[GENERAL] The AKB48 Thread

Yukirin's results in soudenkyo have never been questioned.
And the fanclub trick was brought up only in the last 2 editions (and RH).
Must be mixing up with someone else.

 

Basically.

Not to say the reasons given by @welp are not valid, but it was still a big event were fans made it rain on AKS. They could have gone back to Budokan and stream the results on YouTube if they wanted more profits. It was the NGT scandal that "broke the wheel". AKB couldn't distance itself from NGT without distancing from the other SG as well (because apparently disbandment was out of the question), so all those inter-group events had to end.

 

#JusticeForMaho

 

And probably the 2 catastrophic last editions balanced a good part of the decision.
They lost of mountain of money in the canceled Okinawa edition, and the one in Nagoya showed much less public interest (due to lack of antagonists), and less interest from TV. If I remember right.

 

However, the agency already announced it would halt the election event as the group would head toward the "new era" months before the NGT debacle. I remember fans wildly discussed if the "halt" would be temporary or permanent.

Sorry, the public would never give a shit about "rivalries between the top members" nor any "narrative" as they must have never been aware if those existed in the first place. Ask a random Japanese if he knows Sakura said she wanted to take first place.

How many fans will want to "rain on AKS" knowing the event would be downsized to Budokan and only be limited to online broadcast?

 

And why do you think it was live boradcasted on a main tv station in the 1st place if the public didn't give a damn ?

You should go back in history and see where it 1st took place.
Budokan isn't a football stadium but it is a prestigious venue and still profitable.

 

There's not even a real 48 Group anymore. What's the point?

The only thing I miss is how the Sousenkyo usually ruined AKasses stupid plans and questionable pushes.

 

Do you have a source for that? Because the earliest that I can find of management announcing they're not holding the 2019 election is 13 March 2019 which is a few months into the Maho controversy.
As for heading toward the "new era" stuff, maybe you mean when AKB48 was saying it was gonna change to focusing more on "talent" things (like singing competitions etc) but I didn't actually see any article or anything mentioning the election, certainly none saying the election was halted. So would you mind posting where you read/saw/heard that?

You know NMB is putting up with most of these hypothetical things as we speak yet it isn't stopping them from doing their election right now. Their election will be held in a small venue and isn't going to be broadcasted on TV but that isn't stopping them from doing it. So if these things aren't stopping NMB's election then I doubt they were the reasons that stopped AKB's election.

 

I'm sure the guy who sold his house to vote for Minarun did it only because the event was at Nagoya Dome.

 

NMB's situation now is different from AKB or 48group. They don't have any potential ACE left, obviously no strong center candidates either, the most well-known NMB48 now is Nagisa who will celebrate her 10 years just few months later. In addition, their sales keep dropping down single to single, they need SSK to kick sales and find a new+young potential face. Managements now just care about how to get as much money as they can and don't give a sh*t at members' mental health anymore cause last year their sale was the lowest in 48group. (NGT 218k+ with 2 singles - NMB 158k+ with 1 singles)

 

@Izzy Trinh Sorry using NMB's election wasn't the best way to point out that welp's hypotheticals were nonsense so I'll go through them one by one to clear things up for you.
-The vote system? So just change what voting methods can be used, problem solved (and that's assuming it was even a problem in the first place). No need to cancel an entire event over something so minor and easily changed.
-Broadcast difficulty? So accept a non primetime slot or go with a less expensive channel or just stream it on the internet instead. Once again it's not a reason to cancel an entire event over some minor thing.
-Difficulty getting them all together for the event? That's ridiculous, the election is only 1 day of the year. 48group as a whole continued doing singles together up until early 2020. In fact in 2019 alone the entire 48group gathered together TWENTY times to do handshake events together but welp is claiming they can't even get together for 1 day so he's talking nonsense.
-Toxic fans supporting individual members instead of the whole group? Yet even now AKB48 still has a "center" that hyperfocuses on 1 girl, and wotas still go to individual handshakes, and wotas still pick an 'oshimen', and girls have individual social media and get individual jobs, so doesn't sound like management cares about this. Certainly not enough to cancel an entire event that brings in big money.
-And mental exhaustion? In my opinion this is just being melodramatic. It's only 1 day of the year, heck it's more like only 4 hours and they mostly just sit and clap. Pretty sure doing handshake events or doing a concert tour is more mentally exhausting. And it's not the event per se that causes a girl to get upset or distressed, it's how much the girl herself fixates on the event. Some melodramatic people saw one girl crying or one girl having a mental breakdown and assumed all girls are like that, but the reality is most girls showed up without drama, thanked their fans without drama, then continued being an idol for the rest of the year without drama. Plus consider the context: all singles, not just election singles, have a limited senbatsu and have to reveal who got in and who didn't. Most girls won't get into senbatsu and feel downhearted, this happens in every single not just SSK. Yet nobody is wailing about the 'mental stress' of every senbatsu reveal or suggesting we cancel all singles because the limited senbatsu system is too stressful.

Ok now back to what you wrote.

To start with, AKB48's sales have been also declining so by your own logic AKB would have brought back the election already. Nope, try again.
As for finding a new+young potential face, these kind of elections always favor earlier gen members (girls who have been around for ages), therefore elections are actually terrible for highlighting new girls and young potential faces. Do you think AKB's 10th election ended up giving some new young ace girl a center push? The reality is the winner joined in 2008, had been around forever and had already received years of pushes. Did the 9th election lead to giving center to one of AKB's new 16th gen girls? Nope it went to an AKB 5th gen who had already been in the group for a decade (and 2nd place was an AKB 3rd gen). If AKB's 56th single had been an election Yahagi Moeka would not have been center. If SKE's 28th single had been an election then the 12-year old Hiyashi Mirei would not have been the center. And if NMB's 23rd single had been an election then Aayan and Cocona would not have been centers. If NMB needs to push some young new face then an election is one of the WORST ways to do it. Look at the current intermediate results and you won't see one 7th gen girl in senbatsu, but the 10 year veteran Nagisa is.
And I disagree with your claim they have no potential aces or centers. It's not rocket science to make an ace. Just pick one of the prettiest and genki girls and heavily push her and promote her, like SKE and Sakurazaka are doing right now for example. Aki-P has done this strategy for years. The problem is that in these kind of idol groups the newer gen girls, no matter how hard they try, will usually never reach the popularity of their earlier/older gens.
As for their "mental health", you know NMB participated in every eligible AKB48 election too but did the election cause any NMB girls to have a mental breakdown? They were usually the opposite, it usually never affected them much. You've been watching Nambattle, did you see any of them breaking down and crying? Cos all I see is light-hearted fun and smiles and laughs so, like I said above, this whole "elections cause mental exhaustion" thing just sounds like people being melodramatic. Like I said it's not the event itself, it's how much a girl fixates on it.

The actual different situation that NMB48 is in compared to AKB48 is that NGT doesn't participate in NMB's election.

 

While I agree pretty much with your analyse, I'm not that sure this is the best exemple.
NMB48 girls didn't like too much the the NAMBATTLE competition indeed, and didn't welcome the 2nd one with a lot of joy. (jut check the anouncements, the documentaries, etc ...)
But it doesn't prevent them for giving their all in the event.
I'll just add that some girls are more able to be over the situation the next day. (Yuihan would be all genki again some hours after).

 

I think we must differentiate between why management stop the election and why election should be stop for good (which some fan and members think so).

I don't think management will stop the event which giving the fan the power to choose the lineup due to negative fan culture that associated with it, the rise of individual fan (which is what AKB48 is all about. Well, duh) or due to the voting method which is not reflective. Government of China maybe (if you know what I mean) but for management, as long it bring money, bring hype within fan and the negative fan culture is at controllable level, I don't think they care that much.

 

Onishi Momoka, Okabe Rin, Oguri Yui and Honda Hitomi will participate in Rakuten Girls Award 2022. This event will be held 14 May 2022, at Makuhari Messe 9-11 Hall (Chiba).
Hayashi Mirei SKE48 will participate as a Seventeen model.
https://girls-award.com/

 

Uh. There is a big difference between caring enough to watch the event and caring enough to know the back story.

For example, anyone could have fun watching volleyball match in Tokyo Olympics but rarely anyone cared enough to know details like
This was Carol Gattaz first ever Olympics and she was already 40.
Lee Dayoung was exempt from Korean team after she fought with Kim Yeonkoung, the team captain, and later found guilty of school bullying.

I know enough to know that
Budokan is mainly a sumo venue,
Any singer who can sell out Tokyo Dome will never book Budokan and,
Tokyo Dome is not football stadium either.

Oops. Yeah. The Mahohon disaster started in Jan while the cancelation was announced in March.

The NMB's situation is not comparable at all. Sony Music will not consider disbandment just because Sakurazaka cannot sell out Saitama Arena but, it will consider if Nogizaka cannot sell out Tokyo Dome. Besides, who knows if Yoshimoto has planned to disband NMB48? It has a plan to debut a girl group in collaboration with CJ ENM (under Lapone Entertainment) and, according to Bunshun, NMB48 was rotten inside.

I'm pretty sure he did not sell his house were the event held in Tokyo Dome City Hall and live streamed on 17live.

None of hypothetical factors was my own opinion to begin with. Anyway,

- For vote system, it may be more difficult than it looks. To just omit some pre-existing methods may be perceived as betrayal to old fans. Like, if a corporation revokes its privilege card after the service is at loss, the corporation will lose trust from its privileged customers. Japanese company tends to keep its promise to the fullest. The indefinite hiatus may be the trick to reset the system. Membership subscription may be mass canceled as fans believing the election will not come back soon. Many obsolete vote methods may be able to be canceled/minimized smoothly.

- Less expensive? How many terrestrial national channels are they in Japan? It is only logical to believe any of them is hella expensive. Besides, moving to a new broadcaster can be the end of the tie with the former one. It was already addressed that online streaming would be much underwhelming and big down grade. Prime time? The election was never announced in prime time to begin with.

- I had addressed that the election event was followed by various inter-group activities. This was somehow too complicated for your brain.

- It surely was a huge different between biased treatment and election competition. However much you hated Hirate, you could not stop S&F to promote her just by spreading groundless rumors. You only had 2 choices, just bare with her or stop following Keyakizaka altogether. It was a similar case to members. They were in a desperate situation in which, whatever they did, they would never be pushed. So, it was pointless to harm Hirate and members just coped with helpless mindset. But, a fake dating photo could shove someone out of senbatsu. Of course, the Hirate vs. Keyakizaka case was toxic but, it was fundamentally different. It did not cause animosity among fans nor members.

- They were numerous members appearing nerve wrecked after the event and some unpopular members had voiced out they badly disliked this event.

You were too careless to see that the decision could be made with various "minor things" combined, not for 1 exact major ones.

But, at 1 point, the management has to care. For example, admin of a certain forum let trolls run amok as the traffic was high. But, after several users complained over toxic atmosphere and the traffic had significantly decreased, admin had to appoint multiple mods to regulate the forum and ban some very bad trolls.

 

Maybe, but he still will support his oshimen even the event is being held at Tokyo Dome City Hall and live streamed on 17live. Nagoya Dome just increase his motivation to "rain on AKS" even further. Even the event being held at Tokyo Dome City Hall and live streamed on 17live, he will still "rain on AKS" regardless.

Your example basically explain what I am talking about. The key word here is "controllable". As long as the admin are able to take control of the forum from the toxic behavior, there is no need for the admin to close that forum.

 

You ignore that TV stations main care, is to gather audience / ratings. Public interest brings ratings.

Irrelevant, this is not Korea.

Olympics (why it was build for), concerts, various sports events, whatever that can be organised there.

Completly wrong: 48 groups themsleves held 4 days, 6 concerts at Budokan after their 2nd Tokyo dôme visit.
I'm sure anyone can find more exemples of artist going to smaller venues after big ones.

And ?
From the start, it has allways been the displayed goal of AKB48, while there are bigger venues available. Why didn't they aim for the largest possible one from the get go ?
Such a stupid management who can't think like Korean entertainment fan, right ? As if they had such thinking.
Some places matter more than the capacity.
Exemple .......... wait! we aren't talking about oversea show business.

It works the same with some TV shows.
the girls keep dreaming of another invite at Kouhaku, while this show rating are slowly but surely declining and there are some more popular shows.

 

That was the first official announcement (at the same time of year as they'd usually have announced the next one), but there were ... indications beforehand that it might be ending. Members being unusually evasive when asked about their goals for the next SSK, etc.

While the Maho controversy didn't help, I think the demise of SSK was in the works long before that. At least as far back as the 2018 SSK and its aftermath. Surely the fact that Sakura (Jurina's only credible non-SKE rival) was out, and all the previous actually popular contenders for the #1 spot had graduated didn't help either for building hype and thus securing a good venue and broadcasting slot. And then there was Jurina's very public and documented mental breakdown as a direct result of the pressures of SSK.

This is far from minor considering the most problematic voting method by far is bought as a yearly subscription with voting as an (implied) part of the package. And these subscriptions were floating around in huge quantities. They started phasing it out last year but existing subscriptions won't actually expire until the end of this year.

Spoiler

Of course what they are replacing it with is worse in this regard.

Fanclub thing was around for years and years. There's no reason to "question" anyone's results because of it, these are 100% legitimate votes. Management acknowledged it back in 2011, and said multiple fanclub accounts were fine for voting and the like but not applying for event tickets. It was also mentioned in one of the Non-Fiction documentaries from 2015 (probably Shimada's). Just because it didn't become common knowledge earlier doesn't mean the big campaigns hadn't been using it for years already.