Single Sakurazaka46 3rd Single [Nagaredama] (2021/10/13)

It's a universal reality that male-female attractions exist everywhere, spice up our lives and set this world in motion... EVERYWHERE! I repeat EVERYWHERE... Of course there are some rare pure-white immaculate existences out there that are offended even at the mere reference of "hints of male-female attractions". Better avoid reading such malicious posts...

Alas, even J-idol variety shows are not as subtle as my reference to "hints of male-female attraction" between MCs and idols. But of course, everything is variety...

 

Such a funky banger! "Even made me not get disappointed for not being an emo bop"-kind of good!
The bassline is golden chaos *chef's kiss

I feel bad for the bassist if it ever gets played live tho

 

Do you think the composer of Nagaredama is Satori Shiraishi? His style is different in spring but in the fall he always goes for funky stuff. His latest work was A-side for NGT48 (Awesome) in the summer and it was just okay, didn't hold the same A-side level as High Tension (2016) and Kaze ni fukaretemo (2017), but it was funky I will give him that.

But like you said before none of the A-sides have really lived up to be a A-side quality.

Bugbear came off Idolmaster before they got in touch with Aki-P for Keyakizaka and they were worried the song wouldn't be suitable for a idol-like MV and dance. What they read from the lyrics by Aki-P is what they hear in their mind and they were relieved when they saw the MV for Saimajo.

Unfortunately, none of the composers on 1st and 2nd single have really been high standards. I wonder if it has anything to do with the change to try normal idol-like songs and the experimental route has rather backfired than paid off. I called Ban a turning point on a smaller scale (baby steps) but they are still not there yet.

Derek Turner has never worked with idols before or Aki-P. That must be rather a request from Sony Music Japan than Aki-P. Nobofa was just alright. Then Aki-P tried with Aokado who only made coupling tracks before he teamed up with S-TONE under A-NOTE. The result is long-term and Japanese fandom have started to like this song more than any of Sakurazaka's other songs they have released so far.

Yahoo News Japan interviewed Aki-P in March this year about Saimajo and Keyakizaka:

"The song's great success possibly surprised Akimoto-sensei as much as anyone. I sometimes wonder if the "message song" idea was a move of desperation, something he came up with when he and the rest of management saw that the group might not be able to make a success of a more normal idol song."

And that is exactly what is happening with Sakurazaka. Normal idol songs have not worked for this group except for the hype of Nazekoi being composed by Soulife whom fans remember from the early era of Keyakizaka (Noriokureta Bus, Kimi ga inai, Futari Saison) and none of their songs were like Nazekoi filled with romance and fluffy love. Fans love Nazekoi for the music and the performance from Karin-chan but don't like the lyrics.

And normal idol songs have not brought in any new fans or audience they probably wanted. It's definitely time to just have three strong cool senbatsu songs with dance intensity/art balanced with units/solo tracks. The whole thing about having 7 senbatsu songs for the sake of normal idol songs has not worked out. They can't blame on pandemic for 2nd single because it was down from 1st single.

I got a bit mad on mngmt when I watched MTV Storyline. The members commented on Saishuun having dark lyrics but the composer (Aokado) is trying to brighten it up with encourage rather than the members express pain in the lyrics. This doesn't make sense. That was the group's specialty to convey the lyrics in their dance performance. When you take that off the song is literally dead. No atmosphere, no worldview, and no style.

Aki-P and mngmt have a lot homework to do after the result from the first two singles.

 

It's just sad that something like this was buried by the off-topic stuff in this thread.

Always admired Kimika's work with Keyaki. It's curious that it's been several months since this tweet and it seems that the uniform she made hasn't surfaced... I'm curious about the hakama-style! It would have definitely suited a late March/early April single since that's the graduation season (when girls in Japan wear hakama) so I wonder why they didn't use it for BAN.

I'm happy with the brown, vintage Cardcaptor Sakura-style uniform they went with in the end, but I hope we get to see Kimika's interpretation of Sakurazaka style soon!

It's a bit confusing, but aokado is two people! Aoba Hiroki and Kadono Toshikazu. Aoba is also A-NOTE, who did work with S-TONE for BAN.

But generally, find your perspective interesting. I don't necessarily agree that only "cool" songs is the way to go, but I think the quality of the songs just needs to be higher.

 

I'm pretty sure the music come first, then after being selected to be used, Akip
P then writes the lyrics before passing it to Takahiro and the girls so it all was intentional

While I don't care about SteCola's apparent attraction with the MCs, with this sentence:

The whole conversation steered into a weird, and frankly creepy, off-topic conversation. I think heatsignature here has written better argument to why this is so wrong so I'll stop here.

 

I think management is just playing in a way that Sakurazaka as a group could last for years and years like other 48/46 groups.
You can't always have quality and over the top exhausting choreos..., and more important, giving to Sakurazaka different type of songs could make the group experiment different colours and not being relegated just with a style. Of course there's gonna be miss songs and hit songs but everyone can find his favourite ones according to his own taste.
I am happy Sakurazaka is also having brighter songs and I hope they're gonna mantain these ones too. Not everyone want only that cool keya-vibe. There's infinite possibilities. Every member is different and so as their songs.

About the sales argument. I don't remember if BAN had a sales decrease but I'm pretty sure Nagaredama will do better considering the girls are becoming stronger and stronger amd giving better an better results with HS. Songs quality have a really minimal influence on group's sales.
Sakurazaka is gonna have a bright future, trust me.

 

In any case, all of the Sakamichi MCs seem to be responsible adults and I doubt they would accept their feelings.

 

I assume fashion designers and stylists are contracted. Things can take months to prepare.

In case with this emblem for summer uniform was teased in March and done in late July.
https://twitter.com/tanakadaisuke18/status/1373583711766155264?s=19

This is why I reacted on group colour due to emblem. Previous two were pure white with grey colour in the lower corner and grey background which could represent colourless and this group was intentional to dye in any colour like they told the members in Sep last year about rebrand announcement. But we know S&F is known for doing 180 with last minute changes and continue to treat this group as a test object. Anything can happen during their 1st year like with Backs live announcement.

As for Kimika's uniform she had only started in Feb so it would be tough for her to make it in time for the Ban release and the single was already planned to evolve from Nobofa style. Her emblem had black background which was Keyaki's emblem background. After 2nd single I'm conflicted by S&F's plans because I don't know what is going to happen with the group's direction and mngmt's vision. It was a lot easier with Keyakizaka after 2nd single and announcement of new overture because there was a clear direction to expect from third single.

And thanks for you corrected me on Aokado being a composer duo like Bugbear. It's a jungle when it comes to composers in the idol industry.

 

I don't wanna imagine what happened while I was asleep to wake up our mods like this lol It has been a while since last time

One can only hope. In the course of the years there have been very few men involved with idols I followed who I would call "responsible adults" sadly.

Regading this single and in general Sakura singles I wish they'd show the MV before making the song air on radio.
Other than the quality of it, which is always lower than should be, there's a mere psychological factor: linking a song to images make people to like it more.
This is one of these little thing I'd like to see improved for Sakura. mv teaser, the whole mv and only then performances or radio.

When are we gonna get this single MV btw?

 

I personally do not intend to take up such a task this time around as it is so sudden and I myself do not mind waiting, but it would be good to go back and see how many days passed between the announcement of the single, first release of the song, and then the MV for each single. There may be a pattern.

A fanbase of a video game I play does this with new content updates, and they tend to be able to predict with relative accuracy.

 

Interesting advice @SunlitZelkova
I may do it as soon as I have free time if no one didn't already made a full chart about this lol

 

@Dill well, here it is, I actually became interested in it on second thought and you have been spared multiple pages of rants about the center!

Information for the 9th Single not included due to the mess surrounding its release
Announcement (Creation of Thread on Stage48)
K46 1st Single: 2-5-2016
K46 2nd Single: 6-6-2016
K46 3rd Single: 9-29-2016
K46 4th Single: 2-13-2017
K46 5th Single: 9-15-2017
K46 6th Single: 1-29-2018
K46 7th Single: 7-4-2018
K46 8th Single: 1-13-2019
K46 9th Single: N/A
S46 1st Single: 10-13-2020
S46 2nd Single: 3-1-2021
S46 3rd Single: 8-6-2021

Senbatsu Announcement
K46 1st Single: 2-28-2016
K46 2nd Single: 6-26-2016
K46 3rd Single: 10-16-2016
K464th Single: 2-26-2017
K46 5th Single: 9-24-2017
K46 6th Single: 2-4-2018
K46 7th Single: 7-22-2018
K46 8th Single: 1-26-2019
K46 9th Single: N/A
S46 1st Single: 10-13-2020
S46 2nd Single: 3-1-2021
S46 3rd Single: 8-8-2021

Full Music Video Release
K46 1st Single: 3-15-2016
K46 2nd Single: 7-11-2016
K46 3rd Single: 11-16-2016
K46 4th Single: 3-22-2017
K46 5th Single: 10-2-2017
K46 6th Single: 2-13-2018
K46 7th Single: 7-26-2018
K46 8th Single: 1-31-2019
K46 9th Single: N/A
S46 1st Single: 11-10-2020
S46 2nd Single: 3-16-2021
S46 3rd Single: ???

Let's look at Sakurazaka first. 28 days passed between senbatsu announcement (SA) and the release of the full MV for the 1st Single, and just 15 days passed between the SA and the MV for BAN. It is kind of hard to tell because Nobody's Fault may have been different as the debut single of the group, and while we could just look at BAN's dates, let's take a look at Keyaki's data too.

The dates look like this-

Time between SA and MV for Keyakizaka Singles, excluding Silent Majority as debut singles may be subject to the circumstance of that debut
2nd Single: 15
3rd Single: 31
4th Single: 24
5th Single: 6
6th Single: 9
7th Single: 4
8th Single: 5
9th Single: N/A

Rather than looking at averages and what not, I'm just going to share the pattern I see with my eyes-

Possible schedule for time that will pass between SA and MV for Keyaki-Sakura Singles
Debut Single - Subject to circumstance
2nd Single- 15 days This was identical for SekAi and BAN
3rd Single- 31
4th Single- 24
*All Singles from 5th onwards*- 5-10 (?)

As both 2nd Single SA-MV time passed was identical, I predict the full MV for Nagaredama will be released on September 8th, 2021. Of course, I would be delighted to be proven wrong

EDIT- Darn, it did not load the method I attempted to use to make the table correctly.

EDIT 2- Fixed tables

 

@SunlitZelkova you did an amazing work, thank you!
I fear I was involved in a good amount of those center discussions so I apologize for the mess you had to go through

Mv should be out soon then... I'm so curious to see it!

 

Haven't been here for a while but it's definitely busy here, like always lol. Idk how to feel abt it but i wanna believe that there's this interest in the group from all kinds of fans. So much interest to the extent that they're waiting for anything from them so they can have some criticism, negative or positive, or both, about it all. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. As a fan, buddies to be correct, I would love these people to actually see the group for who they are and what they give, than go by their past, which most of us do. We compare everything they do with keyaki, a grp with lots of antis cos of their concept, hence why there are criticism everywhere. Saku haters are still going around saying their variety is boring, which if they tune into for a day, they will find out it isn't so. It never was. They listened to antis and chose to go with it. Now they're on songs too cos it isn't keyaki-like, according to them. Their goal now isn't tk be like keyaki but to exceed keyaki, so we're seeing them having different kinda songs, throughout the last singles.
Idk what to feel abt the sudden interest steCola has on Saku but I'm happy he/she's opening up to them. The group has gone through a lot and they've evolved a lot, for the better. See them and you would love them. Sorry for the long post. Got carried away lol.

 

Apologies for the off-topic post.
Recent developments in this forum made me realize that it would be for the best of all if I took a hiatus from my forum activities. Of course I will follow all Sakurazaka46 activities as well as those of all Sakamichi groups, however I will maintain "radio silence" for a period of time.

I would like to thank many fellow forum dwellers for the discussions and the camaraderie we shared for the last couple of years. I feel I have to make a special reference to some guys/gals that are particularly special to me (10+10+1 people):

So in alphabetical order:
Thank you @Dill @Iamyoung @iroiroiro @Jsprite @keyak @Maeda_Toshiie @rdamon42 @SaitoWinterStar @turbogig @ukifune my special top 10 which I feel most close to regarding our thoughts and ideas about our group. Please feel free to drop a PM from time to time until I come back.

From time to time I had nice "resonance" with @Atsu-nee @Conjyak @heatsignature @Jerome Phoenix Wilson @JoltFiend @minaeshi @miwa @Seditious46 @too much idea @tpt13. Thx for that!

And my final 1 goes to @SteCola, the person I criticized so harshly in the past, whom I would like to stay here, chill down and tone down the attitude against various groups and members and manage to mingle well with the rest of the forum dwellers. For a moment I experienced being in "his shoes" for reasons that are better left unsaid.

See you all... Love n' peace,
Phil

 

Hikaru centre song “Dead End” will be lifted on the Kochi Hoshi broadcast this Sunday. So excited that title is amazing. Hopefully/probably it’ll be a cool song

https://twitter.com/kochihoshi/status/1432902067702702081?s=21
https://twitter.com/sakuzakacentral/status/1432902262377025536?s=21
https://twitter.com/sakurazaka46/status/1432919150897229824?s=21

 

I was quite busy this week and could catch up only now.
I'm sorry to see you leave but for wathever reason you took this decision I can only wish you the best.
See you soon Phil, take care

 

if the video does not show watch the video here

I guess, no one has posted it yet, so here is a radio rip of Dead End (Hikaru center).

Tbh, I didn't expect this kind of tempo for her song (even though BAN was really fast, too), but I really like it! The melody is catchy and it has a nice contrast to Nagaredama, which feels a bit more laid back. I'm looking forward to the choreo! It doesn't get an MV, right? If so, I'm not too sad about it, since I don't trust them to make a good MV for it .. but I can imagine that they'll come up with a nice choreo. x)

 

it is getting an mv. same director as the one for BAN and Nazekoi. I really like it especially the bridge. Really love the bridge. Though the similar vibes to the title was unexpected but the overall sound is more coherent and solid. Hikaru’s singing is really nice.

risa’s song should be quite different since we have two cool songs so far.