Japan has recently seen an upsurge in idol ikusei (nurturing) games: networked mobile games where one nurtures and produces an idol pop group. These games are a significant part of Japan’s contemporary ‘media mix’, influenced both by virtual pet games and by discourses of nurturing surrounding the production of ‘real’ girl idol groups by male producer-auteur figures. Previous analyses have considered affection for simulated or virtual girl idol figures as a detached longing for stylised characteristics ( moe). This article uses a case study of a mobile game at the centre of the Love Live! girl idol-nurturing simulation franchise to suggest that we cannot only speak of players’ affection for nurturing games’ characters in terms of postmodern disembodiment; we must also consider how in playing idol-nurturing games, players take the place of real male producer-auteur figures in Japanese popular music production, where discourses of gendered nurturing abound.

Why is it that we think of K-pop idols as more globally successful than J-pop idols? In this article, I examine the production, distribution and media reception of the South Korean and Japanese idol pop music under the labels of J-pop and K-pop. I show how although structural and economic reasons go some way towards explaining the differing international reaches of J-pop and K-pop idols, we must also take into account the impact of imagined versions of national popular cultures within the paradigm of the global. Specifically, I argue that we cannot consider J-pop and K-pop’s global successes without acknowledging two critical factors: the way that success in the anglophone West is used as a byword for global success and what the circulation of imagined, Orientalist versions of Japanese and South Korean popular culture may tell us about contemporary mediascapes, both as global configurations of media and the visions they proliferate.

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Why is it that we think of K-pop idols as more globally successful than J-pop idols? In this article, I examine the production, distribution and media reception of the South Korean and Japanese idol pop music under the labels of J-pop and K-pop. I show how although structural and economic reasons go some way towards explaining the differing international reaches of J-pop and K-pop idols, we must also take into account the impact of imagined versions of national popular cultures within the paradigm of the global. Specifically, I argue that we cannot consider J-pop and K-pop’s global successes without acknowledging two critical factors: the way that success in the anglophone West is used as a byword for global success and what the circulation of imagined, Orientalist versions of Japanese and South Korean popular culture may tell us about contemporary mediascapes, both as global configurations of media and the visions they proliferate.