Aimi Eguchi, Of Japan's AKB48 Pop Idols, Has A Secret: She's Not Human

And She only takes up 150 Gigs of Memory!

Only 15 seconds in the limelight and she’d already created an overnight buzz. She was the newest member of the very popular all-girl Japanese idol group AKB 48. Upon seeing the new face appear on a candy commercial, the band’s faithful took to the message boards: Who is Aimi Eguchi?

This past Sunday, Ezaki Glico, the candy company which aired the commercial,confirmed what many of AKB 48’s fans had come to suspect: Aimi Eguchi wasn’t real. The new group member, it turns out, was a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was actually made up of the “best features” of six other members: her eyes, nose, mouth, hair/body, face outline and eyebrows were not flesh-and-blood, but cut-and-paste.

Not everyone was so quick to catch on, however, and Aimi had already formed a fan base of her own. “The video shocked fans of Eguchi,” reports ChannelNews Asia, “who were convinced that her features were more the result of good genes than the skillful use of computer graphics.

But why the suspicion in the first place? A quick search and fans found Aimi’s AKB 48 profile, discovered she was sixteen years old, that she competed in track and field, and that she was from Saitama, a prefecture on the island of Honshu. They would have also discovered that Aimi had debuted in a photoshoot for Shueisha’s Weekly Playboy magazine.

Conspiracy theorists who gave it more thought, however, would have found it a suspicious coincidence that the letters of the new member’s name could be derived from the name of the candy company, the theme song in the commercial, and the name of the candy being advertised. They would have also found it suspicious that Aimi’s birthday, February 11, was coincidentally the date Ezaki Glico was founded, and that the company’s slogan “Hitotsubu 300 meter,” sounded all too much like Aimi’s favorite sport (I guess). Not to mention Aimi bore a striking resemblance to six other members.

A lot of work was invested in creating Aimi Eguchi. In addition to the commercial–which still has fans completely fooled–they released a video in which Aimi makes a statement. Take a look at this video showing how she was composited off of the LIVE band members. It’s a damn good job.