Serpo
25th June 2011, 04:58 AM
First of all.....hahahaha
Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation
A Japanese pop star with a following of thousands of fans has been outed as a computer generated composite.
Link to this video
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
9:00AM BST 24 Jun 2011
To thousands of Japanese teenagers she was the ultimate pop idol.
With picture-perfect teeth and hair, shiny, flawless skin and a sweet singing voice, Aimi Eguchi embodied everything that teenage girls wished for.
However, dig a little deeper, and not everything was quite as it seemed.
Miss Eguchi, who 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, was anything but.
In fact, she was not human at all - but a clever computer-generated composite of six other members of the popular girl band AKB 48.
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Miss Eguchi was also part of a wily marketing campaign, created by a confectionery company that had hired the band to front an advertisement for one of their chocolates.
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 bandmates. 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.
Synthetic pop stars are not an entirely new phenomenon in Japan. Miss Eguchi’s debut comes after Hatsune Miku similarly burst onto the pop scene here. Miku also only exists in the virtual world but has been snapped up by Toyota Motor Corp. to promote its vehicles in Japan and, most recently, the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIpYpRobez4
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8595768/Japans-newest-popstar-outed-as-CGI-creation.html
Japan's newest popstar outed as CGI creation
A Japanese pop star with a following of thousands of fans has been outed as a computer generated composite.
Link to this video
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
9:00AM BST 24 Jun 2011
To thousands of Japanese teenagers she was the ultimate pop idol.
With picture-perfect teeth and hair, shiny, flawless skin and a sweet singing voice, Aimi Eguchi embodied everything that teenage girls wished for.
However, dig a little deeper, and not everything was quite as it seemed.
Miss Eguchi, who 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, was anything but.
In fact, she was not human at all - but a clever computer-generated composite of six other members of the popular girl band AKB 48.
Related Articles
Debris from Japanese tsunami headed for Pacific 'garbage patch'
23 Jun 2011
Two million Fukushima residents to undergo radiation health checks
20 Jun 2011
How fake popstar Aimi Eguchi was brought to life
24 Jun 2011
Japan's virtual pop star world
24 Jun 2011
Miss Eguchi was also part of a wily marketing campaign, created by a confectionery company that had hired the band to front an advertisement for one of their chocolates.
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 bandmates. 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.
Synthetic pop stars are not an entirely new phenomenon in Japan. Miss Eguchi’s debut comes after Hatsune Miku similarly burst onto the pop scene here. Miku also only exists in the virtual world but has been snapped up by Toyota Motor Corp. to promote its vehicles in Japan and, most recently, the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIpYpRobez4
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8595768/Japans-newest-popstar-outed-as-CGI-creation.html