Pleasure Principled

Revealingly Articulate Idol Worship

There’s something about being a fan of a person.

The way I see it, fans of people – real or otherwise – are divided into two categories. They are either in admiration of the person in question, or in adoration. An individual fan can be both, and for the same person too, though they will usually lean more to one side or the other when talking about the person.

Fandom’s a funny thing, really. It’s like politics. The things you can say and can’t, the alliances and pandering and insult-lobbying, the image you need to keep up if you’re known for any sort of reason… it’s all there. That last one in particular.

You see, I’ve always been one to prefer my male idols and entertainers older than me. My favorite characters in sitcoms and dramas are ultimately the tough older man, preferably with a heart of gold but just as acceptable without. If you were to offer me a date with a celebrity but made me choose between, say, Zac Efron and Adam Baldwin, damn straight I’d head for the latter without a thought. Except perhaps the thought that Baldwin is married with children. And perhaps the image of our vast height difference.

The youngest they’re allowed to be is a year younger than me, because any further and I start getting a lot less appreciative, and a lot more uncomfortable. Idolizing starts out in admiration, and shifts into adoration – both of which I find hard to do with the kids under the age of 20. It’s what happens when the young guys in the business are within the age of your siblings, and the law says you’ll be persecuted for it.

None of this, though, explains my obsession with Saitou Ryuusei.

He doesn’t sing, doesn’t dance, and except for his day job as an actor at the age of 12, he’s got nothing in common with every other Japanese celebrity I like. In what seems to be the running trend with my Japanese entertainment fandoms, when I first saw Ryuusei as a young Taiyou in the Yoiko no Mikata drama, I didn’t take much notice of him. In fact, I didn’t know until recently who he was in the drama. It was only after I watched Ryusei no Kizuna, where he played the younger version of Ariake Koichi, that he attracted my attention. There was something about his expressions of sadness against the smiles his character would occasionally be able to break out in that hooked me.

His tiny, high voice – like any kid’s – should have been the biggest warning to keep him as just another notch on the new generation of Japanese actors, just someone to name-drop in seasonal drama previews as a reason for me to watch. Instead, I found myself eagerly anticipating the boy’s next scene in each episode, even if it was a reprisal of a scene from a previous episode. I even found his blog and left comments.

When one drama was over, I hunted down other ones to watch. I couldn’t get enough of him. When he was unhappy, my heart broke. When he laughed, everything brightened up. Even though at least half the posts on his blog were sweetly thanking fans for presents and letters they had sent him (by name, even!), each post was something to look forward to. Someday, I planned to send something myself.

All this for a boy younger than my brother. I don’t even like kids.

Then, there’s Hey! Say! JUMP, the latest boyband to debut from the Johnny’s super-empire. With their birth years ranging from 1990 to 1995 (Ryuusei was born in the tail end of 1996), and their nature as boyband members, you’d think they’d be more likely to join the ranks of my fandoms. But since I’m laying my soul bare about this whole little boy thing, I’ll be honest. I’ve always avoided them because of their age. They may be amazingly talented in the music or acting department. They could have the best personalities on the face of the Earth. They could even be the most handsome boys in the world. They may be angels or demons or alien-engineered humans, and I will never know, because they’re too young for me to care about them.

It’s for the same reason that while I can identify every member of Morning Musume from all the generations without being a fan, I don’t know the first thing about Berryz Koubou or ℃-ute. Even though many of the girls in the latter two groups are around the same age or older than Morning Musume’s youngest member Mitsui Aika, in my head it is solidified that Morning Musume is the oldest group, and therefore it is more “okay” to accept her as an idol, bikini photobooks and all.

And that’s probably my biggest hurdle in dealing with the age factor. Like it or not, there is an image that goes hand in hand with present-day Japanese idols – they sing, they dance, they act, they play around on variety shows, they appeal to you in a friendly, familiar way, and they have to appeal to you in a more-than-friendly way. I am particularly adverse to the thought of my siblings being sexually appealing, and as idols get younger and younger, at some point the two ages were bound to meet. Perhaps this is easier on the rest of the fandom, because they don’t have siblings of a comparable age to link it to, because they are on the same age level, or because they just don’t care.

Of course, my argument here doesn’t entirely make sense. When SweetS first debuted, I balked at their ages, before coming to accept the sexed-up image avex turned into their gimmick for the first few singles. But SweetS is also a thing of the past, 3 to 6 years past – and 3 to 6 years ago I was in the position where perhaps age wouldn’t have been as important to me as it is now, now that I’m supposed to be an upright, productive member of society.

Ryuusei, on the other hand, is not an idol. He is an actor, and only an actor, though apparently his fanbase might very well hold him on a pedestal as high as those of idols. He hasn’t ever been stripped down to a swimsuit, nor posed provocatively, and has done nothing that in any way would be sexually appealing. (Unless, perhaps, crying turns you on.) But I have had thoughts, thoughts of his innocent-sounding voice, or his adorable smile, that may not entirely be appropriate for mere fandom if not lustful in nature, and they are slowly breaking down my aversion to the younger set.

However, that is part of the biggest appeal of the underage group. Their supposed naivete is a charm all on its own, and when they’re young they have the ability to appeal to our protective instincts. It just so happens that in my case, this has the potential to evolve into a greater affection, and my fandom’s entire focus on men older than me was merely a protective mechanism to prevent such a thing. (A very bad thing.) Then again, who hasn’t once considered becoming a Hikaru Genji themselves?

Regardless of the ambiguity this development has left my age bias in, I know what my relationship with Saitou Ryuusei is. He’s won my heart, and he didn’t even have to show off his little boy chest in a swimsuit to do it.