Why NMB48 Has Gained A Lot Of Female Fans?

Tommy Kono May 21, 2012

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It’s widely said that SKE48’s Shake-Hands events are dominated by men. Compared to the Nagoya-based group, NMB48 and AKB48 have a much portion of female fans according to fans who’ve attended recent events of all groups. So what the truth really is?
Well… as some of you may know, NMB has one special members when it comes to female fans, namely Nana Yamada, whose younger brother is a famous boy idol of Janny’s group, Yuma Nakayama. Since enthusiastic fans of this boy idol also want to support his elder sister, many girls are openly stating that they are Nana-Oshi assuming Yuma himself is Nana-Oshi.

Since Shake-Hands event start with women and children first, Nana has the longest lane (even longer than Sayanee and Milky) in NMB’s event in the beginning. But NMB’s popularity among female fans can also be explained Sayanee’s personality which has gained much popularity (very talented but never boast of her talent unless she is using it to make fan of herself) among young Kanasai girls.

Anyway, with 3 of it’s leading members, Sayanee, Milky and Nana, NMB has almost “easily” built up their popularity throughout the nation at truly unprecedented speed.

It’s also said there’re many fans come with Cosplay at NMB’s event, as one fan stated,

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It’s the fact that NMB has a lot of female fans.

I can’t be wrong since I go Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka…. everywhere (he means he goes all 3 groups events)

And it’s also one of NMB’s characteristic that many come with Cosplay.

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which may be because of Momoka Kinoshita, but not everyone costumes like Momoka, but many are emulating NMB’s stage costume such as “Tetsu no Pants (= Junjo U-19)”.

It also can be explained that NMB48 has much less AkiP’s influence compared to AKB and SKE, since NMB is owned by the joint venture of Yoshimoto (20%) & Kyoraku (80%), and it’s based in Kansai, where sense of comedy and talking ability have supreme value.

NMB and Janny’s group Arashi has released their singles on the same day this month, but though NMB48 has lost to Arashi in terms of how much copies they sold, people hadn’t gone crazy at all. This is mainly because many female fans of NMB48 are actually fans of Janny’s groups and we actually saw a lot of comments of female fans who had tried calming down the anti-sentiments on fan thread for Janny’s idols.

Another reason is, of course, NMB’s top-3, Milky, Sayanee and Nana are all from Osaka’s top dance schools which also makes female fans admire them.

Let’s listen what female fans of NMB are commenting on why they’ve become fans of the group.

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I love Waruky (Milky) because I’m attracted to how she can change her personality according to the situation, which is absolutely devilish but cute…

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I simply love them because their dance and costumes are really cool.

NMB also has really pretty members such as Nana or Akarin (Akari Yohshida).

I think NMB girls’ faces are attractive to girls.

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Keira (Keira Yogi) is also cute.

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It may because of fangirl memtality since NMB girls appear on TV more often than AKB girls in Kansai.
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I think there’re many girls who love (female) idols.
Think about it, members of AKB were originally or still are fans of idols!!
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NMB girls are basically from Kansai. So we feel them much more close to us.
Besides it is often the case the one member’s friend is your friend or classmates or something like that, and many people has become fans starting with this.
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And… there’s no major idol groups other than NMB48 in Kansai, I think this is a big reason.
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It looks like many women love idol. It maybe because…. looking at Kawaii girls make them feel Kawaii and actually increases their charm as women?

There was another interesting comment.

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I saw this comment long before somewhere on two channel.
AKB48 = Arashi (for fans of the both sex)
SKE48 = KAT-TUN (for fans of the opposite sex)
NMB48 = Kanjani Eight (for fans of the both sex)
“

Don’t think this somehow makes sense?