Boku ga Mitakatta Aozora/僕が見たかった青空

Bokuao gets to use "official Nogizaka's rival" label because Keyholder takes a big part in both.

In my opinion, 2 big problems of Producer Akimoto are
1. He has been so prolific that no one cares about "Akimoto produced" anymore. It has become too trite, too common.
2. He is a very old man whose taste and vision have not updated for ages. His selection of music and costume has not significantly changed since 20 years ago.

Aside from performance skill, K-pop also win on other various aspects such as,
- Budget: How much might Bokuao's debut MV possibly cost? 4m yen? An MV of aespa possibly costs like 400m won or 44m yen. IVE may go cheaper with 300m won or 33m yen. After watching K-pop MV's of such scales of production, won't Bokuao's MV underwhelming in comparison? You don't wanna invest even 10m yen onto MV, how much profit do you want to make? 200m?
- Quantity of online contents. If you follow Le Sserafim, the group upload new vlog clip like every weeks and, there is a series of 10 minutes-long 4-5 episodes of members hanging out/playing game every month. There is recorded performance of the group at least once a month. And, yes, members are active on Weverse too. This sounds packed as a fan.

 

Day 2:
3rd spot with 2,130 sales
https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/2023-08-30/

This is one of an Avex's bad habit.
It happened several time with SKE48's releases.

 

Are there any handshake or meet up events tickets in the CD? Checking details at the website, so far, I can only see lottery events, so only chances to attend something if you buy the CD.

 

There are 10 online talk handshake events! A few girls even sold out some slots (Toa had one or two sold out). They held a few of the talk events before the single release to help build fans.... But so far sales numbers are still low

 

i don't get why kpop always comes up in these discussions. jpop and kpop girl groups are two very different markets with very different target audiences and expectations. even if the groups you mentioned didn't exist, their fans wouldn't stan bokuao instead, lol. if they like high fashion, girl crush-y aesthetics and music styles, then a group made up of average-looking girls who always wear custom-made unfashionable group uniforms and make generic idol music will have zero appeal to them. the influx of big name kpop girl groups should be worrying for smaller kpop companies trying to get a foothold in the market, not the jpop industry.

eh, american publications like vogue and nylon are actually not that popular in japan. japanese girls and women are more likely to be reading domestic magazines like vivi, cancam, non-no, ray etc. kpop companies seem to have a harder time getting their artists on these magazines, meanwhile all sakamichi groups have members that work as regular models for them. kouhaku 2022 was the result of executives going "how do you do fellow kids?" and trying to pander to young people after viewership tanked to an all-time low in 2021. the result of that was the second-worst viewership rate in history. the general public is starting to move on, and ive/le sserafim's appearances weren't meant for them in the first place, they were meant to pull in already existing fans.

again, the oversaturation of the kpop market is a problem for the kpop market itself and not anyone else. kpop groups only compete with each other. i'd go as far as to say that the current landscape of kpop in japan is pretty damn bleak; most companies have fully shifted their focus to america at this point and nobody is really making an effort to stand out and build a loyal fanbase anymore, instead they are fully relying on the hallyu brand to gain some momentary fame before people get bored and move on to the new trendy thing. this already happened with twice, it'll probably happen again eventually with the ex-iz*one groups, newjeans etc. bokuao's situation imo is not really comparable because they do not have these circumstances; they are working on their home turf, market themselves and operate much like any other akiP group. people know what to expect from them, and so far they've been playing it safe without really bringing anything new to the table. this is probably the biggest reason people aren't interested in them (other than general disillusionment with akiP and his antics).

 

Wait.. so online talk/handshake events? No in-person handwaving of any kind?

Still not feeling convinced to buy. Might buy a copy for the sake of supporting Nogi's rival.

 

Day 3:
4th spot
https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/2023-08-31/

 

Day 4:
5th place
https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/2023-09-01/

 

A couple more videos from 'The Television':

Kudo Yua:

if the video does not show watch the video here

Sugiura Eren:

if the video does not show watch the video here

 

Still a caveman saying J-pop and K-pop are totally different markets. Have you heard of Unlame? Do you think why it came into existence?

You know most international fashion magazines have Japanese version neither. And, yes, some K-pop stars have been on the cover those so as domestic Japanese magazines.

K-pop in Japan is bleak? A poor lost soul have no clue why K-pop shift its focus on USA so as why J-pop stars stars start to reach out there.

K-pop groups compete with each other in Japan too. LMFAO.

 

As promised I made the subtitle file.
https://mega.nz/folder/wz1wRLLS#U1h2c8-84ENMIp-kgJzufA both a subtitle file and the vid with the subs in it.

 

I said it a few months ago in other forums, it won't work again, there are several problems here:

The name: Akip was desperate to launch the group, the first mistake is not putting a number, 44 in this case, if something reminded to the fans the rivalry between 48 and 46 was that number at the end of the name, he didn't give them a number, and gave them a long unattractive name, For their entire lifespan this group will have to sell the "rival" slogan as there is nothing in the name that reminds people of it.

The variety: The 3 groups 46 at the time their formation where announced and they start their activities, the group receives a variety almost immediately after its formation and months later the single was released, in this case akip did it the other way around, now the single was not popular and when the variety arrives in October no one will remember the group.

In 2012 when Nogi arrived, it only had AKB and NMB as big groups, and there were sparks of morning musume left, today in 2023, they have to pass over many groups, AKB, SKE, the 3 groups = from Sashi, Niziu, Bish and the 3 big groups of sakamichi, today are not the same conditions as 12 years ago.

The concept: Not giving the group a concept, it just seems like a mix of hinata + stu = NogiAKB 3.0, there's nothing new, the same theme of songs that is already covered in sakamichi.

Fans don't want AVEX: I remember going to Japanese forums and reading that fans said they didn't want anything coming from AVEX.

Edit: (more in depth with the theme of kpop): Kpop is not the problem, kpop is popular in almost the entire planet, but in japan speaking of idols specifically, kpop has a hard time competing against the big groups, let's see the abysmal difference, LE SSERAFIM barely sold around 160k with unforgiven against the 710k of nogi's ohitorisama single, The only group that can compete and still has a hard time is twice, we are talking about sales only within Japan, it is clear that what these groups sell in Korea or the rest of the world is much more than what Nogi sells in Japan , but this is not a topic for here, kpop is not the problem about this new group from akip.

The problem is that akip launches a product thinking that Japanese fans are going to consume it just because, imagining that we are in 2012 and Japanese fans are not stupid, apart from the current important groups, there are hundreds of small and medium groups crowding the Japanese idol market.

I hope they do fairly well so that they can fulfill their idol dream but akip or avex has already made many mistakes with this group and I think the same thing that happened with "the coinlockers" in 2018, another failed akip group, will happen to them.

 

@ric_cr
Mind reorganising your text ?

Day 5:
7th rank
https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/2023-09-02/

 

Apart from the small wall of text from @ric_cr what was said in there carried mostly the sad truth about Bokuao. Overall, the arguments were reasonable and well-founded. At least it helped me go many steps further into what's not exactly right with the first single.

As I said in my very first post in this thread, the name of the group did not exactly resonated well to me (a name other than x-michi but ending with 4x would be much more succesful imho)... But apart from that, all that I was seeing and hear put me at rest that the group will fare well at, and after its debut.

Now sales figures seem not to be as expected from fans that actually did like the group (one of which is me) and apart from all the arguments about K-pop which I don't quite understand (as K-pop leave me completely indifferent), what @ric_cr said made sense to me. What I don't quite understand (and hope a knowledgeable fellow forum dweller would care to explain to me) is why AVEX is not so liked in Japan(?) among fanbase(?)

Now the issue is how this current state of sales will affect the group. I hope management finds a way to react and make the right decisions. It is such a pity to see 23 young dreams get dissilusioned... These girls have worked so much and so hard to get this ship going... As I've seen they decided to send the girls out in the streets to "connect" with people (despite being so "copy-paste", it seems to work) and I am eager to see their variety show and how this will manage to help them.

From my standpoint I can do nothing more than wishing them the very best. Their success at the end of this uphill would give me great joy.

 

I can't speak to any larger issues with AVEX as a company, but my understanding is that there seems to be a general pessimism that AVEX understands and/or actions the ways in which promoting an idol is different to promoting an artist.

Past AVEX idols have consistently been considered underpromoted. Idol fans are ravenous for content and access (lives, hs events, showrooms, variety shows etc.). The AKB48 tagline says it all, "idols you can meet every day". Promoting idols is therefore something of a numbers game and AVEX doesn't seem to be very good at that game

 

The group appeared on yesterday's edition of the weekly NHK TV show 'Venue 101' - they're the first act in the show with the song performance at 7 minutes in (credit to uploader):

 

I kinda expected that the group wouldn't be selling a lot, but I don't think this means that this is the end for them tbh.

There are many differences between this group and Nogi at their debut. Nogi debuted as "AKB's rival" at the time when AKB was at their peak... and AKB's peak was really HUGE, so yeah that was a big deal, and Nogi actually got involved in AKB things quite a lot at their debut. They did a remake of Aitakatta, had Acchan in their MV (!), had dramas/songs with Mayuyu and Kojiharu (!), and many other things at their debut and through the years. They received lots of direct help from AKB who were extremely popular at that time. Now for Bokuao, first of all, them being the rivals of Nogi is a repetition of an idea that was already made (Nogi as rivals of AKB) so it would work less well, but also, they're not debuting at Nogi's peak. if their debut was sometime after Influencer or something... and when Nogi still had Maiyan and Nanase... that would be more like it. and also, they are receiving no direct help from Nogi. They're just using the Nogi name in their tweets etc. (calling themselves Nogi's rivals) but it ends there. Nogi is not promoting them at all, I mean Nogi didn't even work with Keyaki and Hinata so... I guess this is logical, I mean, if you debut as someone's rival, the rival is not supposed to help you lol. But well, for AKB... since their debut and for a long long long long time, AKB helped every other group. All the 48 sister groups, Nogi, even Keyaki (they probably promoted Keyaki more than Nogi did, which is funny). in their singles, in their shows etc... making members from those groups center songs (yes the Sakamichi girls centered b-sides in AKB singles that were quality songs/MVs). You can even just see, on this forum, this is initially an AKB forum, and it turned to a forum about all 48, all 46 and more lol. Anyway yes, Bokuao is getting no direct help from Nogi at all. Again it's logical, I guess, but it explains the sales too...

I also agree about the name. Yes, it would have been so predictable and maybe boring if they used "44" but these things work lol. People aren't going to remember this super long name. Even if they remember just Bokuao, it doesn't really remind you of 48 or 46 at all, so you don't link them to each other, when the goal was for them to get popular thanks to those groups. So yes, maybe they should have been predictable and use a number... it works to make people at least check the group and eventually like the members and become fans.

Also this is a personal opinion, but I wasn't a big fan of the song or the center choice. it reminds me too much of things that have been already done, it kinda has the feeling of STU and Hinata mixed or something. it didn't really leave an impact... But I actually thought that they maybe did this on purpose and they plan to start low so that they can only do better later. I think they should do like what Nogi did and... after a few singles, use better songs and have the "visual" members as the centers. That could work better...

Anyway I still think they're going to do better in next singles. and it's possible that someday, they'll be doing better than Nogi? (if they get popular and Nogi declines) but that's in a long time, if it ever happens lol. But they probably won't reach Nogi's peak. then again, I don't think Nogi reached AKB's peak at all either... so it makes sense.

 

Done, xD sorry, yesterday I was rushed and I had to write everything very fast.