In-depth analysis of Hermes & Love Life fans

In today's Japanese two-dimensional idol industry, the two hottest works are Hermes (the homonym for the abbreviation of "Idol Master") and Love Life ("LOVELIVE!"). literal translation). "Idol Master" started as a game, and the series of works has spread all over the world, relying on years of hard work to gain a solid foundation of popularity; And "LOVELIVE! "It became famous in one fell swoop by relying on well-made animation, and the disc sales of the second phase even set a record, as a young work, "LOVELIVE! The popularity is close to "Idol Master". So the question arises, what kind of state are fans of these two works in? Could it be that many fans of "Idol Master" have jumped ship to "LOVELIVE! "Is it there? Or are fans taking both? Today we will explore the distribution of Hermès and Love Life fans.

■ "Idol Master" is still going strong on pixiv

As mentioned before, "Idol Master" was originally an arcade platform development game released by NAMCO on July 26, 2005, and due to its growing popularity, games on various platforms have been launched one after another, and animation has been launched, which can be said to be the "big sister" of Japan's two-dimensional idol works. In addition, "Idol Master" is also very popular on Japan's largest video site, NICONICO, and it has also maintained the highest activity in pixiv and doujin exhibitions along with "Oriental Series" and "VOCALOID" all year round.

This time, let's take a look at the performance of "Idol Master" in NICONICO and pixiv. First of all, let's pay attention to the following figure, the number of video submissions with the label "Idol Master" has been increasing since 2007, and since then, the popularity has remained high as various works continue to appear. There will be a slight increase in popularity at many points such as the release of "Idol Master 2", TV anime broadcasts, and the release of "Idol Master Cinderellagirls", but in recent years, there has been a downward trend due to the lack of new works. However, with the release of the theatrical version of the anime in 2014 and the release of the game "Idol Master All Out", the popularity began to soar again in April. To date, there have been 253,500 works tagged with the "Idol Master" label on Niconico, and 18,500 people have participated in the post.

On pixiv (see the picture below), "Idol Master" has also maintained a high level of popularity for many years, with more than 210,000 works uploaded to pixiv so far, and about 30,000 people have participated. However, although "Idol Master" has been active since the opening of pixiv, it has also experienced a lot of popularity turmoil. You can see the explosion of related content after the release of "Idol Master Cinderellagirls", with 6,000 works uploaded to pixiv every month at its peak.

About 70% of the contributors to pixiv's "Idol Master" related works are men. Sixty percent of the contributors disclosed their gender information, and two out of ten contributors disclosed their gender and age. In terms of the number of 6,500 contributors who disclosed their gender and age, the majority of the respondents were men in their early 20s, and the number of people on both sides of the chart was decreasing.

■ Become famous in one fell swoop! The new generation of idol drama "LOVELIVE! 》

《LOVELIVE！ is a two-dimensional idol project jointly created by SUNRISE, a well-known Japanese animation production company, music publisher Lantis, and ACG monthly magazine Dengeki G's magazine, which began to broadcast the first season of TV animation (all 13 episodes) on January 6, 2013, and ended on March 31, 2013; The second season (all 13 episodes) aired on April 6, 2014 and ended on June 30, 2014. It tells the story of girls who begin to embark on the road of campus idols in order to save the crisis of school abandonment.

Although as early as 2010, "LOVELIVE! appeared in front of the public in the form of LIVE, games and radio dramas, but it was only after the animation was launched in 2013 that it was truly recognized by the audience. As you can see from the image below, since the decision to animate at the end of 2012, LOVELIVE! The number of submissions on NICONICO has skyrocketed; After the second season of the anime was launched, the number of submissions doubled on this basis. A veritable "fame in one fell swoop".

The situation is very similar at pixiv, which exploded in popularity after the decision to animate it at the end of 2013. At the end of 2013, the number of submissions exceeded 100 for the first time, and the number of submissions was only about 1,000 when the first episode of the animation was broadcast, but in June 2014, when the second phase of the animation ended, the number soared to nearly 6,000. Although with the end of the second phase of the animation, the popularity of the work will begin to slowly cool down, but "LOVELIVE! has also managed to occupy a place in the field of secondary creation. As of now, pixiv has a feature of LOVELIVE! More than 40,000 entries were submitted, and about 12,000 people participated.

Then you will take it for granted that most of the contributors to such a male idol work are men. I'm sorry you're wrong, in pixiv's LOVELIVE! Almost half of the contributors, including those of undisclosed age, are women. According to the information, "LOVELIVE! 64% of contributors disclosed their gender, and about 20% disclosed their gender and age. Looking at the 2,635 contributors who disclosed their gender and age, we can see that they are younger than the fans of "Idol Master"; The largest number of male contributors is 19 and 21 years old, and the number of female contributors is declining in a small hill, while the number of female contributors peaks at 18 years old, and continues to decline on both sides. It's worth mentioning that pixiv itself is a site with a lot of female contributors, although LOVELIVE! It is a work with a large number of male contributors, but this does not dampen the enthusiasm of female contributors for excellent works, and we can even see that there are many young girls aged 12 or 13, and in general, women make up the majority of submissions under the age of 16.

So in addition to "LOVELIVE! In addition to the main tag, let's take a look at some sub-tags, see the picture below. In terms of characters, Nicole Yazawa and Mahime Nishikino have more contributions than other characters, and Minami Kotori's popularity has always been high. Hono Takasaka in the first phase of the animation and Nozomi Tojo in the second phase of the animation have had a significant increase in contributions. Overall, with the exception of Nicole Yazawa and Maki Nishikino, the number of contributions from the other members of μ's on pixiv is not much different. Other characters, such as Kiratsuba, a member of the idol rival group "A-RISE" in the show, have also seen significant growth after the second episode of the broadcast. And the most popular CP group everyone must have guessed, that's right, it's "Nicole Mahime". In addition, there are various combinations such as "Eri Mahime", "Ori Hono", "Rin Hanayo", "Kotori Hono", "Kotori Kaimi", "Hono Kaimi", "Eri Kaimi" and so on.

■Can Hermès and Love Life prosper together? The answer is yes

It can be said that one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers, Hermes and Love Life are both the leading works of the two-dimensional idols, can they inspire each other and seek prosperity together? Based on the large amount of data we've listed above, it's not hard to see that this is possible. Although Hermes and Love Life are both two-dimensional works with the theme of idols, there are more female contributors in Love Life, and there are relatively few adult-oriented works, which is quite a big difference compared to Hermès. In fact, only about 20% of the people who post love life works on pixiv have ever contributed Hermès works. Judging from the contributor alone, there are not many points of contact between Hermès and Love Life. Judging from the situation of fans, although there is a certain difference in age, love life is not only very popular among men, but also quite popular among women in the ten-year-old generation. Hermès, on the other hand, has not been suppressed because of the attack of the love life craze, but still stands in the second world by virtue of its popularity over the years. I believe that in the future, both works will be able to continue the popularity boom in their own way and bring sincere works to fans.