Idols Within Ourselves- Maro

My beloved Kanyon has been graduated for almost 24 hours. I can't think of a better time to start writing...

How do our oshi members come to be? Is it by chance? A girl in the background catches your eye as she spins... Is it by social pressure? Everyone you know likes her and you start to see her charm... Is it purely superficial? She's not the best dancer but she's definitely the prettiest... Or is it through understanding? She seems to see things the same way I do...

I think that for every fan it is different. For myself, it's the last. Understanding. Understanding is how I came to love possibly the least popular girl in the Hello! Project.

I happened across H!P by accident in 2011. I knew nothing of j-pop or idols at all, when one day while watching related video and related video, it happened. I stumbled across my first song. S/mileage's Uchoten Love completely took me by storm...I heard it play in my head all day and night. The more I researched about this adorable group the more I loved them. I watched their videos constantly, and was thrilled when I first was able to remember their names and match them to their faces. I continued this way for over a year before I discovered ways to get closer to the girls themselves through goods and blogs. Especially the blogs, beautiful and bittersweet.

When I found S/mileage's blogs I read everything I could find. They all seemed pretty similar though truly. Some personalities stood out a little differently but the rest was pretty much the same to me, happy, cheerful, radiant. All but one. Fukuda Kanon's.

Hers were different, in a darker, sadder, more disconnected way. Through her daily stream of consciousness I realized that being an Idol is hard,and above that, that being anyone in general is hard. Not everyone is as happy as they seem. For a long time I watched and felt her internal struggles, I witnessed her following dwindle, and I saw things in her words that I recognized in myself. I realized that being happy with your appearance, ability, and relevance is hard. So hard, and it becomes harder the longer you hide it. From her I learned that to learn to be happy with yourself means to find and embrace what you love with all your heart. It means to never let your own fear keep you from showing the world what makes you beautifully you, whether others accept it at first or not. Her fear and pain, and eventual overcoming of those things gave me courage to do the same. I was eventually able to find freedom within myself by accepting the things that make me different and being the person I wanted to be.

Kanyon gave me the strength to find myself, and for that I'll be forever grateful to my beloved purple-now pink hued beauty. My first idol love.








I truly hope that she continues to find love and happiness within herself as well as from others as she follows her own road, wherever she may go. And I hope that she paves her way in the most Marotesque way possible.