Produce48 Senbatsu - わかりやすくてごめん (short PV)

[horichansenpai.livejournal.com]

Title translates to "Sorry for being easy to understand"
Song will be on the A version of the AKB48 single "NO WAY MAN"

Group comprises AKB48 members who ranked 22 to 52 in Produce48:
Sae Murase (center), Moe Goto (center), Erii Chiba, Mako Kojima, Chiyori Nakanishi, Tomu Muto, Minami Sato, Saho Iwatate, Noe Yamada, Nanami Asai, Bibian Murakawa, Misaki Aramaki, Aoi Motomura

source: AKB48

Produce48-related = okay to post, mods?

Comments

[miyozari.livejournal.com]

The song is cute (but not ott). Damn, if Miyu didn't graduate already, she would've been part of this. Anyway, I'm glad that Sae is center. Erii looks like a girl playing dress-up.

Well, if this post was approved. I might finally submit that 48G post, I've been planning for a while.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

Still here to help!

[adenar.livejournal.com]

Miyu was in the main single, No Way Man :)

[riceballism.livejournal.com]

holy shit Sae is breathtaking. She really seems to have learned a lot from her Produce 48 time cuz she is keeping the spotlight no matter where the camera goes and her aura is just WOW.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

AKB quality fell off a cliff somewhere between 2013-2015. Think Soshi 10th anni levels of mismanagement.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

From the time Acchan left in 2013 until Yuko left fans were really super worried about the group's future. AKS did't do enough to promote the undergirls/newer gen girls (some just never caught on with the public like Hilary :((( ) And post 9th-gen the talent level of girls auditioning really took a nose dive....early gens saw AKB as a path to a "real" career, but when the group exploded you had hordes of young girls who just wanted to be an akb idol- once they were in the group they didn't necessarily feel pressured to improve because they had achieved their goal.

[pseudo-shigure.livejournal.com]

same. i've been curious about this. also with popular member like sakura. i wonder if bein an izone member would be beneficial for her financially.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

I think it benefits her in that it's a new stream of income. Her popularity in 48g has probably peaked and she's super polarizing in the fandom. AKB isn't printing money like they did a few years ago and now there are a ton of ex-akb girls in the larger industry, so it's not enough to depend on the 48g name long term.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna try to summarize. I can go into more detail but it's a lot.

Pay- theatre girls get paid in gum. I believe they get ~$50/show but these girls are also paying for transport to/from the theatre and rehearsals. Most girls in AKB never see real money. Now, if you get to be senbatsu/front girl level and have some public recognition you can make money from CF's and side gigs. I don't believe they get much in royalties from the actual music sales. Golden-era Kami 7 girls on the other hand became millionaires but between group CFs and solo CFs they were endorsing 20+ products at any given time. There's no trainee debt because "training" is mostly on theatre etiquette, how to do makeup, and really basic "can you imitate these dance moves" classes.

Schedules vary greatly. Acchan got like 5 days off in all of 2011. Front girls/kami level girls are super busy (or they were when I still followed them closely) but theatre girls show up a few times a week for the stages and that's pretty much it.

Backgrounds of the girls also varies greatly. I'd say most are middle class, but some do come from wealthy families. There's waaayyyy too many girls in the franchise for me to know more than that lol.

[pseudo-shigure.livejournal.com]

damn. i was wondering how these already debuted girls feels like (assuming they already have steady work and income), having to compete just to debut. but if they got paid nothing, i guess pd48 was almost as important for them as for the trainees.

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

There's a ton of documentaries, I'm not totally up on current stuff, but their kin sma special (from 2012) is a decent place to start for general history https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t5tns
They have feature-length documentaries that cover all of 2010-2012, and a few after. Not sure where to find them now as my most reliable non-jpopsuki source doesn't exist anymore. but you can check the aidol site-http://myaidol.net/category/releases/akb48/

And like I said, there's a huge range of experience. Front girls have managers and "people", but if you never get pushed (the majority of the girls) AKB is basically a glorified after school job.

[calzonazos.livejournal.com]

It's pretty much what @kenziekinz09 said, but I also haven't followed the group in ages so idk what's up these days, but I want to add that AKB48, and pretty much every j-idol group, is seen as a headstart to an actual career and not something you're supposed to do for a long time, which is why all of them they have these revolving door lineups.

Payment depends on schedules, but once they get in a decent agency they can have monthly salary payments as j-entertainers do. There's no trainee debt, but the training process can be just as exhausting as the kpop one. Trainees work under the japanese system of "watch your seniors and learn from them" so they go on stage as replacements for missing members soon after joining. AKB and its branches were founded on the "idols you can meet" concept, so every group is based on a specific city with an exclusive theater where every "team" performs three times everyday (this is why every branch group has three "teams"). Of course, many other j-idols have their own "theaters" now and function in similar ways to AKB, but they were the pioneers in that sense.

Schedules can be intense but Japan does have a law against minors working after 9pm, so it's not as awful for the underage members but yeah as kenziekinz09 said, famous members are constantly on the run, and even middle tier members invest lots of hours into the group. If they're not doing much they can also choose to leave and "graduate", which can be done quickly as there isn't any kind of slave contract binding them to the group.

As for the backgrounds, I don't know how well off are the current members, but the original members (the OG lineups of Teams A, K, and B) were pretty middle class, one of them used to sleep on a gym floor, another took home the group's lunch leftovers for her family, someone else lost her house in the 2011 tsunami. You'd have to ask a more up to date fan about these tho.

Also, the production values, as cheap as they look, are actually better than regular j-idols! It might look weird to see them doing their own hair and makeup but that's standard practice on the j-industry... we're just too spoiled by kpop lol. I do think they get stylists and make up artists when filming MVs

[pseudo-shigure.livejournal.com]

hmm seems like they're forgetting all the dance training already

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

Lol they basically learn the choreo the night before and have the lyrics on cue cards behind the camera

[pseudo-shigure.livejournal.com]

smh. i was hoping being in pd48 was the company's effort to improve the skill/quality (some) of their girls. but i guess that's just never a priority

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

Nah, their whole shtick is that they're untrained girls doing their best.

[calzonazos.livejournal.com]

In my experience, j-idol fans like the "unpolished" value of the performances more. They don't care too much about singing/dancing but rather if their fave gets screentime or not (not that different from us kpoppies in that sense!)

[kenziekinz09.livejournal.com]

The j-idol world is a totally different skillset. If you watch produce you'll see that what the Japanese girls lacked in skill, they mostly made up for in pure entertainment value. They know how to play to crowds and cameras. That's what's most important in their system.

[minho-lover.livejournal.com]

ah love all the girls who came on pd48!!

[spainawards2008.livejournal.com]

I always thought Muto Tomu was cute. Wish she had done better. I think she's fairly popular in AKB though?
I wonder if someone new is going to climb the ranks now that Sakura's out