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The story
A veteran fan known as “Oda-kama,” a longtime supporter of Morning Musume’s Oda Sakura, announced on 5ch’s Hello! Project board that they’d hit their 15th anniversary as a fan (“wota”). The thread lit up with congratulations, along with self-deprecating jokes and life updates from poster Kazuko, and the conversation soon drifted to buzz about new member Ishikawa.
What people said
Imori Miyuki, 16 years old — not yet anyone's. (a nod to a famous old idol-era catchphrase)
Got hit again by 'Renai Hunter'
Couldn't break free after '1・2・3'
And then Oda-chan joined and sealed the deal
Is the Eko standard actually 30ml of gin?
Sounds like some hostess from a Showa-era cabaret
She's basically Oda-chan's successor.
Not Kanon.
so it wouldn't have been weird for her to be in the original lineup or 2nd gen.
That would be plenty weird!
Apparently it's a dark chapter now — he genuinely loses it if you tease him about it.
I do want to thank Oda-chan, but…
That's fine — she can just stay a distant idol I admire from afar.
Be greedy about it!
If you actually put in the effort, you've got the potential to blow up as big as Mizushina Takayuki did (a tarento famous for his idol fan art)
Don't let the chance slip by!
I won't forgive it!
I'm not as brimming with confidence and hope for the future as I was when I was young (likely a typo of 自身 'confidence' for 地震 'earthquake' — both read "jishin")
and now I'm feeling kind of down about it
Never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder though
Look at you, you actually know! lol
Scaling it and gutting the gills and innards through the gill opening (a technique called tsubonuki) was no problem
But grilling it so the fins don't burn while cooking it all the way through — like one of those pristine whole fish you get as a wedding favor — turned out to be an absolute nightmare.
So how'd you end up eating it?
Background and Key Points
A “wota” (a portmanteau of otaku used specifically for idol fans) marking 15 years devoted to one member is a fairly ordinary milestone inside Hello! Project fandom, but the scale only makes sense with the group’s own timeline. Morning Musume debuted in 1997 and has run through nine-plus “generations” of members recruited via open auditions; Oda Sakura joined as part of the 9th generation in 2011, so a fan’s 15-year “Oda-kama” tenure roughly tracks her entire run in the group, not the full 25-plus year history of Morning Musume itself, which is why one poster needling “her singing career just hit its 25th anniversary” reads as a dig at how junior 15 years actually is within Ookami-board terms (Ookami, “wolf,” is 5ch’s long-standing nickname for the Hello! Project subforum).
The thread doesn’t really argue over the anniversary itself; where it splits is over what a “proper” fan owes an idol he’s followed this long. Several posters push the OP to be more assertive — buy the new photobook, show up to the meet-and-greet, maybe even get noticed the way fan-artist Mizushina Takayuki did — while the OP insists he’s content staying an anonymous, unacknowledged admirer.
What’s easy to miss without Japanese idol-culture context is how normalized the financial sacrifice jokes are: the poll-worker shift mentioned isn’t a throwaway line, but a nod to the real, unremarkable practice of Japanese idol fans taking odd temp jobs specifically to fund event tickets and merchandise.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread「💖Oda-kama Ookami 15th Anniversary」.
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