Oh SMAP! | Former SMAP Members Throw Shade at JE with New Project

If you're a Johnny's Enterainment fan, or even just a Jpop fan in general you're probably aware of the fact that SMAP disbanded last year. SMAP was probably JE's best known group, having been in the entertainment industry for about 25 years. Their single, "Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana" is in the Oricon charts literally every week still despite being 15 years old. So of course it was met with great shock and sadness when such an influential group disbanded and departed from the agency.

Former SMAP members Inagaki Goro, Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, and Katori Shingo recently launched a new project called "Atarashii Chizu" (New Map). The most notable thing about this project seems to be their desire to leave behind JE's very outdated and limited way of doing things and make themselves accessible to a wider audience. The group's website is available in a variety of different languages and they have also opened up accounts on various social media websites such as YouTube and Facebook. Their fanclub will be open to members overseas as well which is pretty unheard of for Japanese artists in general, let alone JE artists.

This isn't the first instance of ex-Johnny's going on to form or join new groups (I'm sure a lot of you know about my dear, unfortunately very short-lived G=AGE with four out of its five members being former Johnny's Jrs. and more recently, the indie group ANTIME that is made up completely of ex-Jrs.) but Atarashii Chizu may prove to be the most succesful so far due to who the members are. As a petty fangirl who likes to give Johnny's Entertainment sass for a number of their strategies including their attitude towards their global fans, I'm loving this and can't wait to see what this new unit comes up with.

But what about you? How do you feel about this news? Will you support Atarashii Chizu? Let me know in the comments!


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1 comment:

  1. I think that this is a great thing to happen. Maybe thats what the members actually wanted to do, being more accessible outside of Asia! I can imagine Johnnys being like NO-this-won't-happen-as-long-as-you're-under-me. So they decided to do their own thing when their contract ends. There are others proofing that they can do without johnnys, maybe not THAT popular but they are still doing fine! I never was a fan of smap so I don't know if I will follow them but I would like to just because of them doing that!

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