To be quite honest, I had no intention of picking up this book at all. It wasn’t until a reader of my blog suggested I do a “review” about Memoirs of a Johnny’s Fanboy that I even considered reading it. The reason? Because I didn’t want to be controversial. After everything that had happened 6 months ago with him, I didn’t want to put my voice in and become controversial. I have always been that way, even trying to not interject my full opinion of Jin or full opinion Ryo and Yamapi leaving NEWS. Why? Purely because I didn’t want to start controversy and wanted people to like me.   So, after considering the suggestion and going back and forth with this other girl though, I decided to download it from iTunes. It was only $3.99 and I had read some of his blog posts before and I liked his style of writing, so I decided to go ahead and read it. I had nothing to loose in my perspective. I could at least read the book, even if I didn’t do a blog post about it. I could still not be controversial if I wanted to. It was around 11:00pm that I downloaded the book and I thought I would get through some of it before going to bed, but 1:45am rolled around I had inevitably completed it. I decided to write some thoughts about the book because of the things he said in his book and it made me think about a lot of things in a different perspective, from a perspective of someone whom has gone through a lot and been in the fandom for longer than me, Fanboy or not and  “Pedophile” or not.

First off, the reason I really like this book is because I think this book was very well written and structured. I liked how he infused his own story side by side with information about Johnny’s and the world of the Japanese entertainment Industry. He gives a personal touch by telling his story, but at the same time telling people about the inner-workings of the Johnny’s fandom from someone who has been involved in it from before the international Johnny’s fandom was really established. It was interesting to me because I have only been a Johnny’s fan from 2008 and I didn’t know a lot of what had happened in the fandom before I came into it. Even if I did though, I dabbled in a different part of the Johnny’s fandom than he did, though I used to be a die hard Hey! Say! JUMP fan when I first came into the Johnny’s fandom and it was interesting to see how the parts of the Johnny’s fandom he was involved in were the same and differed from the parts the I was/ am involved.

Secondly, I liked how he didn’t stand on a pedestal and preach to us, but was relatable. He was down on our level and got good and dirty in the fandom, just like us. I had been through a lot of the same things in fandom as he has. He had a lot of the same thoughts and feelings towards the Johnnys Boys as I do, and I am sure a lot of you other fans out there as well. I mean come on, if you look up to someone isn’t it natural to want to see them in person and root for them? Isn’t that what fandom is about? Fangirl or Fanboy or your age, it doesn’t matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to anyone else. Another reason I think he was relatable is because he admits his failures. He admits he makes mistakes and that he isn’t perfect. Many times in the book he mentions if he could go back and change something, he would have.

Third and final, he wrote about a few lessons that I think Johnny’s fans should take to heart and that I have personally learned with maturity and being in the fandom for 4 years.

#1: Johnny’s is a Business.  Its okay to be sad if something happens in Johnny’s that you don’t like, but don’t do it publicly. Its just embarrassing to yourself. I learned that the hard way, but I am glad someone else thinks the same way as me. But, I guess (as he mentioned) that comes with maturity and because the average Johnnys fan is generally quite young (depending on the group too), they don’t see that yet and don’t have that kind of maturity yet. I was 18 when I joined the fandom and I didn’t reach that maturity until last year when I was 21.

#2. Haters gonna Hate and You can’t please everyone. If you become “famous” or relatively known, you are gonna get haters. Heck, I am not even relatively know at all and I still got hate. This goes hand in hand with pleasing everyone. Not everyone is gonna be your friend or want to be your friend. Sure you should be nice and I consider myself a friendly person, but I am the same way as Kamichan, VERY selective of who I call a friend. All this comes with expressing your opinion. Of course you should express your opinion, but bashing is something completely different. Even if people express their opinion and not bash though, there are going to be people who disagree with you. Thats okay, as long as both parties respect the other party. This is the fundamental problem I have with fandom sometimes; some people have no respect for the other party (or the boys) and we allow our emotions to get the better of us and not face all the facts before making an opinion. I used to be that emotional person and I learned the hard way that its not good at all. It just hurts people. Everyone is human and sometimes we forget that. Kamichan’s story is the perfect example of this summed up and everyone in fandom should take this into consideration, weather you like him or not.

All in all, I would truly say I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is new to the fandom, or people who don’t know much about how fandom was before the number of foreign fans increased. I was not a fan of Kamichan before reading this book by any means and didn’t know much about him, other than the few blogposts I read and what I had seen and heard around fandom here and there. Even then, I was neutral because I only had those few facts. I picked up this book solely because it was about Johnny’s and I like hearing other people talk about their fandom experiences with Johnny’s, Nothing more nothing less, and it turned out to be an excellent read.