J!-ENT: Frequently Asked Questions

July 27, 2007 by KNDY · Leave a Comment

Frequently asked questions we receive over the years and to help those who are curious about certain things in regards to J!-ENT:

Why do you use “Hamasaki Ayumi” when it’s Ayumi Hamasaki?

For J!-ENT, we use the family name first, first name second like they do in Japan. I made this decision back in the mid-90’s because while learning Japanese, I noticed the Japanese friends and associates I would communicate with, would have an easier time communicating via names if I used the family name first.

I know it may be confusing for non-Japanese that J!-ENT does this but it’s a practice that we have done for over a decade now. So, headlines or our articles or things I reference will use the family name although news sources will more than likely use the first name/last name order. Hope this makes sense.

How come on Japanese sites, there are no images for Johnny’s Jimusho artists or groups. Especially when it comes to the music?

In Japan, Johnny’s Jimusho has a strong control over their artists and their images. So, many Japanese companies in Japan must follow the rule of not featuring the artwork of Johnny Jimusho talent. So, for J!-ENT when you see the top albums or CD singles, the Johnny’s Jimusho talent will not have a cover and companies have used a generic image.

There is a written quality difference between what you have on your articles and on the blog reviews. Why is that?

On our PDF’s, those are mostly interview-based and we try our best to do a lot proofing. But for the content we provide for the blogs, such as reviews, the reason why we stopped doing the PDF reviews is that some reviews that are given to us by our reviewers, do not fit the template on PDF’s, so the blogs allow for more things to be written.

Whereas in our interviews we were much more strict, the music reviews we actually are a bit more passive towards a writer, especially if they want to write in their own style and not worrying about us copy editing their work. We’re a bit more laid back in those instances.

Why are you reviews limited to certain companies?

For DVD’s and music, we do not review illegally downloaded material but what is provided to us by companies. And there are only so many companies that have interest in North America and who they want to bring to North America. Sure, it may be limiting to us but so far, we’ve been in good place to establish strong relationships with several companies for our reviews and yes, we do miss out on a lot of releases by the other companies but fortunately, the companies we deal with are among the bigger ones in the industry that they have many artists or many titles that keeps us busy no matter what.

I don’t understand why you guy’s don’t capitalize with your site. No message boards? Also, you guys cover everything instead of just Japanese entertainment. Isn’t that bad?

I think that’s the beauty of J!-ENT. A lot of us involved are professionals in our own careers but we have been doing this for so many years because of our passion for the things we are interested in. We are interested in many things and we always say that we do what we want for J!-ENT. We love people coming to the site and having the same interests. But there are many sites out there that have communities and message boards, that do a great job with it, no need for us to go there.

I know it’s a bit weird since J!-ENT came from the whole BBS years back in the early 90’s and we are known for our message boards back then but we feel there are sites who do a great job doing it now. Which is totally cool with us.

Why does this site interview these people and you guys don’t?

A lot of these sites along with us get offered to interview certain artists by a label or company. And we are known to turn down a lot of them. But our interviews are pretty long, many pages and not web-based. We have a pretty good idea of how we like our articles and how we do things.

Nor do we feel we need to interview everyone and feel we need to churn out as many interviews as possible. If anything, why do an interview and then find out everyone is releasing an interview with that same artist. Nah. Not our thing!

How do I join the J!-ENT Press team?

We’re always looking for good people but read this section and then decide if you really want to be part of the press team.

We learned the hard way of how we bring people into J!-ENT. Some are in it for the passion of the music or to enhance their work portfolio but there are some with other intentions that we just don’t want the headache of having to deal with that. So, we have been a pretty closed and only letting very few people in. It works better for us this way.

But in the beginning you start with easier duties and gradually the duties will improve to possibly leading to interviews and other areas.

There is always this misconception that it’s glamorous that we interview artists but there is a lot of work involved. Especially when it comes to reviews. We used to have so many people interested in being reviewers but once they do it, they realize that deadlines were not to their liking and that they were not interested in all forms of music but just a certain genre and writing about people or music they were not familiar with, was just too difficult.

So, it’s not easy as one would think. If you are one that can embrace all kinds of music, especially various genres when it comes to films or animation and even video games, then that’s great. But then you get to the other part, realizing that covering this niche especially when there is no true (or strong) distribution of it in your country region, there is no budget for advertising (especially for International marketing) from a company and knowing that you are going to do a lot of written work and know you are doing it for free.

Everyone starts out enjoying the fact that they get a free product for review but when deadlines come and that passion becomes work, free can only go so far for some people and they realize, they want to get paid.