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The story
Natsuyaki Miyabi, a former Morning Musume ’14 member now active with PIMMY and other projects, is set to serve as “one-day manager” at an eatery run by one of her longtime fans. Word that the collaboration curry costs 3,500 yen, the collaboration drink costs 2,300 yen, and even two-shot photos come with a fee sparked a mix of congratulations and unease on 5ch’s Hello! Project board over the idea of fans collecting money from fellow fans. One post — “Knowing the money’s going to a fellow otaku kills my motivation to go” — set off a tangle of reactions: surprise at the pricing, curiosity about who this veteran fan-turned-shop-owner actually is, and the thread rolled on without a clear consensus.
What people said
Yeah, I kind of get that
Since it's shot on a smartphone, the quality's way higher than the usual cheki (instant Polaroid-style fan photo)
Why isn't it an actual photo?
Even that's a stretch 😅💧
Wait, was she in prison or something?
Miyabi-chan's already married, you know
The regular "red" katsu keema curry runs about 2,200 yen? 2,400 yen with an egg topping? So this is 1,100 yen more than the usual price
Makes you wonder how much of that actually goes to Miyabi-chan
An event that's basically just collecting money from fans isn't okay
I'm going too — think you can make the timing work?
but only about 1 or 2 out of every 10 people there were guys, so I felt pretty out of place
I'm only doing the matinee so I've got room to spare, but if you're doing both matinee and evening it might be tight
Right? If it had at least started at 11, I could've made it
Background and key points of this discussion
Natsuyaki Miyabi joined Morning Musume ’14 in 2014 as an additional member, and after graduating has continued her entertainment career as PIMMY. Within Hello! Project, it’s fairly common for graduated members to take part in collaboration shops or one-day-manager events, so a tie-in with a shop run by a longtime fan isn’t unusual in itself. What split opinion in the thread was the fact that the collaboration curry was priced above the regular menu, and the discomfort some felt over the basic setup of “a shop run by a fan collecting money from other fans.” Fan-led projects tend to have less funding behind them than ordinary tie-ins, which often pushes prices higher — and that’s what drove reactions like “this kills my motivation to go.” At the same time, several posters said they actually planned to go, so it wasn’t a simple split into for-and-against camps. Note that the posts touching on her age or marital status are based on anonymous hearsay and have not been confirmed as fact.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Natsuyaki Miyabi ends up becoming one-day manager at a shop run by a veteran otaku lol.”
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