An Appeal to the Overseas Fandom (Updated 30/6)

Let me start off with an experience of mine that happened to me recently.

A few weeks ago, I was surfing on Google+ and exploring other people's profiles. There, I stumbled across an open Akari Suda fan club circle started by a bunch of Japanese wota. Casually, I just +1'd a few posts here and there, even going so far as to join. What I didn't expect was that the owner of that Google+ community later commented, in Japanese of course, on one of my (albeit very old) Google+ posts. He was just curious as to my language skills (which were hopeless I can tell you that right now), but nevertheless welcoming, seeing that someone like me, all the way from Australia, has Akarin as an oshimen. So I made my intro post on the community front page, piecing together something simple with whatever Japanese language skills I had at my disposal, and I was in.

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"If you're presented with a choice between two options, take the third one."

You could sum up the senbatsu election results like that. Marketers, media commentators and the like originally framed it as a two-horse battle between Yuko and Mayu yet in the end, it was the black horse Rino Sashihara ("Sasshi"), widely expected to have dropped a few places from 2012, that took out top honors instead. The atmosphere turned from a tear-fest to one of celebration and, curiously, laughter, as the former rising star of AKB48 rose back from the grave and stole the thunder away from the top two perennial favorites. Rarely anyone expected the preliminary results to follow through all the way to the final results, let alone predicted this before the voting "stations" opened.

Let's have a closer look at the results and the evening that was.

On Oshimen

It's that time of year again. Election season. A show of dedication for their members by the voting wota and, as Yuko puts it, votes mean love. What compels people to vote for them? Various factors, of course, but there is almost always that one crucial factor: it is their oshimen. Their one and only favorite member.

That got me thinking: what is it about my oshimen that makes me want to vote for them? Broadly speaking, how did I even get this far in the first place, that I would even consider thinking about having oshimen and subsequently voting for them/her?

I want to talk about my oshimen (pl.). Undoubtedly, this is going to be a very frank and personal take on all of them.