33 comments on “Is it a bad thing to be in love with an idol?

  1. If theyre underage: yes
    If you’ve been following them since they were underage: weird and sketchy at best

    • I can’t believe I got downvoted so heavily for saying its weird to be attracted to underaged people lol. Keep it classy, guys

  2. @Cunning – sadly that’s probably the case 90% of the time, since just about all H!P idols start underaged.

  3. I guess there’s “love” and there is “love”. Personally I think it is indeed very sketchy. An idol in general is a persona, not a real person. Falling in love with a persona, a character, is something. Falling in love with the person behind the persona? Not good. You might love their looks, but the way an idol acts towards their business life is different from their private life.

    There was this incident when a fan confessed his love to Momochi on radio (it’s here up on WiT, too: http://wotaintranslation.com/2015/06/28/wota-confesses-love-to-momochi-via-phone-on-her-radio-show-cringe-ensues/) and she handled it like a pro. However, Momochi is after all an incredibly professional idol, strictly seperating her idol life from her personal life (going on hiatus for her internship, leaving business completely to work as a teacher, etc.). I can see how it’s REALLY uncomfortable for other girls, especially younger ones.

    And as Cunning has mentioned: A grown adult person shouldn’t fall in love with an underage person. That’s just creepy.
    Usually there’s people going “yeah but I’m a teenager can’t I fall in love with (idk let’s say) Yokoyan?”. Yeah, then the whole underage thing is not present. Still, how can you fall in love with someone you don’t know? A crush is one thing, but real, actual love just shouldn’t happen between a fan and an idol.

  4. I published a novel and wrote “Goes to Suzuki Airi” in the beginning.

    Btw. significant part of novel is about idols, h!p wota and such (even wotaintranslation included). Real stories, but names are changed. In Russian.

  5. Serious crushes on a few idols, but I know it’s not real love – because I know it can’t be real. That’s why I’m very forgiving regarding their flaws, rather than pretending that they don’t have any.

  6. I don’t think I’ve fallen in love with any idols. I don’t seem to really fall in love in general, but that’s another thing altogether. I had dreams about meeting my oshi and spending time with them, but I don’t think it was romantic. I tried to tell an idol that I love her voice once, but it was noisy and I was nervous and I’m not sure the voice part got through to her. I felt awkward afterwards.

  7. I think I’ve read and watched enough of my oshi’s videos, magazine interviews over the years. Am I lucky to hit most (if not all) of her “ideal type” including age (so I am not some 40-70 year old liking a 20 year old)?

  8. I used to love some idols when I was at the same age as the idol, like 17. While it didn’t sound too weird , it was still miserable as some of the comments said. These guys at least are in Japan, how much it is likely to be for a foreigner to date an idol? Almost impossible. But it was not about the possibility of course, you just couldn’t control your mind as good when you were young. You blamed your reality, like what if you can the girl meet in a different circumstance? Will you able to pull it off? Etc.

    My solution was stopping following idols heavily for a couple of years, just a checking from time to time. I wasn’t t sure whether it just worked, or I was just a bit more mature. It wasn’t as painful as it used to when I saw my oshi again.

  9. To be in love with an Idol is gross, creepy, embarrasing and immature. Typical platonic love for pathetics virgin wotas.

    That said, Chel, marry me, please.

  10. I personally can’t understand how anyone could be fully in love with any celebrity/well-known person that they know they’ll never have a real chance to get to know and connect with. I realllllly don’t understand these people who genuinely fall in love with idols when there’s a sizable age gap. At the same time, I understand someone who knows it’s delusional to love a famous person like that, but they know it’s just a fun escapism fantasy to think about and it doesn’t effect their life too much. lol

    I recognize that reading interviews about them/seeing them perform/watching clips of them doing other stuff can bring me happiness that I don’t receive from any other sort of media, but that’s about it for me. I know I’m probably just attracted to my favourites based off of what information I have and who I /think/ they are. I feel like especially for overseas idol fans, any little bit of info we get could change how we think of them. There’s so much to idols’ lives that we as fans will never see, and I respect their private life being mostly separate from their work life.

    I think it must be tough to become an idol when it comes to this kind of stuff though. They’re probably doing their best to appeal to as many people they can, and they probably know there will be fans who fall for them for real…

  11. I don’t really care that I can’t marry my idols, but I at least wish that some of them would fall in love with and marry each other rather than some random dude

  12. “If you fall in love with an idol, you run the very real risk of becoming a stalker. Don’t do it.”

    That’s not love, that’s infatuation, which is often unfortunately confused with love.

    There’s nothing wrong with people having their fantasies, so long as they;re sensible enough to be able to keep the disconnection between fantasy and reality.

    I don’t think it’s possible to be truly in love with someone you don’t know … or rather, the character of a person you’ve been tricked by the media into thinking you know.

  13. Its fine if the “Love” you have is only that of admiration or support or that where you can clearly see the line of whats real and whats fantasy… It goes tooooo far when that “Love” turns into an obsession.. Those wota who truly believe that the Idol they love should love them back and go to great lengths to try and enter their personal life take it way to far and are the type of Wota that give us all a bad reputation… I’ve been in love with Kamei since the 1st day i saw her and thought of her as one of my ideal types of girls, a type that I could marry but never once had an urge to fly to Japan and track her down to try and make my fantasy a reality, thats just creepy

  14. Since I am able to hit most of these criteria, maybe real relationship can be pursued with the person behind the “idol persona” if given a chance (maybe after idol career, because idols can’t date or their career will be in jeopardy). The person behind the “idol persona” might be different, but it is only after trying can you love or hate this person. However, there is no real way to meet the person behind the camera to see how it will go from there. In a normal setting, if you like someone or have a crush, you can ask her out if you are from the same school or workplace or you have common friends, they can help you. In this case, you have no options (stalking is no go)

    It is very rare for the stars to align in my favor because my luck is always short (100 percent dekimasen live ticket lotteries). In this day and age where people can easily find their match using smartphone apps; is it wrong to believe that just this time, the person for me is someone who runs a fake persona on camera: do I swipe left and forget her like the rest?

  15. The NMB48 member who announced marriage abruptly taught a lesson to those fans who spend too much money or expecting too much.

  16. There are many types of “love”. You can say “I love backpacking!”; I love pizza!; I love sunrise in the morning!” That just expresses enthusiasm for something. Loving idols this way is very healthy. It’s a good hobby.

    When people actually fall romantically in love with an idol, that is unhealthy, but exactly what idol marketers are trying to achieve. Then they soak up all the money they can get.

  17. I thought I was in love with Niigaki. But when she left I was fine.

    Then I thought I was in love with Michishige. But when she left I was fine.

    Now I’m in love with Sato. If she leaves i’m going to die.

    :D

  18. I don’t think I have… I just like Karin-chan too much. Like TOO MUCH, really. I want her to be happy, successful and very famous, but I don’t want to have sex with her.

  19. don’t really need to have sex with your idol to love her. i’m fairly content with waking up to my idol’s smile 365 or 366 days a year.

  20. I do understand those who say they are sexually attracted to pretty girls, it’s okay if the age gap is not too much. Now falling in love with someone you don’t really know leads to frustration in most of the cases, even in real life.

  21. Ah~ I chose yes on that poll and only afterwards realized that crushed were not included.
    At the beginning of my MM fandom I had a really huge crush on Yossi. I’m younger than her tho mind you.
    I was really satisfied when she later on started to exclusively hang out with Ishikawa and like probably lots of people had this headcanon of them being secretly dating.
    Now that she suffered depression while being married and after her recent misstep (I’m sorry I should call it crime shouldn’t I? Ah~ this is really hard) I wish that we’d been right and she would have ended up with Charmy instead.
    God I just wanted to talk about my teenage crush but now I’m really sad. Never would I’ve expected things to turn out like this more than 15 years after I started to crush on this amazing Japanese idol singing Mr. Moonlight on that burned DVD a friend gave to me. :(

  22. I fell in love with these idols… they took my virginity and wont give it back!

    https://youtu.be/JGvz2kh3J3M

    I think its dangerous ti get too close to idols (or any celebrity), most because their personas arent real. They may be based in reality, but they are not the true authentic self. Appreciate them for the entertainment they bring. However, never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers…

    • > However, never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers…

      Shook hands with idols. Nothing stuck to my fingers. Very disappointed. What did I do wrong?

  23. Any kind of feelings that a person develops for someone they’ve never even properly met (I’m going to say repeatedly having several seconds of handshaking doesn’t count) does not have something I would define as real love.

    Tangentially, I once read a book where a guy’s inspiration for inventing time travel was there was a starlet he thought was his perfect match, he was disappointed at how unsuccessfully her life had ended up, and was sure he could go back and fix everything by going back and becoming her significant other. I was pretty disappointed when this guy’s creepy-ass plan didn’t end in failure.

    • I want to see that as a movie, but with your ‘failure’ ending. That’d be pretty awesome, actually.

  24. I had pretty serious feelings towards Sayu for few years. Or, the image I have of her, of course, as I don’t really know her.
    It’s quite painful actually.
    I distanced myself from her knowingly because it was getting too serious, I avoided everything with her in it (her graduation helped a lot). It helped to calm me down.
    I still fantasize about her (tmi, sorry) but it’s more physical now and not “real feelings”.
    I’m a woman, couple years younger than her so thanfully I don’t have “age gap” problem.

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