How did you discover AKB48?

a girl I spoke with about anime randomly suggested the band to me, I was 16 when I first heard some of their songs like aitakatta then katyusha and then renai pressure, just started getting into jpop and to be honest I was confused at what AKB is lol. I've heard people talking about their show and members graduating, I thought it's a drama or some kind of high school at first lol.

In fact, I remember seeing Acchan's graduating video even before that conversation as one of the most popular on youtube back when AKB was something unheard of for me.
Then I saw some bits of AKBINGO and a radio station talk between mariko and 2 other members which made me laugh and pretty much won a place in my favorite shows to watch list.

Not sure if it's just me but some of their songs remind me of these japanese OST's in video games which I'm always a sucker of.

 

I actually discovered AKB from watching AKB0048 I really like Kibou ni tsuite and kono namida wo kimi ni sasagu XD then I watched the seiyuu performed the song live where I noticed Mayuyu! (and the rest of the girls ofcos) After that I barely watched anime since I focus on AKBINGO!! Then I watched their performances and MVs... Well I didn't immediately search for them on the internet tho, like after a few months? Then on Yuko's graduation day (after Mayuyu won! ) I started to get to know "who" exactly is AKB :'D

 

Back in 2011 i googled for the japanese video with the most number of views on youtube, showed me heavy rotation (around 80m+ views at that time) I was like what's with this group with so many views that I don't know of considering myself a fan of everything japanese, saw hebirote and thought that the views must be because of the fan service in the vid. Checked out other mv's and become a casual fan, Acchan was the only girl I have known then and not really much into idols at that time. Then late 2014 stumbled upon AKBingo clips on youtube, wanted more, marathon all the AKBingo episode, saw the documentary movies then my life turned into 48 world.

 

I actually heard of them back in 2010/2011, when I was a huge Girls' Generation fan and they were about to make their debut in Japan.. I heard of AKB48, and like, the sheer number of members they had blew my mind.. In Korea, you never have that many, I mean yeah, SJ had 13 at one time, GG has 9, but even at that time, GG's 9 was still a huge culture shock (the most I knew was 5-6, like Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, etc) I remember my thoughts on the group clearly at the time was "Whoever likes a group that has THAT many members must be delusional.. ain't nobody got the time to remember so many faces!"

Fast forward 4-5 years into the future, in my senior year, a group of us decided to go to Japan for our senior trip. On one of the days, we went to Akihabara for dinner and arcades.. We arrived at like 5-6pm, waited for a couple others that missed the train. Got out of the electric train/tram(?) exit and I saw the AKB theatre/store. A friend of mine who's a huge Japan fan in general was like "this is where AKB performs, you can buy their stuff here", I went in immediately for fun, asked her who was the most popular member, and she was like "Oh, this and this are the popular ones, but I think her merch are all sold out." I think one that was mentioned was Myao?

When I came back from the trip and finally came back from international studying, and had true Japanese TV for the first time in a long while, I happen to watch Shukan AKB subbed on WakuWaku Japan.. I recognized the group AKB.. Watched a few episodes and I haven't laughed that hard for a long time, and couldn't wait for the next episode, searched and watched the next 5 episodes. From then on, I was just like "Everyday, gotta watch at least an episode to literally LOL or I would forget them"

 

I found AKB0048, watched it, loved it. I started listening to their songs even thought I didn't realize first that it was an actual group. I started noticing this later. a while later, I found a RPG about AKB0048 and joined. I started learning things akbout AKB and now, I love them :3

 

I'm in JE fandom and occasionally watched Domoto Kyoudai, when Takamina was a regular there. Immediately loved her. Then of course, there have been quite some collabs with SMAP (I'll forever love Sasshi for having the balls to tug almighty KimuTaku with her on stage and make him dance with them )
I've always liked some of the members, but it was incredible difficult for me to get into the fandom. Mainly because whenever I felt like I actually got down some names and faces, I saw PV or performance with girls I didn't know. Then I realized they are from sister groups. And it's so not motivating at all to learn like... 100 names I follow some solo acts and sub-groups though. I always liked no3b, Yukirin's and Takamina's solos and I love Iwasa Misaki's songs!

I got into Nogizaka fandom finally because it's a bit calmer there with less members, but I also follow AKB for a few members I really like (Yukirin, Tomu, Takahashi Juri etc.)

 

Mine was when I saw Heavy Rotation in the most watched video in JPOP category on Youtube. At the first time, I dislike them, but after a while I started to like them since their songs helps me to feel better, after all I encountered worst situations in my life.

 

Watching Majisuka Gakuen!!! I found out about the group and started listening to the music and videos!!!!

 

the eguchi aimi news!!!!

 

When I first got internet in 2008, I just got hooked on youtube and watched every video that appeared in that side-bar-thing-I-don't-know-what-it-was-called and came across Aitakatta and Seifuku ga Jama wo Suru. That was the first j-pop song aside from anime openings I've heard, and I thought it was really cool. So I tried to look up what AKB48 was but there wasn't really any information in my native language - Ukrainian, so I looked it up in Russian and still didn't find anything, and I didn't know English well at that time, so I didn't really understand much when I looked it up in English, except for the names of the girls. Fast forward two years when I was in university and learning English and finally started using internet in English properly, and started looking up all things I was interested in and AKB48 happened to be one of those things.

 

from my friend, he showed me heavy rotation mv. but i was 15, so i decided not to discover them XD

then, i saw akb48 mv from youtube, search them more on wikis and started to follow it until now

 

I went to Japan back in April for vacation and saw the commercial for tatakau shoten girl. I decided to download a few episode and check it out because something about mayuyu drew me in. After watching a few episode I looked up info on mayuyu and discovered about akb48 that way. I tried hard to stay away from akb48 before this, but discovering mayuyu changed me haha

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I discovered AKB because of AKB0048 ! I felt in love with it in the first minute of the episode because of the song Aitakatta ! When I tried to understand how the group work ( it's confusing when you discovered them), I start to like the group and since that I fellow it !

 

First I watched AKB0048 on CR, but I didn't really get into it until I was looking for Japanese game shows and stumbled across AKBingo. At some point later I really got into the music and watched the documentaries.

 

Back in 2013, when I was obsessed (still am) with Hello Project, there were millions of discussions of Hello Project vs AKB48. AKB fans had good speeches to convince me to watch AKB. First song I heard was Heavy Rotation where I really got into Yuko by where I discovered AKBingo and the rest is history

 

LOL ... I just searched " Oppai " on youtube ( maybe october 2015? ) and yes, thats how I discovered AKB48 XD ( lil perv )
Then I saw Sayanee's photo ... It was love at first sight ... then I heard on the video " Yamamoto Sayaka " it seems like a name so I searched it on web and yes , its her on the pic ... after that , I started searching about AKB48 .. weird ?

[ Sorry, I'm really bad at English ]

 

i've allways loved japenese anime!! so one summer i discovered musical animes (idols) the first one i saw was AKB0048 then Love Live and Idolm@aster.....
back then my fevorite was Oshima Yuko 9th!! but i also loved Motomiya Nagisa who became Atsuko Maeda 14th!!! i really enjoyed the songs espesially "yume wa nando mo"
after i discovered the existance of AKB48 (the first person i looked for was Yuko i remember before i know any other girl when i watch MVs i end up looking just at her ignoring the others i was really idiot to do that ; thinking about it now i regret this soooooo much ) and started watching as much vidoes about them as i can!!

 

In 2009 I was looking for a Hamasaki Ayumi album on a site and through that I found RIVER. I liked them and listened to them a lot casually, and then when Beginner was released I became a diehard fan.

 

AKB appeared on my country's TV for once due to a visit and I was slightly curious.
I then searched them up on youtube...Oogoe diamond was the first song I listened to, really caught me in.

 

It's a pity but I've only been quite recently into AKB48. Being into japanese culture and having gone to Japan a few times I knew about the band's name but I was not interested in idol bands, I thought they were for some japanese weirdos salarymen... You know, the usual foreigners stereotype for idols. So for me AKB48 was just one of those japanese young girls band.
A little more than one year ago, I don't remember why, my wife and I watched the music video of Kibouteki Refrain. I really loved the song and the MV. Then the next video that immediately came up on youtube was the big team shuffle of 2014. Even though we didn't understand much of what was happening we sat through the whole video. 1 hour and 48 minutes. It was trully fascinating to enter the life of this group: the joys of some girls, the tears of others, the comments, the tension... All of it felt so real and we could feel the hard work, the dreams and the struggle of all thoses (pretty) young girls and women. We were also impressed by the strong and mature personality of some of them, like Takamina soukantoku or Yuko, who had graduated but was commenting.
So that's how the 'virus' (a good one!) entered my mind. Now that I think about I find it quite funny and unexpected that I caught it by watching 1 hour and 48 minutes of a team shuffle in which I had no clue what was happening.
Then I spent one year watching tons of videos to discover the group history and get to know the members better. All the AKBingos and other variety shows, documentaries, Majisuka Gakuen, live shows, 1830m no yume so many times... (many thx to all the subbers!)
There are many members that I came to like a lot in the 48G, but three really stood out very quickly: Acchan, Ricchan (who unfortunately graduated just a few month after) and Sakura, who caught my heart as soon as I watched my very first AKB video: Kibouteki Refrain.
Now that I completely got into the 48G, I really hope they will be going on for a long long time!