some background info about the super-confusing akb that i took 3 months to understand without any help! /accomplished/
akb48 has 82 members & 10 trainees as of 27/12/13. yessss 82 members. they are then split up into 4 teams: Team A, Team K, Team B & lastly the newly-revived Team 4 (Team 4 was created in 2011, disbanded in 2012, and revived again in 2013)! each team has their own captain to lead the team - proposed in 2009 or something i guess.
okayyy so the thing about them is not that much of singles, but stage performances! the girls perform at their own theatre everyday, except on holidays like new year & other public holidays in japan. each team has their own setlist of songs, and this setlist is called a stage! the girls will do the same setlist until a new stage is written for them, and it's super exciting waiting for new stages to be created! recently all the new stages have been delayed, super sad. since akb48 has sister groups, which are ske48, nmb48 & hkt48, fans usually refer to the whole thing ALL48/AKB48G/48G or similar. super exciting and dramatic!!
akb48 also operates like a school. a group of girls will debut at the same time, and they are labelled as xx generation (e.g. 15th generation). the 1st-3rd generation are the original members: they form Team A, Team K & Team B respectively. the 4th generation onwards are accepted as kenkyuuseis (trainees) and they work hard to get promoted to a full member of a team! of course, if they keep accepting members, the number of girls in the group will grow. so once a girl feels like she has done what she has to do in akb, she graduates. some graduate to pursue an acting career/modelling career/voice acting career/singing career, some graduate to focus on studies. many girls have graduated these past 8 years. really dreading the day my oshi mayuyu graduates. /ok going off topic/
okay now that the super summarised background info is done, here's some reasons why i love akb48 so much.
#1: The girls aren't perfect
unlike most idols where they seem to be on a higher level, one that is unreachable by us common people, these girls in akb are just everyday girls and you can relate to them so well! you have super gorgeous girls to average-looking girls, you also have relatively tall girls to midgets (shortest girl in the whole 48G is 138cm). some are skilled in dance, some in singing, some in MCs & some in variety shows. the talents they have are so varied. there hardly is any perfect girls in this group, since their concept is to let the girls grow in the group! the front girls of the group (aka those who perform on TV, those faces you always see) are probably the most polished, since they're from the 1st-3rd generations and have been in this group for 7-8 years. they might look perfect now, but if you travel back in time and view their 1st performance ever, you'll see the difference. ^^
#2: AKB48 is full of drama everyday.
when you feel that akb has gone stale, something surprising always has to happen to create a talking topic. first, in 2009, senbatsu elections was created. and this event was to let fans vote for members they want to see in the upcoming single. (and tickets are sold through the previous single (~$20), so fans can't spam votes all they want like how mediacorp fans spam, unless they're super rich and buy like 200 copies. it's possible though). then in 2010, janken tournament was created. this event is just scissors, paper, stone to decide the top 16 members who will sing the upcoming single. the single where these top16 members appear in tend to have lesser sales since the members may not exactly be the most popular. but oh well . ;^^
and this year, management created yet another event, that will be an annual event if successful: the akb48 draft kaigi. basically girls audition, get chosen, undergo training, and then get presented to the team captains for them to choose which girls they want to have in their team. the selected members will become members of that respective team. didn't watch the live stream so i don't know the exact process, and whether it's successful or not, nobody knows yet because the selected girls will only debut in 2014. but also equally exciting 'cuz i found 2 girls i really support in the draft!!
and if that's not enough, management decided to give the 34th single a title that's 76 characters long: 鈴懸の木の道で「君の微笑みを夢に見る」と言ってしまったら僕たちの関係はどう変わってしまうのか、僕なりに何日か考えた上でのやや気恥ずかしい結論のようなもの. and this made people talking again.
so basically, there's no quiet days with akb!! and with their performance everyday, there's bound to be some news. so basically, news 24/7.
#3: The "Idols You Can Meet" concept
you know how idols are so hard to meet and you've to wait years for them to visit your country? and then you simply sit at some auditorium and enjoy the performance and go home. and continue waiting. if you're an akb fan, you don't have to. of course, japanese fans enjoy the most privileges, because the events that are gonna be listed soon only cater to the japanese. and this is because akb isn't meant to be an international idol group. their japanese market is enough for them to survive, so why would they need us international fans money. which is super sad, because even applications for events have to be under a japanese address & phone number. okay back to topic.
their theatre shows everyday will end off with a high-touch event: you high-five the members that performed that day. don't know much about this because not much news about it, i guess it's 'cuz it happens everyday it becomes something usual.
the most common event is the handshake event, more commonly referred to as HS event/HS. the name tells everything - you shake the hands of the members you won tickets for. and you get few seconds of interaction with the member, the duration depending on the popularity. when i first heard about this i was like super shock 'cuz i knew it was so damn difficult to meet an idol, much less an interaction with them. so yup if you're a fan in japan, you're super lucky. they have HS events so frequent that it seems like it happens everyday. even if you don't win a ticket for one HS event now, you can still try again for the next one.
another event, which is the "ultimate fan service" provided by akb management (as quoted from someone), is the 2shot event (2shot=phototaking). yes you take a freaking picture with members of your choice!!!!! as long as you win the lottery for the ticket. popular members like mayuyu, yuko, yukirin sell out super fast. and guess what. akb's new album comes with a 2shot event!! of course i couldn't resist it so i just applied. with my super bad luck and all, i just applied so that i won't have regrets. i never expected to win. BUT I WON. i won 3 2shot tickets with my oshi mayuyu. and mayuyu is a popular member so winning even 1 tix is hard, but i won 3 tix!! and so i ended up having to tell my dad that we need to go japan in june 2014. i mean, like how many times in your life will you have a chance to take a picture with your favourite member, aka bias in kpop terms or oshi in jpop terms? of course i'm gonna spend that money travelling to japan just for this.
basically these are some of the reasons as to why i love akb48. of course there are more, but i probably can't think of any more because my mind is preoccupied with my watariouka hashiritai's album. so i shall end here.
i love akb48.
i can proudly say i know all the names & faces in akb48 - all 82 members & 10 trainees. and i also know the names of all members in hkt48, their sister group. not the faces though. yet.
current ranking of top 16 members in akb48!
mayuyu . naachan . sahhoo . yukirin . yuko . takamina . renacchi . ricchan . umechan . miyupon . naanya . mikichan . paruru . hinana (draft member) . saya (draft member) . miion
current ranking of top 4 members in hkt48!
meru . sakura . nako . shinamon
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