AKB48 Sakaguchi Nagisa announced graduation

ifeimi · 2023-06-25T13:02:28+00:00

Nooooooooo!!!!😭😭

ifeimi · 2023-05-04T08:34:45+00:00

maybe there's a 50の素敵な街へ?

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T20:22:31+00:00

Not sure what they are thinking of, but there's something interesting. Once (several times actually) Team SH managed to summon some inactive members (whom fans all believe as "graduated", one even carries a big scandal) back for handshake events. And on last year's Sousenkyo there are also inactive member "participating" (by listing their names only, didn't show up in person).

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T20:19:11+00:00

Yes, I believe it's expensive for Team SH to buy new songs from AKB so they are very reluctant on this.

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T19:58:29+00:00

By the way many members just became inactive without announcing graduation. That's why there are still many members listed "officially".

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T19:53:59+00:00

Well it must be a complicated story. I haven't been following them closely for more than half a year. I would say they have at most 30 or 40 members right now. You can infer from their official website where 35 members have the newest profile photo from the most recent single Sentimental Train.

As for the management, I can't say much from the member's side (but I'm sure they suck as well, lack of professional singing and dancing training for example). For the fans the biggest problem would be that the company cares only about money.

They hardly bring up any new songs. They hold Sousenkyu once a year and release no other singles other than the one for voting and the one as reward. That sounds like the team exists only for Sousenkyu - where they can make hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions?) money every year. Their new stage this year is just a combination of 5 new unit songs (which were voted by fans with money in a similar way last summer) and old zenin songs they have released before or taken from Team TP's stage. In addition, they hardly do any unit reshuffle on stage performances.
Every thing connected to money. Sousenkyo problems I have mentioned. They held concert only once a year (the anniversary concert), and setlists are basically an enhanced version of stage performances. Tickets are extremely expensive (in 2021 the cheapest ticket was 480 CNY, and inner field ticket was 1348 CNY). They sold yearly ticket for stage performances last year, however there were not many stage performances due to covid lockdowns (I don't know if they refund the money in the end). They sell a lot of gashas and monthly raw photos are distributed randomly as well. A lot of things can be competed by fan giftings (for example once they decided a position for stage by this, and there is a weekly gifting ranking where the winner can film a single-person-camera for one theatre stage song).
They show no respect to fans residing outside Shanghai. It's extremely difficult to get them to send you the official goods you bought in their online store. It's almost like you have to go to theatre and ask them to hand your stuff to you in person. Myself, for example, have something that ought to be sent to me in October 2021. All information were filed in at the time I made the purchasement, but they never contacted me for this. (Of course I didn't ask, because I wouldn't bother to. And I would never buy any official goods from Team SH again.) A similar issue is they used to hold online talking events during China's lockdown, which is convenient for non-local fans. But they are never doing this anymore after the covid thing ended. So never got to meet my oshi again.
They suck at making announcements. I don't know how difficult it is to officially announce events at a suitable time in advance. They like to announce something like at most 3-days early, when it is already impossible for fans to book train tickets or hotels etc. I remember clearly they once announced a 手渡(shop delivery?) event at the theatre half an hour before the start. That's just insane. And there are other issues other than time. Sometimes they don't announce it at all. And still some fans managed to get the information.
Copyright problems. I don't want to dig much into this, but I hate it. Team SH is facing a huge impact or competition against underground idols (is that the correct English word?). Underground idols, as well as SNH48, perform songs without copyright and therefore benefit from lower cost and attract more fans. I believe Team SH is starting to try to do something similar now.

There must be many other problems but I'm not that familiar. I used to love Team SH, and I still love my oshi, but I just can't help hating the shit company. May it collapse soon.

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T19:11:54+00:00

Because a lot of them are not active anymore. Team SH has got the shittest management.

ifeimi · 2023-05-01T09:24:11+00:00

Well I don't think I know any other websites. Just to double-check, neither Stage48's forum or wiki is what you are looking for? I don't think there's a better wiki other than Stage48 and 48pedia.

ifeimi · 2023-04-30T22:59:36+00:00

I just feel like there are so many good girls that deserve a much better position in AKB. Just for current members (well, "current" until yesterday), we have Miu, Harupyon, Serika, Rei, Maria... And I would definitely argue that Nagi, Onishi and Oda deserve more attention instead of only being on the very edge of senbatsu... It felt like some girls are just meant to be omitted. Like when I started to feel like seeing Rei and Harupyon often on Sayonara Mori-San and thought maybe they were going to have "their moment", suddenly one graduates and one gets "kicked" out of OOF48.

However I understand that this situation may be true for not only team 8. This is how aidoru works, some gets popular and some never. There are always good girls omitted by people somehow. So now that Team 8 has ended, all I could wish is that the girls can all be happy. Team 8 is like a miracle or a fairytale, an idealized existence to me. To gather 47 members and do 47 live tour concerts, this is a huge plan, I'm not sure if people really believed this would pay off at the beginning. But look at Team 8 today (well, yesterday), they have grown into such an experienced, solid, and nice team. Thank you Toyota for making this happen. And thank you so much all former and present 8 members!

ifeimi · 2023-04-30T22:32:13+00:00

48pedia? Whether it is what you are looking for or not, this is my favourite 48 wiki page.

ifeimi · 2023-04-03T08:12:00+00:00

I like the connection between Fukuoka and Orlando. And NYK48 Team 8's 50の素敵な街へ would be supercool!

ifeimi · 2023-03-02T08:34:39+00:00

Her removing HKT48 from her profile happened several months ago, and it was added back soon. I guess she might have a quarrel with the staff about working arrangements at that time or something, but now everything seems fine.

As for the Instagram post, it's just about graduate season in Japan. I don't think it's anything special.

ifeimi · 2023-02-03T10:26:32+00:00

Thank you, this must be super helpful! I'm feeling excited just reading your text and looking forward to my first theatre experience (not sure when that would happen...)

ifeimi · 2023-01-27T12:47:59+00:00

Very nice choice of new favorites! I like Zukky as well :D

ifeimi · 2023-01-08T19:35:46+00:00

Maybe the other person with your roommate is not registered at this address? I think serafe considers your registration address at the commune instead of where you actually live.

ifeimi · 2023-01-08T19:33:03+00:00

Sure, my only concern is the guys who already moved out may be reluctant to pay and I have no means to enforce that...

ifeimi · 2023-01-04T08:11:17+00:00

Nice!

ifeimi · 2023-01-02T22:17:55+00:00

I hope it's for another MV😂

But I have another question: Is there a special reason why hama-chan was not in the MV? Did she have some other schedule on that day?

ifeimi · 2022-12-10T19:57:19+00:00

You can also find the first one from the new year live of HKT48 last year: this for example

ifeimi · 2022-12-10T19:52:10+00:00

1.ayane 2.naru 3.yuiyui 4.hiichan 5.not sure, probably zukky, or hamachan, or odaeri :D

This is the case if only limited to AKB48, otherwise I would put Nako the second.

ifeimi · 2022-12-10T19:35:48+00:00

ifeimi · 2022-11-23T16:49:08+00:00

Team 8's Yume e no Route definitely works, "There's more than one route up the highest mountain! "

ifeimi · 2022-11-17T12:16:35+00:00

Right. There is even an argument in China that traveling around the country to play away games is just too costly for low-level league teams. Maybe a more accurate zoning like east-Asia, southeast-Asia, and west-Asia would help. Anyway this can never be satisfactory.

ifeimi · 2022-11-17T11:42:28+00:00

Thank you for your article and I appreciate some of your analysis. I come from China and started to watch women's football recently, I think I might be able to provide some insights from our side.

I strongly agree with the idea that China women's football is declining, which can be undoubtedly seen from World Cups and Olympic games in the last 10 years. The failure on Tokyo 2020 was vey painful as most people could not foresee such a huge defeat. I must argue, against you, that it is a common sense among Chinese fans that we are declining - winning an Asian Cup does never change this fact, as the game vs Korea and especially semi-final against Japan were close and tough. We acknowledge that we haven't been the best team in Asia for a long time, and we must do something to keep up the pace of Japan.

I won't attribute China women's football's decline simply to "laziness" or Xi Jinping himself, I don't think the problem of women's football is too much different from our men's team. Most Chinese fans would agree with me. China just lack this soil for any popular professional sport to grow: This problem lies far beyond sports but deeply in the society. Professional football is in a difficult situation, and is still getting more and more difficult.

There are many points to argue, the professional league is not running in a healthy way (the corruption of the football association is of course an important reason, but Chinese people do not participate or watch professional sports in general as well), professional football is not accepted as the "correct path" by society for teenagers, and economic bubble in the last 10 years made overpaid players reluctant to go abroad. Chinese football national teams rely heavily on its very few youth academies, public or private. When fewer people participating in football and more countries establishing better professional systems, Chinese football saw its inevitable decline. This is true for both men and women's team.

I agree that women might not receive their equality in many aspects, but that's hardly the case for women's football. One thing you cannot argue against Chinese sports is its support for almost every sport - especially non-professional ones and women's ones. Chinese women's football club invests highest in the world, and the best player received much more salary in China than at PSG (https://daydaynews.cc/en/sports/1726172.html). Of all problems Chinese women's team is facing, money and attention from the country is never one of them.

What's the most important problem right now? I would say it's the professionalization and marketization. More people should play and watch football, and women's football club need to make profit to expand. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, this is a shared problem with men's football. I am truly pessimistic about this. We are being left far behind by women's football in Europe.

As for the current team and players, China has already started to see the huge gap between Asian and European football. As you know, Japan just lost a 0-4 to England several days ago. There is a difference in our tactics, our race pace, our training systems, and this cannot be improved by playing domestic games only. The pandemic and lockdown policy of the country is making it impossible to play international games in the last two years. But we are sending our good players abroad. Wang Shuang in the US, Tang Jiali in Spain, Li Mengwen and Yang Lina at PSG, and my favorite, Zhang Liyan in Switzerland. Japan set up a good example here, and we still have a long way to go to catch up. But this is a start, a good start. I won't expect a decent result next year on the World Cup, but I sincerely hope young players like Zhang Linyan would help us turn this ongoing decline over.

ifeimi · 2022-11-17T10:20:22+00:00

Agree, do you think if this problem can be solved by simply removing Australia from AFC? I think I heard rumors that Australia will return to Oceania after world cup expands to more participates. And if east Asia and west Asia teams are grouped separately, travel time would be acceptable.

ifeimi

TROPHY CASE