Single AKB48 61st single [Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da] - (2023/04/26)

Have not I said para para dance originated in Japan?

For your information, the choreograph team came from HYBE Japan. Definitely no K-pop influence.
https://twitter.com/Sakuranko/status/1637816440018567169

Honda's voice is pitchy. Unless the center aint getting a solo line, some pitchy lines are must.

 

I disagree. To me it's the worst of the "new" AKB. (My ranking so far is: MotoKare - NemoHamo - HisaLip - Doushitemo) When they announced Honda as center, I expected it going more the KPop direction, and honestly I'm disappointed it's not. As @bonjourmarlene said above, they're trying to re-create the golden era, but for me it just doesn't click with the new era of AKB, it feels wrong.

And here I disagree again. It's not a bad song! (at least for me) My problem is 1. what I wrote above & 2. I'm hit by too many ,,Do I like or dislike part X?" what puts it automatically on the neutral/negative on my scale.

I like the melody and the overall energy, can't say anything about the lyrics since I haven't read a translation. I think my favorite part (in the lyrical version) is when it transitions into the chorus + the chorus itself.

 

once i got it in my head that it should be one of their summer/beach songs it somehow made the song work more for me than it did on the first few listens. just putting that idea here for anyone who wants to play with re-visualizing or recontextualizing the song.

 

Reading the criticisms international fans have for this song is hilarious. So far I've seen

• It's too kpop
• It's not enough kpop
• It's like nogizaka
• it's too much like classic AKB
• it's not like classic AKB enough

I like the song and the choreo a lot and I truly think people are doing it a disservice by constantly trying to compare it to... something. Unnecessarily. Whether that something is Nogizaka, kpop or old AKB. Just enjoy the song for what it is.

Honestly I think that most fans don't actually know what they want from AKB, they just want the feeling they used to have about AKB songs back. I 100% think that if River was released today people would call it "kpop". So many fans are at the same nostalgic for the old AKB, want AKB to move on to new heights and concept, while ALSO having the biggest hate boner for kpop and treating anything that has ever even touched kpop as tainted and incapable of ever making anything that isn't kpop.

Stop just... GIVING everything to kpop. Hand choreo? kpop.... like WHAT???? since when does kpop own things like HAND CHOREO. Like come ON

 

Go to the 'UZA' thread in this forum and read the comments. People here will always say something sounds/looks like K-pop if they don't like it. It's common and poor argument and you can find it as early as 2012.

It's okay to not enjoy something, but it's really unnecessary to brag about everything.

 

stop comparing!
AKB48 is above all JPOP!! please respect.

The single is very good, the dancing is superb and the more I listen to the song I like it more and more!
I hope the Japanese will like it too and the sales will increase !!

 

This is interesting. I don't know how I would rate the songs at this point, because honestly I like all of them... But my taste aside, I do think this is probably the best one since Sustainable. I would agree they're trying to recreate the golden era, but I don't think they're necessarily trying to be 100% like what they used to. They're trying to keep the AKB feel while also being distinct from the golden age. And I think this song is more SakamichiAKB than classical AKB. But honestly, what even is classical AKB? They always did different things, and just like @Maruif said, we keep comparing these new songs to something just because they have a different feel from what we were used to years ago. But that is normal and more than okay, because the group is, technically, different. The members are not the same, so we can't expect their releases to sound like they did back when we had Acchan as center and the rest of the kami7.

A bit unrelated, but @bonjourmarlene mentioned being worried about the lack of a hook in this song, which does also worry me, but at the same time I'm very glad it doesn't have one. It almost feels like a more well-rounded song in a way, because of it? Instead of forcing some sort of repeated verse into it to get it to stick in your head, the song just flows.

 

PREACH!!!

couldn't agree more... sadly

 

fffffff I remember this. The moment some fans hear the faintest electronic beep beep coming out of a 48 song, a big K falls from the sky and smashes their keyboards.

I like the song in all its hyper-sugary glory. And I love that they are focusing once more on giving us a good choreography. Hopefully it pays off like it paid off with Morning Musume.

 

Did you just... completely ignoring my reply and continue pushing your agenda?
Once again - Sakura Inoue has already worked with 48G way before she knows hybe or whatever it is.
The other choreographer, Nosuke was same as her.
Japan has world famous dancers/choreographers for ages, they work with whoever interested them. They aren't idols who have little to no artistic freedom.
I'm not sure exactly how the finances are going, but at one point AKB could afford paying a lot of money for someone like Rino Nakasone.

 

Personally, I rarely use the "it sounds too much like kpop" card. I think I only feel that way about one song across all of J-Pop (excluding groups like NiziU), and I don't think this song feels k-pop-y at all. I think k-pop and j-pop sound quite different, but choreography has never really been super distinctive between the two countries. And, as we can see, this has been a discussion that's been going on for over a decade... and honestly, of course there is gonna be overlay.

K-pop idols were born out of j-pop and now j-pop is returning the favour and copying some of the things that work in k-pop and appeal also to the Japanese public. I've met quite a lot of Japanese students, mainly female, who came for an exchange to the UK. Barely anyone is into AKB these days, they know the OG Kami 7 and that's it, but almost all of them have a couple of k-pop groups they follow. Like it or not, Japanese people enjoy k-pop. J-pop producers will have to incorporate that somewhat to be successful in the future. This will not ruin j-pop in the way some people on her like to complain. There is still a lot of distinction and personally for me, the most important part is that idols get paid. That's it. That's the only thing I don't want them to cover from k-pop, I don't care about the rest. If it works and makes AKB more popular again, I'm all for it.

Nogizaka also doesn't have a distinctive sound to me... Have any of you ever listened to "Jikochuu de Ikou!" and "#SukiNanda" one after the other?

As for the last two bullet points, what I said previously sort of seems to fall into these categories, but neither of those are reasons as to why this song doesn't fully do it for me. I think it draws well on past elements and incorporates modernism, my only issue with it is that it isn't catchy enough. I feel about it similar to how I feel about Hisashiburi no Lip Gloss - good song, will definitely enjoy it when it comes on, but how often will I actually think about it in six months+ time and actively search for it and listen to it?

For me, it's Ne mo Ha mo Rumor in 1st place by a long shot, then Hisalip > Doushitemo > Moto Kare desu. I enjoy all of these songs, but NmHmR is still a song that I want to listen to even now, a year and a half later (it was also higher in my Spotify Wrapped 2022 than MKd and Hisalip).

 

as an enjoyer of diverse cultures, i find it quite hilarious people are fighting over who owns what esp. in music. no one owns certain style of choreography or melody. japan and korea (korea and japan if you will, looks like people here will fight over that too) have similar culture and historically always influenced each other in some ways(just neglect the conflict). relatively speaking jpop hasn't changed much tbh but kpop is imo derived from music all over the world and fad in style of music changes year by year and by group as well. hence calling a song 'kpop influenced' doesn't make sense in the first place and should not be a criticism unless you are a 'purist' and want japanese idol music to be never-changing - same as in the 90's.

in regards to this single if it reminded me of anything, it did remind me of sakamichi and those hand movements you don't see much of that in kpop at all. i remember during izone era, the korean members spoke on a vlive they had a hard time memorizing hand movements for 'gokigen sayonara'. they had not done this sort of fast and intricate hand choreo for a song - obviously a very japanese song and done by a japanese choreographer. sometimes i wonder if you guys even see kpop much at all you know esp. considering a lot of you seem to bring up kpop in every argument on this website.

 

the kpoppiest thing about this is the girl in the center. whether or not that's a good thing is another question. maybe it would have been better to have a double center of yuiyui and zukky like dutchie said on discord. i don't think anyone would be bringing kpop up were that the case. i certainly don't think the song itself is kpoppy by any stretch of the imagination. i think them teasing OO48 probably had something to do with confusing expectations as well.
the problem we have is that they're using girls as center who aren't exactly representative of anything else about the songs or the group.

i would wager that the reason people know "kami 7" is because that was the scope of their akb knowledge before they discovered and moved on to something they liked more. i don't think it should be akb's focus to pander to people who have already stopped being interested in them.

 

I agree with this. It's occurred to me that while I don't necessarily think rotating centers is a bad idea, I'm also not sure it's doing much good to the group. It seems like right now they're favoring Hiichan as the center, which I assume is good to appeal to the overseas crowd, but I'm not sure translates into sales exactly.
But mostly, I wonder if rotating centers all the time may be making it harder for the group to recreate its image. Having a fixed center brings in a lot of issues, but since this is the "new AKB", I question whether having a girl the others could rally behind and who could represent the group as a whole wouldn't be a good thing. Someone with the right aura to be the face of the group, who people that don't really listen to the group could look to as someone to pay attention to, thus eventually becoming fans. I, and I think a lot of other people, saw that in Moeka. But they still have Yuiyui and Zukky. Yuiyui especially I think could be this for the group. And it doesn't mean she would have to center every A-Side, but maybe most, instead of changing constantly between members with different images.

 

It is a rotating center. Universal just picked the best girl to represent a girl with fiery fighting spirit.

 

Love that the song is more melodic and feels fuller maybe because of all the instruments? Love the choreo a lot esp. that intro.
Song isn't really specific about high school too. Just about meeting someone wearing a white shirt at a railroad crossing, shouting your feelings about them just to get your voice drowned out by the passing train? Could be high school yes but not really that specific. They all look like they go to a college with uniform anyway kekw.

NemoHamo >= Doushitemo > Hisalip > Motokare for me

 

Regarding the hand choreo:
Naruchan spoke and gave some of her tips to remember the choreo:
She hasn't asked about the meaning though!
"Ninnin" (Ninja pose?)
"Plus"
"Onigiri"
flip it "Down"
"Heart"
"Kokorozashi(?)" thumb pointing to the heart with 2 fingers extended
"Forty..."
"Eight!"

Video:

if the video does not show watch the video here

I'll admit I didn't even pay attention to the hand choreo during the first performance.
I wonder what they mean?
One hand choreo I remember and enjoyed very well is the Heavy Rotation one, those basically spelled out the lyrics.

 

I was talking about the general public, not necessarily idol enthusiasts. These people I know personally aren't big into idols in general, neither k-pop (except for one or two), I was just talking about the awareness that young Japanese women have of AKB. They knew the big names during golden era, and also recognised Miichan on a shirt I had, but don't know any other names except Yukirin (golden era member) and Hiichan (IZ*ONE) now.

But it begs the question, who exactly is AKB trying to target at the moment? Are they still targeting the ojisans you see (and hear) at old AKB concerts? You hear more and more how the number of female fans is increasing, especially on the younger end (20 somethings). Cause those two demographics like very different things. As a woman in her 20s, I'm not super into gravure, despite being queer. I enjoy when members talk about fashion, makeup or dieting advice. I don't think someone like Hiichan, on the other hand, is super popular with older men thanks to her brazen personality and her refusal to never in a million years do bikini/underwear gravure. I doubt they also care much for fashion/makeup/diet advice. AKB did do bikini singles during their golden era, when they had so many older male fans. I don't want to reduce this category of people into "they only care for sexy naked girls", but it obviously appeals more to them than it does to young women.

I don't necessarily think those people I've met have discovered AKB and moved on, it's more that they know of AKB because literally everyone in Japan does, and they've decided the way they function isn't for them. One comparison I've heard is that K-Pop is more aesthetic to look at and women in K-Pop are freer to be sexy and mature; some have literally called AKB "childish".

I obviously disagree, we're all here because we do enjoy AKB for what it is and don't feel the need to change it, and also there is a lot you could argue about when it comes to sexiness and freedom in K-Pop (but that's a whoooole different topic). That being said, I don't know who AKB is trying to appeal to at the moment. They're not being very explicit and while that might help gaining fans from across a very broad spectrum, I think having a clear target audience and defining their new image based on that might help them to establish a bigger fanbase again.

 

Oooh I like the song more after watching the performance

 

@primermicarrucha do you have anything to say about this post?