[Special Feature: The Future of the Entertainment Business] Atsuo Nakayama: Entertainment Business Driven by "Oshi"—The "Great Transformation" from Consumer to Expresser

The term "Oshi" (fandom/support) gained general recognition when it was used in the 2011 AKB48 General Election, and it likely began to spread in earnest around 2018 with "Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer." Since the social phenomenon of female fans visiting the same movie repeatedly as "Toru Amuro's women," we saw news of Arashi's hiatus and the start of tweets marking November 4th as "Good Oshi Day" in 2019. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020, it became widely welcomed as a movement that drives the economy. With the shutdown of physical spaces like broadcast media and music concerts, talents and characters came to be sustained by the existence of fans. In the emergency of being "unable to deliver," the supply side also began to realize that having a place for regular communication through fan clubs and having fans "push" (oshi) each other on SNS allowed them to expand their base. The three years of the pandemic were when "Oshi-katsu" (fandom activities) became deeply ingrained in the population.

The act of being obsessed with a single talent or character (sometimes even directed at things without personality or growth potential, like castles or locations) and following their growth process as an "Oshi" is not actually that new. It has existed since the 1980s, symbolically captured by Takarazuka or Johnny's (now SMILE-UP) in the form of "Okkake" (groupies) or "Shin-ei-tai" (fan guards). However, compared to that era when there were many discourses admonishing the excessive behavior of hundreds or thousands of people, the recent "Oshi" movement, which mobilizes units of hundreds of thousands or millions, has evolved into a completely different species in terms of both scale and user behavior. This is also the difference between the 1980s, when anime was a 300 billion yen niche market watched by fewer than 1 in 10 people, and the 2020s, which has become a 3 trillion yen market watched by 9 out of 10 people. Compared to 40 years ago, when being in a fan club was a quiet personal hobby, being a fan of someone has become commonplace, wrapped in the active and social resonance of the word "Oshi."

Nowadays, well over 90% of Gen Z have an "Oshi"*1, and roughly 50% of all generations are "Oshi-katsu users"*2. At this level, it conversely leads to "Oshi-hara" (Oshi harassment), where people annoyingly continue to "proselytize," or even camouflage themselves as having an Oshi just to join conversations despite not actually liking them. Saying "I don't have an Oshi" is sometimes perceived as being a person without hobbies or emotions, becoming a new form of social pressure. Alternatively, the word "Oshi" has become inflated, serving as a prop to gloss over various complex relationships and emotions. How should we describe the way someone calls an admired senior an "Oshi" and screams with excitement even in front of their boyfriend? From affection and love to the light feeling of thinking something is nice, the spectrum of human sensation has diverse variations that are not clearly black and white. In the sense that it allows people to skillfully gloss over these and keep relationships ambiguous without making them black and white, it may be playing a role in significantly changing the diversity of human relationships.

As long as individuals were watching their favorite anime on video, society likely would never have cast a positive gaze on such "Otaku activities." In the 2000s, Otaku began to go outside and engage in social activities through music concerts and pilgrimages to sacred sites. In the 2010s, this established a global presence through the successful export-oriented service development of anime, manga, and games, building a major economic zone. Parallel to this, as it came to be relied upon in the 2020s as fan activity that helps during recessions, both Otaku and Oshi have become fully recognized by society. Ultimately, the act of supporting a special celebrity or character as an "Oshi" does not stop at mere personal emotion or hobby; it is inseparably linked to economic activities such as purchasing goods, participating in events, and going on pilgrimages. It can be said that it gained "pro-sociality" precisely because it came to be recognized as a sufficiently effective lever for driving the economy.

I have often received inquiries from the media regarding the potential of "Oshi" as a consumption activity, due to my involvement in writing "The Oshi Economy." In terms of "Otaku consumption activity," it could be said to be 700 to 800 billion yen; it could be seen as part of the 2.5 trillion yen "character business market" used for licensed products and CM tie-ups; or it could be called the engine driving the 13 trillion yen "content industry" including video, publishing, and games. These are consumption activities that were carried out quite commonly even before the excuse of "Oshi" became widespread. However, the main theme I want to discuss in this paper is whether the very act of talking about "Oshi" as a part of consumption might be wrong.

The intention behind this is that while "Oshi" certainly involves "consumption" such as event participation and goods purchases, its essence actually lies in a shift in the user's vector from "buying" to "participating." Oshi-katsu can actually be done without buying goods or services. Spreading information on SNS or organizing a fan club on Discord to provide information to everyone is also a fine form of Oshi-katsu. What matters is not consumption, but the excitement surrounding that talent or character and the expansion of the fan economic zone itself. In fact, it can be said to function perfectly as "Oshi-katsu" as long as there is influence and mobilization power, even without paying a single cent.

Figure 1 is a chart published in "Creator Wonderland" (Nikkei BP, 2024), showing that users no longer fit into the framework of "consumers." For the past 15 years or so, people have been writing product reviews on Amazon, providing information to thousands of friends on mixi and Facebook, and letting people listen to everything from product commentary to idle talk and karaoke on Nico Nico Douga and YouTube. Activities that "cannot be called economic activities but influence people" are becoming increasingly common. On TikTok, they upload "tried dancing" videos to popular songs, and on ROBLOX, they provide spaces for other users to play with games they have created as secondary works. It is as if consumers, while being amateurs, are engaging in semi-creator activities or sometimes organizing them to engage in editor-like activities.

"Oshi-katsu" is just one part of the cross-border behavior of the "Consumer/Editor." "Builders" move away from consumption and exist between "Creator/Editor," spending 100 hours completing a Virtual Shibuya in Fortnite or ROBLOX and receiving tips from the dozens of users playing there. "Mixers," whose activity has increased the most recently, exist between "Creator/Consumer," singing and dancing as performers themselves and gaining tens of thousands of followers that rival professionals. Sometimes, thousands of people are emerging as "Video Clippers" who do not show their own faces or voices, but clip Hiroyuki's broadcast videos and upload them to YouTube, gathering advertising revenue from hundreds of millions of views. Yes, "Oshi" is one phase of the process where consumers cross borders and become involved in the content of works and media. Consumers can no longer remain silent. They do not just simply select and follow what is provided. They inform their peers whether something is worth following, sometimes becoming leaders of consumers while proselytizing, and becoming producers who make the creators themselves famous through clipping. Oshi-katsu is the process by which passive consumers acquire agency for themselves.

Come to think of it, the "consumer" itself is a modern invention. The world's first department store, Le Bon Marché in France, opened in 1838. At that time, ordinary people did not purchase luxury goods other than daily necessities. Before then, users of luxury goods such as art were mainly aristocrats, and merchants would visit their residences as peddlers, providing everything as tailor-made goods and services in closed spaces. However, Le Bon Marché began to stimulate consumption by displaying products like gloves and scarves in "showcases" at the storefront, indicating prices through "fixed-price sales," and allowing anyone to enter and look at the products. The same thing began in Japan in the 1880s; what had been a credit-based business with no signs or prices at the storefront gradually changed to a product display system. This led to the emergence of "consumers who window-shop at storefronts without specifically deciding what to buy"*3. When the Imperial Theatre was built in Hibiya in 1911 and Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi was established in 1914, all of Japan enjoyed consumption with the phrase "Mitsukoshi today, Imperial Theatre tomorrow."

More than 100 years have passed since the "consumer" was born and became widespread. What the various phenomena appearing in the social movement of "Oshi" indicate is that the very concept of a passive and static consumer is now old, and we are seeing a change into an existence that wanders between a more active and dynamic consumer and an expresser.

There is a case that serves as a symbolic turning point in terms of who creates "trends." In 2023, YOASOBI's "Idol" became the first J-POP song to reach number one in the world on the "Billboard Global Excl. US" ranking. This song was adopted as the opening theme for the anime "Oshi no Ko" and remained the top Japanese song throughout the three months of April-June 2023 when the anime was being broadcast and streamed. As a result, it swept a total of 77 titles, including the "Japan Record Award (Special International Music Award)" and "Spotify's Most Streamed Song in Japan #1."

But was it the power of the song, the power of the vocals, or the power of the anime "Oshi no Ko" that made this song a "trend"? In fact, while the official video uploaded to Ayase's YouTube channel was played about 100 million times in the three months after its release, during this same period, about 1,000 creators uploaded videos of themselves singing or dancing to "Idol" with their own arrangements on their respective channels, and those were also played a total of about 100 million times [Figure 2]. This means these "sub-creators" were played 100,000 times each. According to the producers of YOASOBI, a major part of the reason for victory was inducing these clippings and reorganizations by UGC (User Generated Content), or what I define as the "Remixer" part. This is because those 1,000 people played a "diffusion" role, attracting layers of people who were not originally fans of YOASOBI itself.

This SNS upload culture, where users who are supposed to be mere "viewers" behave as if they are "editors" or "creators" themselves, was a situation that greatly shook the supplier/consumer opposition that has permeated for 100 years. They are not getting paid to do promotional activities. They just "tried" singing or dancing by imitating something that "seemed likely" to trend, without any vested interest, just to deliver something interesting to the hundreds or thousands of people close to them. That act becomes the training wheels for the real thing to spread, actually creating the trend. I felt that the activities people have been nurturing as "Oshi-katsu" over the past five or six years, with the grand finale of the global craze of the song "Idol" in 2023, are a symbolic example of the "Great Transformation of the Consumer."

So how do consumers transform into Mixers, Builders, or Oshi-katsu fans? In fact, as UGC has come to hold the core of trends, people who have been doing business until now are starting to get lost in a labyrinth. The "winning pattern of major companies," which spreads by hijacking TV programs, radio programs, and magazines with MVs created by famous directors, actors, and Japan's leading creators, is becoming increasingly less effective. In contrast to the YOASOBI example above, there are an increasing number of cases where users show no interest at all in movies, music, games, or anime that producers have teamed up to finish with a perfect structure in an attempt to make them hits. As the "laws of hits" are increasingly left in the hands of the users themselves, the creators are conversely groping in the dark about what to do.

While you can drive "consumption/purchase," the more you try to drive "Oshi," the more it slips through your fingers. In the Kohaku Uta Gassen, slots are decided in advance for each talent agency, and each company just fits in the idols or singers they want to promote. Actresses are cast based on the strength of the agency or the discretion of decision-makers, regardless of whether they fit the role. These "non-substantial movements" have begun to come to light in the SNS society. The fact that acts that hinder the improvement of the quality of a work are affirmed as a necessary evil is probably because a way of providing that looks down on the user has been rampant, based on the idea that "quality of the work" is not the winning factor.

It is actually a simple story: things that users "want to support" are those with highly transparent processes where the results of the user's support are correctly reflected. The reason people bought so many CDs to vote in the AKB48 elections was because they knew their single vote would clearly be reflected in the result. Amazon, whose monopoly is now a problem, gained popularity 20 years ago because reviews were not deleted based on the publisher's logic, and the voices raised by users themselves—both good and bad—were reflected as they were. The Barnes & Noble book search engine, which was being wiped out by Amazon at the time, was a system where "books from the publisher who paid the highest amount came to the top." Regardless of user preferences or popularity, it was a biased ranking that prioritized only the winners in business practices, putting what they wanted to sell in the foreground rather than what users wanted to know or see*4.

Providing what users want to know and see rather than what you want to sell, and ensuring that the results of user support are properly fed back. Thinking about it that way, what a straightforward world it has become. The 20th-century mass production and mass distribution systems that built a large wall between "supplier/consumer" now seem like nothing more than a transitional period. Things that can induce the user participation behavior of "Oshi" and are chosen by users will become the center of the next generation of entertainment.

*1 https://xtrend.nikkei.com/atcl/contents/casestudy/00012/00838/

*2 https://woman-type.jp/academia/discover-career/data/vol-75/