Let me start off this thready by saying I am not joking, I'm not being sarcastic and I am also not trying to start a war between the English speaking MM fans. My experience is purely from experience getting to watch one Hello! Project Concert and one AKB Concert.

In case you are an H!P fan thinking I'm just favoring AKB because this has its root as an AKB friendly forum, you're wrong. I attended the concert and knew only 3 songs sung during the 2 hour concert.. and ONE of them was the english version of Happy Birthday. I just wanna get that out of the way

The Hello! Project Concert I attended was in 2004, so it was pretty much still at its height, with tons of great songs and Berryz being the fresh new face. Most of the people attending the concert were middle aged men who wore casual t-shirts and if there was a girl she would also happen to be middle aged. I saw only 5 girls in total during the large performance at Yoyogi Hall or whatever the hell it was called and one of them was a tiny girl with her parents. Meaning of the total of 5 girls I saw.. one was a mother presumably forced to attend. I remember paying attention.. one was a bizarre looking middle aged woman doing a Berryz Koubou dance, two girls went to cosplay as W but did NOT attend the concert (I saw them LEAVING).. and of course the kid and her mom.

Upon my evaluation of the AKB concert... -duhn duhn duhn-

The tickets given exclusively to girls are pink instead of blue, and they have their own row. Not only are the girls actually girls.. they are LOLI GIRLS. They sat right in front of me, mimicking all the hand motions and paying deep attention to the show. They were good looking lolis too. No joking.

Not only was there an entire row of loli girls (about 15 of them) there were honest to god JHS to HS aged couples attending. Young, thin, and using lots of hair care products. There was also a decent ratio of JHS/HS single guys in attendance.. yes there were some kid nerds.. but most of them looked pretty cool. The Gackt type of hair people.

These people were NOT the main audience but they were a well represented group of people. I would give the ratio of cool people to nerdly types 1 of every 3 people. There was also a group who was about 1 in 6 people who seemed like salarymen who just got off work. Although its not neccessarily less creepy to have an older guy in a suit there.. these people looked clean and thats what counts.

About 1/2 of the group seemed normal, i saw a fat boy with his mom also.

Wotas will always be wotas but I am glad to see that the ratio and mix didn't seem as bad as the H!P concerts. That is all.