Chapter 10

"Big star? I’d rather be worry-free first." Zhou Xiao thought to himself as he listened to Inoue talk about big stars.

But there was no need to say such things out loud. After exchanging a few more pleasantries with Inoue, Zhou Xiao finally bid him farewell and started walking back to his small home.

Indeed, he was still walking. Although the 5000 yuan in his pocket was a huge sum compared to the 30 yuan he had when he left home, Zhou Xiao, who knew that 5000 yen wouldn’t last long, had to be prepared to make every penny count.

After returning home, Zhou Xiao began to seriously consider which path he should take in the future.

No matter what the future held, there was one ultimate goal that was certain: to establish AKB48.

If he didn’t exist, this girl group would have been established on December 8, 2005. Now it was 2000, and setting up an idol group wasn’t a difficult task, but establishing AKB48? That wouldn’t be easy at all.

Even if he had a wealth of songs and ideas in his head, there were still some very important things that needed to be secured within the next five years, or perhaps only four years.

First and foremost, money was needed.

If it was just a small idol group, it wouldn’t require much money, but AKB? Even the initial investment wouldn’t be small.

Not to mention, renting the entire eighth floor of Akihabara Don Quijote was a huge investment. The lease for Don Quijote wouldn’t just be for a year; it would be for three or five years, with the rent calculated in the tens of millions.

This was just the first major expense. Other expenses wouldn’t be small either, such as the rehearsal and recording of songs, which were also very costly. Renting a recording studio, hiring professional sound engineers, choreographing and rehearsing dances, renting training venues, planning and producing costumes, and even purchasing sound equipment, microphones, and software for the theater—all of these required a significant amount of money.

And after spending all this money, AKB might still just be a concept to the general public, not even having started its underground debut.

Even if it did debut, it would inevitably be a period of heavy spending. For example, the theater performances, with a daily capacity of 250 people, would generate only a small amount of ticket revenue, barely enough to maintain basic financial balance.

Moreover, to establish AKB, besides money, there was another crucial point: so-called soft power.

After AKB was established, to secure more resources and pull more people onto their side, turning AKB into a national idol group like an unsinkable aircraft carrier, the biggest innovation was to sign the members' management contracts with multiple companies. These companies and their parent companies were spread throughout the Japanese entertainment industry. Only in this way could AKB and its founder, Akimoto Yasushi, avoid retaliation from major companies and develop better.

For Akimoto, this was a necessary move. Otherwise, he alone couldn’t fight against the entire Japanese entertainment industry. Although AKB’s rise boosted the idol culture in Japan by several orders of magnitude, it also blocked the financial paths of others. AKB not only dominated the charts in Japan but also squeezed out the livelihoods of gravure idols.

However, Zhou Xiao believed that if possible, Akimoto wouldn’t have made this choice. Who would want others to meddle in a group they had created and nurtured like their own child?

So, for Zhou Xiao, if possible, this was also a choice he wouldn’t make. Of course, not handing over the members to various companies would make the future path very difficult, but Zhou Xiao, with over a decade of experience in the Japanese entertainment industry, would do his best to avoid it. Don’t think it’s easy; just getting rival companies to not hinder his development was already a challenge. Without the resources of these companies, Zhou Xiao would have to find more TV resources for the members, otherwise, AKB might just have a brief moment of fame and then fade into obscurity, never becoming the monster group he had experienced.

What Akimoto had that Zhou Xiao currently lacked was his fame and strength. In the 1980s, Akimoto had built the "Hello! Project" predecessor, "Morning Musume," and was the planner for multiple famous Japanese TV shows. He also wrote the lyrics for many famous songs. Only with such a reputation could he receive enough responses after posting recruitment ads.

Therefore, the final conclusion was that besides money, Zhou Xiao needed to build a significant reputation over the next few years, at least as big as Akimoto’s. Not only that, he needed to do more. He must have enough resources in major TV stations and entertainment media companies to have a say, so that AKB’s members could still have sufficient TV and radio resources even without being distributed to various companies.

"Money, fame, and solid assets are all indispensable. There’s a lot I need to do in these five years..." Zhou Xiao lay on the bed in his small room, lost in thought.

It was only 2000, and for Zhou Xiao, there was nothing to do during the day and no birds to watch at night. Being a teenager just entering the industry, he didn’t know any seniors to socialize with, so he could only stare at the ceiling in boredom.

"Right, let’s watch TV!" Zhou Xiao suddenly remembered. Since he was going to work in TV, how could he not watch it? The small room he rented naturally didn’t come with a TV, so he had to scavenge a small, barely functional TV from the junkyard.

After turning on the TV, the picture was full of static and interference, whether due to poor signal or the TV itself. Zhou Xiao slapped it a few times, but it didn’t improve. Reluctantly, he had to endure it.

The TV shows and anime being broadcast were quite boring, after all, they were from over a decade ago. Even the once-popular TV shows didn’t interest him much.

After flipping through a few channels, Zhou Xiao finally found something that caught his interest: a singing show!

Although the performances and makeup of the participants in these singing shows seemed silly to Zhou Xiao, the songs were good. Many of the singers and groups he saw were still well-known to him even after a decade. Watching the young and vibrant faces on the TV, Zhou Xiao felt quite nostalgic.

"Hey!?" At this moment, Zhou Xiao discovered a group that particularly interested him.

This group was Morning Musume.

"Truly... quite nostalgic."

Watching the young girls on TV, Zhou Xiao felt very nostalgic.

In the early 1980s, after Yamaguchi Momoe retired and married, leaving her white microphone at the Budokan, the Japanese idol culture entered its peak. A host of talented and capable idols like Matsuda Seiko, Nakayama Miki, and Koizumi Kyoko adorned the opulent bubble era with their dazzling presence. However, such idols could easily become tiresome. With only TV as a media channel, many in the entertainment industry who were sensitive to the market could sense that the relatively simple idol era was about to reach its peak. The one who extinguished the idol flame of the bubble era was none other than Akimoto Yasushi.

From 1985 to 1987, Akimoto’s "Morning Musume" created a miracle and a fast-food phenomenon. It was a miracle because in 1986, the group and related acts topped the Japanese Oricon charts for 38 out of 52 weeks! But what did it matter? After the group’s dissolution, few of its members continued to thrive in the entertainment industry.

What this group truly left behind for the Japanese entertainment industry was probably that many of these girls later became the wives of various figures in the industry. The most famous among them were Takai Masako, who married Akimoto Yasushi, and Kudo Shizuka, who married Japanese superstar Kimura Takuya.

After Akimoto’s destructive approach, the Japanese idol industry entered a stagnant period. From the 1980s to the 1990s, few idol groups debuted in Japan, and even fewer achieved success. The only one that truly left a mark in history and had real talent was probably SPEED.