User blog:Lucy554/The Aikatsu World Ranking: Foreign Aikatsu?!

So, today I wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind lately: Will we be getting foreign idols in Aikatsu Stars? And, yes, we do have all of the girls from Venus Ark, who are all confirmed to not be Japanese, as it's mentioned that this is the forst time that Venus Ark has been to Japan. But, will we get more foreign idols, and, more specifically, did Aikatsu develop differently elsewhere?

The Aikatsu System
Now, from what we've seen, in Japan, at least, the Japan that Aikatsu takes place in, most girls of any age can support themselves on being an idol or designer alone, and don't appear to have any trouble living a normal life outside of being an idol. (This was mainly shown by Mizuki.) However, we don't know that much about Aikatsu in other countries. In shows like PriPara, it's been confirmed that there are other idols in other countries, be it that the foreign idols in PriPara, at least the ones shown in the second movie, were as stereotypical of their coutries as you could possibly get. However, we did get one peice of information of foreign Aikatsu from Kaede in the original...

Now, if you don't remember this, way back in Season 1 of the original Aikatsu!, Ichigo left for America! Earlier in the series, a scene was shown with a conversation between Kaede and Ichigo, and Kaede said a few things about what Aikatsu is like in America. The most notable thing that she said was that idols in America (Not to be confused with the TV show "American Idol.") had to work part-time jobs in order to sustain a normal life. So, we can see from this that Aikatsu likely isn't as popular in America, as idols have to do something else in order to live! However, ti's still fairly popular, as there are at least enough fans to fill Yankee Stadium.

Now, other than America, there is only one other country that we have an idol that is confirmed to be from, and that's New Zealand. Yeah, Kiara is from New Zealand, as stated in Episode 51. However, we barely know anything about how Aikatsu works in New Zealand! All we know is that Kiara is very popular there, as well as abroad. It's clear that the abroad popularity is due to Venus Ark, but what about her popularity at home? Now, New Zealand isn't the biggest place, so it's safe to say that there probably aren't too many idols, but there are still enough to sustain a fanbase, and likely enough that Kiara would want to be one.

Okay, so we know that there is Aikatsu in Japan, America, and New Zealand, but what about everywhere else? Where is Elza from? What's the Aikatsu there like? Now, as handily theorized in a blog post by the user SingMeloetta, which can be found here: Were is Elza from? Now, in here blog, she says that Elza is most likely from Belgium. Wow, who would have thought? Now, we can take this fact, and apply it to surrounding Europeon countries, such as France and Italy, where idols have gone to study and continue there Aikatsu, such as Koharu and Yozora. Alright, so can we safely say that all three countries have stable AIkatsu? No, we can't. Koharu wasn't there alone, she had her parents... It's questionable whether she could survive alone as an idol in Italy. I think it's safe to say that france has a stable idol community, as Yozora appears to be doing quite well in the intro, and in PriPara, PriPara originated in France. But what about Belgium? To be honest, it could be either way. Elza is royalty guys, it's questionable whether there's stable Aikatsu in Blegium because the only idol from Belgium is also the next heir to the throne.

The Idols Themselves
All right, so we've established that there's pretty stable Aikatsu going on in, at the very least, Japan, America, New Zealand, and France. But what about the idols from these countries? Let's look at some examples.

From America, we have confirmation that Kaede and Rei started their idol careers here. Now, we can safely say that they likely have a menagerie of different idols, as Kaede was a hyper pop-type whose father ran an interntaionally famous sushi company, and Rei was a model from New York. As such, popular culture is so varied here (Yes, I live in America.) that we could have many different idols... Just look at some of the poopular girl groups.

All right, so what about New Zealand. Well, I have no idea... Because Kiara is the only idol from New Zealand. (By the way, why is Kiara a pop type? Why is FuwaFuwa Dream pop-type? They both are much better suited to the cute-type!) Now, we can safely say that they probably have hyper and kind idols over there based on Kiara's personality, which is probably part of what made her so popular, but we can't say much else...

Cool. So how about France? Well, we can safely say that modelling is a steady idol career over in France, as Yozora left to study fashion and modeling there! In real life, France is also regarded as a fashion capital. However, because Idol Anime tend to get a tad stereotypical when it comes to foreign idols, there are likely a sureplus of cute type idols as well, based on stereotypes and the introduction of the (likely) one-time charater Alice Carol.

So, what will happen?
I think that it's safe to say that if we do get more foreign idols, we probably won't get to see them perform, and they probably won't get much character development, as the anime seems to be shying away from actually showing us these other places. While we will probably get some one-time foreign characters on Venus Ark and the Aikatsu World Rankings, they will likely be in the background. And based off of the history of Idol Anime, I think its safe to say that if we do get foreign idols, they will probably be under-developed and stereotypical.

Thanks for reading! I'll likely be making more posts like this in the future, so stay on the lookout! See you next time!