pawn off as a real identity.
The Cylon in the jpop band was a product passed off as a musician.

They've been manufacturing pop acts for decades now. This is simply the logical next step.

That's what I wanted to say. The Gorrillaz were probably the wrong example.

Sure enough I'm extra annoyed [if I had known or cared about this JPop band] that they were trying to mislead me by pretending a non-real photoshopped digital image was a real person.

It's a step further than the misleading lots of other mainstream pop has been doing up until now.

But it's a small logical next step, like P3NT said.

Before recently, we've had "pop stars" that

- didn't actually write their own tunes or songs
- didn't play any of the instruments
- can't actually sing unless heavily autotuned
- are actually sung/performed by a different person than the one you see in the video clip or interviews
- don't actually IRL look like their heavily photoshopped videoclips or photographs
- done any of the above while misleadingly claiming or implying otherwise

So having already stripped all those attributes from the concept of "pop star" or "idol", be it entirely openly, as a "public secret" (Madonna, for most of the above) or secretly misleadingly, continuing with

- isn't actually a real person

doesn't seem like a very big step at all, and really a logical conclusion. In fact, who knows if it might have already been done before but it never came out?

And who's to say that Daft Punk has been the same two guys in robot suits since ever?

[Jenne]

Huh.  This makes me sad, unaccountably so.

[Mangrove]

After this, Aimi will have to be caught doing CGI drugs, break up with her CGI boyfriend and end up in CGI rehab.

[BadBeast]

Even veteran Free Festival Uber-Crusty septagenarians Hawkwind have been replaced by Robot replicas now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pimCdIwMPw

"I would have liked you to have been deep frozen too,
and waiting still, as fresh in your flesh for my return to Earth,
but your father refused to sign the forms to freeze you,
lets see, you'd be about 60 now,
and long dead by the time that I return to Earth,
My time held dreams were full of you then,
as you were, still underage,
your android replica is playing up again, it's no joke,
when she comes, she moans another's name,
and that's the Spirit of the Age, that's the Spirit of the Age,

I am a clone, I am not alone,
every fibre of my flesh and bone is identical to the the others,
everything I say and do, is in the same tone
as my test tube brother's voice,
there is no choice between us,
and you rejoice in your uniqueness,
and consider every weakness something special of your own.
Being a clone I have no flaws to identify,
even this doggerel that flows from my pen has just been written by the other
20 telepathic men, word for word,
It says "Oh, for the wings of any bird, other than a battery hen"

"That's the Spirit of the Age,  the Spirit of the Age,
That's the Spirit of the Age,  the Spirit of the Age."


There goes the last of my illusions, straight down the crap pan.