Japan's First Foray into Scripted Reality TV with "Shibuhara Girls"
Next month, MTV Japan will make its first foray into the realm of "scripted reality tv" that has now become ubiquitous on American television. Entitled "Shibuhara Girls", a portmanteau of the hip and fashionable Tokyo neighborhoods of Shibuya and Harajuku, the show will follow four pseudo-celebrity young women in their journey to drop the "pseudo" from their titles. All four of them come from backgrounds of notoriety, including one woman with a burgeoning pop music career and another that is the daughter of an ex-Yokozuna, or highest rank in Sumo (think Mohammed Ali or Mike Tyson). Though slightly different from its American counterparts "The Hills" or "The City" in that the women will not be required to hang out with eachother, expect a full serving of Japanese flavored bubble-gum pop, no thinking required.
MTV SHIBUHARA GIRLS generic tune-in #2 from TokyoDesignStudio : MTVJ Promos on Vimeo.