Tokyo Idols Review

Hello there all of you anime fans and you idol fans i'm here today with a review of something that until this morning I had no idea about but it's something that to me was very interesting so here is my review of the 2017 film Tokyo Girls.

So then I here you ask what is this documentary about well dear reader the film follows aspiring singer Rio Hiiragi and it examines the idol culture and fanbase that has helped make it phenomenon. How I described the film just now is I think better then the description on IMDB and it's also the most accurate as Rio is basically the main character in this film altho other idols are mentioned with the most famous being AKB48 but I do have to say the film does feel a lot longer then an hour and thirty minuets.

As mentioned the film stars Rio Hiiragi and she is the only idol listed on the films official IMDB page and before you al ask I looked and there's no Wikipedia page for the film but I will say that the film does a good job of presenting her as human who has real issues you do see her get upset a lot in this film and it honestly makes her feel more human and not like someone putting on an act.

Even tho this isn't the main focus of the film the film does a fairly solid job of showing the different between a big idol like AKB48 and what they call the idol underground which is where alot of small time idols play and I have to say these small time idols have it hard from what I can see they barely sell out even the smallest of venues and yet they put in just as much time and effort then the bigger and more well known Idols do.

As well as showing of idols in this film the movie also shows us what it's like from the point of view from the fans in fact in this film both the idols and the fans have around 50% each of screen time. I don't know if this is just because i'm not Japanese but alot of the fans featured are really old and that to me looks disturbing but I do understand that alot of idol fans in Japan are older men so maybe it's a culture thing.

Incase your wondering this isn't an Asian film it's a British film since the BBC aired the film on BBC Four last summer so if you go looking on various Asian film sites the chances of you finding it are quite low and I should know because I tried to find it on kissasian.

 Overall this film didn't need to be an hour and a half at best it should have been around an hour long which even then would be stretching it a bit the film for me tho gets an 7 out of 10.