What Is Oshi-Katsu? Why Fandom Matters in the Age of AI

There is no clean line between being a fan and doing oshi-katsu, the active support of your oshi. But when feelings move from “I watch because I like it” to “I want this person’s activities to continue” or “I want to celebrate their growth together,” action joins the support.

Buying, spreading the word, going to see them, planning something with friends: the size of the action varies from person to person, but at the center is entrusting a little of your own time and feelings to the other person’s future. That is why oshi-katsu tends to become a longer relationship than simple consumption.

The line is blurry because it doesn’t match people’s own sense of themselves either. Some people who go to a live show every week say “I’m a fan,” while others who only watch a stream once a month say “this is my oshi.” There is no standard you can measure from the outside.

Companies using this word should take note. Draw the line by amount spent or number of visits and you shut out people who don’t fit. It is closer to reality to think the word oshi-katsu describes the direction of the feeling, not the size of the action.

It is also worth knowing that this shift does not run in only one direction. Someone who supported strongly for a while may step back when life changes, and many people come back after leaving.

That is why operators and services are better off not counting people who leave as failures. Keeping the door open so people can come back at any time turns out to be the most effective measure in the long run.

Whether to use the word oshi is up to each person. Don’t treat only the people who buy every time as valued customers. Once you count those who recommend you to friends, who keep using you and who quietly read what you post, the promises a company should keep and the touchpoints it should offer become concrete.

Once, support meant watching from afar through television and magazines. Next came the age of going to see them at concerts and through fan clubs, and then social media made it possible to send words every day. Now fans also take part in spreading the word, planning and even making products.

This change could be explained purely as technological progress. But what actually drove it was a simpler desire: to see up close, to tell them directly, to be of help. Each time a new means appeared, that desire found a form.

As the distance has closed, both joy and responsibility have grown. Your oshi’s voice reaches you at once, but fans’ expectations reach them just as fast. What matters now is designing a distance at which people can comfortably keep going, rather than simply adding more connections.

Even as the stages advance, the earlier ones do not become unnecessary. There are still people who first learn of something on television, and people who support without using social media. New methods have simply added choices.

The real problem is providing a way in only for the newest methods: announcing only through streams, accepting sign-ups only through social media. You may think you added touchpoints when you have actually narrowed the ways in to one.

AI can quickly produce drafts of text, images, customer service and plans. Products and information multiply, and “convenient” or “correct” alone no longer sets anything apart. In such an age, what remains as a reason to choose is the story of who is carrying this on, and with what feeling.

When things of the same quality sit side by side at the same price, people look for a reason: who made it, what the background is. The more information there is, the more people want a story to choose by.

Explaining yourself instead of running away when you fail. Remembering the people who have supported you for a long time. Carrying the words exchanged on site into the next improvement. Human warmth is not the opposite of efficiency; it is an asset for building trust.

What AI is not good at is taking on responsibility. Even as the quality of what it generates rises, keeping promises, apologizing when you are wrong and deciding what to do next remain human work.

In oshi-katsu, fans are often backing not ability but attitude. Even people who fell for someone because they were good at what they do find that, as they watch them keep going, they start supporting them for reasons other than skill. That shift cannot be explained by performance.

When companies consult us about oshi-katsu, goods and campaigns tend to come up first. But fans are looking at more than the product. They look at how the company understands that culture, whom it values and how it stays involved after the project ends.

The “after it ends” part in particular tends to be treated lightly. A company may be enthusiastic during the campaign, but once it is over, the contact point disappears and the announcements come down. Fans remember that drop-off.

Map the touchpoints among fans, the people they support, companies and local communities, as OSHI MAP does, and relationships that a single sale could not reveal come into view. Before adding more touchpoints, think about what good remains for each party. That is the foundation of a business people want to back.

Map it out and you notice how many projects leave no benefit for anyone: the company only spends money, the fans’ burden grows and nothing remains for the person being supported. Drawn as a diagram, it becomes obvious.

A phrase that often comes up in consultations is “our products aren’t suited to oshi-katsu.” But fans use restaurants, finance and transportation for their oshi, too. Often it is not that the product is unsuited, but that the company doesn’t know how it is being used.

So the first step is not to plan but to observe how your products and services are already being used. Sometimes it is faster not to get in the way of existing uses than to invent new ones.

Rush for sell-outs and buzz and decisions like these follow: restricting sales too far, stoking expectations alone, putting off explanations. Even if the numbers come in over the short term, if people feel “my love for this was used,” there will be no next project.

The hard part is that no one can fault you on the spot for chasing short-term numbers. A sell-out looks like success, and criticism comes weeks later. At the time of the decision, you can’t tell whether it is good or bad.

Not betraying does not mean never failing. It means telling people quickly, when a problem occurs, what happened, how you will fix it and who you will make it right for. Trust is built not through perfection but through what you do after a failure.

That speed can only come from preparation. Set up the contact point and criteria only after something happens and decisions take days; set them in advance and you can act the same day.

In oshi-katsu projects, uses you never anticipated will always come up. It is more realistic to be ready to act quickly when something happens than to try to make sure it never does.

The memory of feeling betrayed lasts a long time, and it is shared not only by the person but by the people around them. A response from several years ago still coming up in conversation is not unusual.

A sincere response, conversely, is remembered just as well. The verdict that “they explained it properly back then” becomes trust in the next project. Both the savings and the debts of trust compound, and it is realistic to see them that way.

A mechanism like PQuuut, which lets fans liven up a venue together, does not put the company in front; it helps the people who want to cheer act. The stars are always the fans and the oshi, and the service is what smoothly connects them.

A service that stands out too much gets in the way of support. Fans want to photograph their oshi, not a company logo. A design that stays behind the scenes ends up being used for longer.

Talking directly with people at events and exhibitions reveals troubles that numbers alone can’t show. The future of oshi-katsu comes not from new features but from continuing to listen to the people involved. This lab, too, will keep recording that change, moving between audio, articles and the field.

That strain often shows up where it is hard to see: on-site staff, the person being supported, the fan organizers who run a project. When the front of the house is lively, we want to check whether the burden is piling up somewhere.

Whether oshi-katsu lasts as a culture depends not on how big the heat is but on whether the people involved will want to do the same thing again next year.

Oshi-katsu is no longer a special hobby of special people. When one in three people has an oshi, it also means that, for a company, a third of its customers are supporting someone.

How you handle that fact will shape your business from here on: whether you avoid getting in the way of support, and whether you can help it. In the end, that is what decides whether you become someone’s oshi.