Summary: This week’s AKBingo took up from where it left off in the previous episode: the moe competition of the 48 groups continued. The girls were asked to write down what they consider an ideal girlfriend and what would be the best thing to write on a heart-shaped piece of chocolate. In addition, the girls were challenged with coming up with the best moe line in a situation given by Yoshinori, one of the judges. The climax of the episode had the girls do monomoe (a combination of monoboke and moe, iow girls use items to catch the hearts of the judges).
Analysis: Sayanee and Miichan continued their good stride from last week while the teamplay of Karen and Takamina succeeded very well. However, the biggest star of the episode was Tano who keeps taking more and more steps towards being a proper variety star. Her way of snapping back at the judges was spot-on and she was even used as the punchline of the entire episode.
In these weekly posts, I gather all the variety appearances of AKB members and briefly summarize what happened. AKBingo was on a break this week due to the Sochi Olympics.
Ariyoshi AKB Kyowakoku (17.2)
Members: Uchida Mayumi, Owada Nana, Kojima Haruna, Kobayashi Kana, Komiyama Haruka, Sato Sumire, Chikano Rina, Tsuchiyasu Mizuki, Mukaichi Mion
Summary: This week’s Kyowakoku was a radio episode with non-senbatsu members and the 15th generation members. The episode started awkwardly as the non-senbatsu failed to do what they were supposed to do: introduce their talk subjects by singing them to the tune of Tetsu and Tomo’s Nande darou gag. The girls shared episodes which clearly mark them as non-senbatsu: other members not eating Ucchi’s souvenir, Chikarina’s handshake time being shorter than kenkyuuseis’ and Suuchan being compared to a potato on the Internet. In another corner, the four brought up things in which they are better than Kojiharu: Chikarina had sung a popular CM song before joining AKB, Suuchan has Teruyuki Kagawa’s phone number (+ Chikarina is friends with Nounen Rena and Takei Emi) and Kana is more often mistaken for a hostess. The climax of the episode was an insect eating competition between the non-senbatsu members and the 15th generation members.
Analysis: This week’s episode will be remembered for a long time: it created a legend for AKB fans. It was much easier for Ariyoshi to tease the girls as they were more willing to do anything to leave a lasting impact and Kojiharu was also more eager to tease them. The seriousness and hunger of the members were also obvious so it was entertaining to watch the episode. However, the end of the episode is what will be remembered: 15th generation members eating even more insects than comedians can take usually and then Ucchi pulling off a move I don’t remember ever even seeing. The eating competition has guaranteed future appearances for Ucchi and the kenkyuusei since they have a character on the show now.
Summary: AKBingo tried out a new format this week that reminded me of Andare’s moe corners: the program had the members come up with various moe lines in given situations. The twist is that the “moeness” of each performance was rated by famous AKB analysts: manga author Kobayashi Yoshinori, critic Uno Tsunehiro and publisher/editor Aoki Hiroiki (familiar from Sashihara no ran).
Analysis: It is weird to see AKBingo doing something so close to what Andare does. The only twist they added to the mix was having the episode revolve around the judges, which can be quite polarizing. At least Sayanee and Takamina guaranteed that even this episode had laughs and Tano’s courage to come forward even in a big group is amazing – and she even understands what to do. There will be no AKBingo episode next week due to Sochi Olympics, but it looks like the next episode will continue with this same format.
In these weekly posts, I gather all the variety appearances of AKB members and briefly summarize what happened. After last week’s post I realized that posting only summaries doesn’t feel right so I added review parts to a few programs.
Summary: This week’s Andare upload featured Team 4 members who had not been on the show in a long while, but no Mariko (again) as it happened to be a Thursday episode. The four started by talking about what they have been doing since they appeared last time on the show and pondered whether they have made any development. At first they were made to clear various challenges: imitating Funassyi for 30 seconds, acting out Andare’s pervert writer’s moe line, pulling off 3 weird facial expression in a row, dancing UZA as energetically as they can, doing monoboke 3 times in a row and imitating Miichan for 30 seconds. In the following corner the members were challenged to talk alone for a minute and they ended up talking about each other. Ayanan revealed Yuiri to be perverted, Yuiri exposed Ayanan being a bit of a kusogaki while Yuurin claimed Mogi to be excessively negative and Mogi talked about how easily Yuurin feels down despite what she claims in her catchphrase. In the final corner the girls acted out moe situation and lines related to high school students (as all of them go to high school right now).
Review: In my opinion this Andare episode showed these girls at their very best. In fact, I don’t even remember seeing them do so well in variety shows until now. It is about time their revered talking skills from the theater performances can be seen in variety. All four of them were energetically involved in keeping the show running and clearly had fun as well. They were surprisingly amazing in what I would call “flow talk”: the sort of talk in which the members funnily force someone to do a task no one wants to do. They had various patterns for that and all of them worked very smoothly – even rivalling what Andare veterans usually do on the show. Their style clearly focused on the point that all the members kept talking without a stop. Even when one member was under the spotlight the others would loudly cheer on and comment from the background. That style has its pros and cons: it worked very well in this episode, but it can also be quite overbearing when done in the wrong situation. The most obvious winner this week was Mogi who introduced a new character that will surely turn into a fan favorite. Heck, she even went as far as to (briefly) imitate Hard Gay even without her new character.
This week’s AKBingo presented the first half of the annual Lucky Girl Ranking in which the members’ fortune for the next year is decided. Since last year’s result was a fiasco with the top and bottom actually being the other way around, the regular fortune-teller Shimada is accompanied by another one, Getters’ Iida, a former comedian. His ‘fortune-telling’ was more about the members’ personality instead of reading from hands. Most of the talk this time is centered around Iida’s tidbits about the members’ personality quirks and future possibilities which includes a prediction of Takamina gaining more acting work (and that led to her showing that she can cry fast). There were lots of HKT members featured in this week’s episode, but it looks like AKB is in the spotlight in the second part. I will be posting an analysis of this episode after next week’s episode so I can approach the Lucky Girl Ranking in its entirety.
This week’s episode was a bit of a disappointment: there was too much laziness with the hints as Abe even didn’t give one (is that the first time this has happened?). The hyped mic performance was one of the weakest so far, with both sides being only so-so and the whole thing had to be wrapped up by Sata and not the members themselves. Ranran still sticks with her awkward style: overreacting while coming across as lighthearted and fishy doesn’t quite work. It becomes even more obvious when she is in other kind of situations, like Kyowakoku’s radio episodes. Continue reading →
In these weekly summaries, I go through the latest episodes of AKB48′s various shows. Shimada appeared in the popular talk show Downtown DX this week and apparently succeeded to some degree (her name reached the top of search rankings after the show).
With the Nana prank project coming to its end after 3 weeks, I’m not too satisfied with its outcome. If it turns out to be a bigger success later on, then I’m fine with it. However, I think the staff screwed up it to some degree. The peak came with the centaur climax last week and the other prank this week wasn’t a satisfying follow-up to it. Most likely they did it that way to get Nana’s own reaction, but she didn’t show much of a reaction, as it could be expected. Oya and Sahhoo did well as prank helpers and Tano’s fineplay was a life-saver this week as well. Her and the director’s reactions were needed to save the last prank. I can understand Kojimako being picky with the food since I am myself quite like that, but for a Japanese TV talent that is unacceptable as pretty much everyone have to be able to do gourmet reports. Continue reading →
In these weekly summaries, I go through the latest episodes of AKB48′s various shows. Sasshi appeared on Konya ha kurabetemimashita, a popular talk show in which Miichan appeared earlier this year.
AKBingo (29.10)
Members: Karen Iwata, Saho Iwatate, Nana Okada, Ryoka Oshima, Yuko Oshima, Asuka Kuramochi, Mako Kojima, Ayana Shinozaki, Yurina Takashima, Juri Takahashi, Mariya Nagao, Miki Nishino, Ami Maeda, Minami Minegishi, Suzuran Yamauchi, Yui Yokoyama
This week’s AKBingo continued last week’s theme of competition between senbatsu members and young newcomers. This time it was a what’s-in-the-box reaction game and the staff had a group of old people who don’t know anything about AKB judge whose reaction is best. The ones who took part in the game were Kojimako, Yuko, Ayanan, Miki and Miichan. Ranran and Mariyagi appeared only in the short talk part before the episode.
This week’s AKBingo proved to be so fruitful that I decided to give it its own article. Like last week we got a new episode of the popular Omoide Quiz Kotaete Toozen corner (Toozen for short), but this time the members participating in it were Karen as the dealer and Tomu, Tano, Juri, Miyupon and Ryoka as the players.
Variety 48 
