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The story
A photo of Hello! Project idol Mano Ohtsubo in her Christmas costume spread across social media, earning her her first-ever “manbazu” (a post that racks up over 10,000 likes/retweets). What drove the spread wasn’t so much the quality of the outfit itself, but sympathy over how plain it looked next to other members’ costumes, plus talk of a “gap” in how much effort or budget goes into each member’s outfit. On 5ch’s Hello! Project board, reactions ranged from words of encouragement for her and complaints aimed at the agency, to worries about her going viral for a negative reason, and even mockery of the sympathy narrative itself.
What people said
and now you're jumping on this 'she looks great' viral bandwagon
always comes standard as part of the package
That just means way more people got to see you
Stay positive!
Depends on the person
Background and Key Points of This Topic
In Hello! Project, fans have long pointed out that when trainees get promoted to full members, they tend to get fewer costume and exposure opportunities compared to more senior members in the group — and the word “gap” gets used in that context. This particular manbazu spread less because of the photo’s quality and more because of the sympathetic take that “maybe different members just get different amounts of budget spent on their costumes.” Where the thread split was over whether to simply welcome this wave of sympathy, or to see it as “going viral for a negative reason doesn’t actually help her” — what the agency’s actual intentions were remains pure speculation within the thread, never confirmed either way. It’s also easy to misread the term “manbazu” itself: it’s just slang for when retweets or likes top 10,000 on social media, and doesn’t necessarily mean the reaction was a positive one.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Mano Ohtsubo Goes Manbazu with Her Christmas Costume, Kitaaaa (ﾟ∀ﾟ) !!“.
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