As someone who enjoys both kpop and western pop I feel there's definitely something that about kpop that creates a more intense fandom, but it's not easy to put one's finger on why exactly. One reason might be that in the western music industry there's more of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product. Kpop artists put out a lot of material that makes you feel close to them and makes them relatable. I'd say that the culture of Korean media is more intimate in general. Kpop stars appear on a lot of tv shows where they just play games, share stories, spend time with at their home, work, coffee shop, restaurant. If you have a favorite western pop star you might see them on a talk show or read their Twitter feed, but it doesn't really feel like you're spending personal time with them week after week.
> of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product
It's not just an assumption, they are open about it. It's not a coincidence that kpop idol are forbidden from dating (they enforce it very strongly btw) and that they organize events were fans can pay in exchange to sit down with them and hold their hand for a few minutes.
Their business model has always been that they prefer to charge a single super fan 900$ for a limited edition album than sell a 10$ albums to 90 people.
Was in Bangkok a few months ago with my two sons. Driver dropped us off (mistakenly) at the first class drop off. It was quiet but when we entered the doors of the airport there was thousands of girls stretched all the way to the check in counter. And they all started screaming. My 15 year old and 13 year old sons thought that was kind of cool. The celebration quickly subsided once they saw we had no kpop stardom. The star arrived as we checked in and those girls totally lost it for the one or two minutes before he was ushered in to VIP.
>western music industry there's more of an assumption that the product is the music whereas in kpop the artist is the product.
I disagree, also a big fan of kpop and 90s/2000's pop groups and KPOP is just another iteration. All that intimacy on boybands was there back then in magazines, hotlines, tv shows, etc etc, but we probably were not teenage girls during that time and didn't participate.
Kpop groups routinely hire many of the same producers that were popular in the 2000s boy groups into kpop now. One that really stands out is Teddy Riley and other NJS producers from the actual 90s here.. A lot of them migrated over there where New Jack swing continues even to this day.
Anime and games target a similar crowd as K-pop. Although anime mostly targets single (lonely) males with obsessive characteristics, K-pop goes mostly after the female parallel.
Looking at the 2021 sales figures, this seems false. While one might argue that Uma Musume, Tensura and Love Live count, the other top-10 grossing franchises of last year are Haikyuu, My Hero Academia, Shingeki no Kyojin, One Piece, Tokyo Revengers, Jujutsu Kaisen and Kimetsu no Yaeba. From this, what anime mostly targets is pretty obvious: School aged boys who read Shounen Jump.
And when you decide to check the offer and not just what some people buy, you have content for a lot of people. Shojo targets young women, Yaoi is not really aimed at a young heterosexual male audience either.
You want diversity in picture books? Mangas have been doing it for more than 40 years. Some of their more successful authors are women.
A genuinely high quality anime takes time and money to make. Otaku fan service can be churned out along with loads of cheap knick knacks. There’s also the whole gacha game industry which ties into those series.
K-pop is similar. People obsess over a band and not only buy an album, they buy an overpriced can of coffee with a picture of their favorite star, a shirt, a bracelet, order a bag of cookies they shilled on their Instagram, and so on.
A school aged boy has to beg his parents to buy him a tshirt with an anime he likes. An adult Fate or Love Live fan has no problem throwing down $500 for a new figure or $80 for a “limited edition” Bangladesh-made bag. They’ll happily do it monthly.
The only two examples you listed are primarily gacha games though. If you meant to draw parallels between K-pop and gacha, why mention anime when they're never the primary medium? And even then, the real money still isn't in the goods, it's in getting people to waste their life's savings gambling for JPEGs.
Both of the games are based on anime franchise, though.
Even aside from that, here in Japan it is not uncommon for enthusiastic anime fans to throw multi-thousand $ for goods (including fan-made "doujin" items), live concerts of voice actors/actresses, travels to model locations and so on.
I don't see any difference between their mind and K-pop fans'.
I imagine letting the artist become influential outside of music would mean their record labels and producers loose control. I wonder if the relationship of who owns what and the where various lines are between The Talent and Producer in world of K-Pop is maybe quite different compared to places like the UK where characters like Harry Styles have long-since moved past being a "music artist".
This difference might change how intimately an artist is manufactured and presented.
One big difference is social media, where you can see any celebrity "at the same level" as your uncle or friends, while back in the 2000s there was nothing to reproduce this "mundane" seemingly close relationship with celebrities.
