Slipping away, more doc issues, plans and plans and plans...

I wish I was younger. I don't have near the energy I had even 5 years ago. It sucks. But, idol invigorates me. I am so glad to have this in my life ! Like i said before, I would have an idol fund for tours and trips to Japan. But, I try to do what I can to support all the way over here in the U.S. I really appreciate all that you do, Derek ! You are our connection to the idols we love so much. Keep the faith, brother and I hope to see you again soon !

as always, thank you for your extremely kind words. They mean so much to me and I really appreciate you taking the time to write to me and tell me all of this. Thank you so so much! And of course if you want to do like a business analysis of what I'm doing, that's fine, but I am not sure how to give you numbers... I don't keep records lol. I just go and go... but maybe I can give estimates? In any event, the real deal is that I need to hire a staff person who I can trust... and then I need to find a better way to keep contact with these groups that disappear on me. Then I need to figure out how to properly market my documentary and get it out to new people and expand the idol fandom plus reach all the idol fans here. Help me solve these problems, and I'll be doing exactly what I'm always talking about that I want to do... which is to get that nest egg of cash to support all the other creative things I'm trying to do in life. Anyway thank you for your comments. Lots of love right back to you!

Thank you so so much! I can't express how much your words mean to me! I hope we can meet someday when Japan is open again to foreigners. I want to talk about so many things with you while having a beer together or a good burger someplace! Lets make it happen!

Hiya Derek! Thanks for another patreon podcast. I never miss one but I do not always write something. As a business major in uni, IdolUnderworld and everything you do is very interesting for me. Idol is a niche but a possibly profitable market. Most idol fans will support idols with every last yen, dollar or euro they have, and I think your business mindset and way of marketing is quite effective. In terms of the doc, I think it might need a bit more to truly flourish and get its investment back to break-even. I'd love to perhaps do research on IU, make a company analysis and recommendation. Only if you're interested, of course! I think I can even get credits for my Honours class if we do, hehe! Let me know, maybe I can prove to be helpful in some way. I've been doing this lately for a case competition (which entails we get a case with a company experiencing problems and we have 5 hours to analyse, find a solution and make an implementation plan), and it seems I'm not too bad as I'm in the finals! I'm sorry to hear about Masa. I'm glad to hear the new editor works well! I can't wait to see the rest of the doc. It has been a big, long and exhausting project but the end is near, even if it feels like it keeps getting out of reach. Lots of love Derek, hang in there. Love, Romy

Hi Derek. The new year has started… and the chaos starts again. The documentary starts releasing. (I´ll come to that later, but you already know from twitter it´s more than positive). Okay. There still are some delays… but let´s stay optimistic. That last remaining problems are a fart in the wind regarding to the chaos with your former editor. You will solve them very quick. And if possible… cut his fu****g wage short. He has open work he didn´t deliver but was supposed to do. Therefore you shouldn´t pay that. Yeah speaking of loneiless… I definetely need that Lottery Jackpot that grows intensely every week. If i ever get that, you instantly have about 10 people you know and love – friends - here working in Japan on your project. Your dream is so cool that many people wanna share it if it´s possible somehow. If i had the funds to don´t worry for several years and even could take tome people who share this with me i´d be faster in Japan than you can say „WTF“. But… right now. I´m afraid we only can morally support from here. And play Lotto when i think the Jackpot is big enough… Speaking of Money… The appartment sounds good. You have one extra room. Storage AND a living room, And if you grow… and Miho and Kosame start through, you will have more merch for sure and need that. The extra minutes to station, in comparison to an additional room for less money sounds good. Very good. Consider that. Good to hear you start dating again. Now let´s see what interesting people you meet. Don´t be disappointed of the first backslash. The art of dating is to start again and again until you found out someone lovable. Until then you meet people and collect some interesting, funny to obscure stories to tell when among friends. Hang on, have fun. Back from personal stuff an right to the Documentary, The first episode was … fu****g amazing. Everything so well done. I was amazed after Chihiros intro how the history starts, how it´s done. How it´s amazing narrated by Aku. I didn´t know how that idol thing started in Japan. Amazing. Beruhas Bio is a great example. On the one hand The producer had really hard expectations but i get the point. Before leárning about you i only knew the commercial idol scene. And from a foreigner perspective so many idols sound equal. If you wanna win you´ve got to be creative. Regarding that i can totally agree. I would have missed the whole idol underground scene if i hadn´t clicked out of curiousity on a Bandcamp recommendation for Necronomidol back in 2017. That lead to the idols, learning about Ricky created it. After some time you appeared, introduced IU, where i learned about so many great idol bands. Thanks to you. But i´m drifting away again… I know many idols appearing here hope to be expanding their fan´s radius. For me i can say it totally worked for NaNoMoRal, Didn´t have them on the radar… and was so enjoying their history and their music i bought their CDs at IU, which i probably wouldn´t have otherwise. And the final Biopic involving Chihiro totally cracked me up. I never casted but i dealt with many resignations. And she found the perfect solution for it. Turn the chessboard. And we all know hoe it turned out until now. Who couldn´t just feel deepest respect and sympathy for her. And you packed all that amazing stories together, The storytelling is strong with you. We watched it together in a virtual cinema environment with webcam, pausing between the parts and talking about it. (We even paused for the graph you did about bands and their genres and analyzed that for five minutes,) We had lots of fun and will do it again this week. Can´t wait for episode two. Now that everyone who believed in your doc, supported it so far as good as possible now it´s time to spread the word and bring it to the people. If you don´t plan a secret surprise Welcome Kosame Special with CD, Poster, Photos and who knows what else for February the following month is perfectly for promoting. If people know about it, they will be curious and you make sales. In long term for ideas what you can do i think producing Miho and Kosame and working more Photobooks is a good start. If you wanna express yourself in game producing and regarding your author talent i´d suggest you try reading a little bit in Ren´py and try writng a visual Novel. The engine is free, easy to learn, works on every system, you can port it to any system and even legally sell the games. I even have tons of royality free music i can share with you if you´d like to experiment a little. In any case i think it will be a good thing after the whole project tornado of a last year, to take a few days off. You worked for two or thee workaholics. And i know you too well, you will do so in short time again. If you have that free space just use it. Load your batteries. Best wishes Sven

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