When I read the statement by Togasaki last night about Nacchan and Yonechan, I thought they were resigning with immediate effect so why do I read from so many people today that both will be back for an AKB48 handshake event on the 5th February for 1 last time before retiring. Apparently this has come straight from Togasaki in a message that’s been posted today.

I understand that some fans would like to say a proper goodbye to them but I think this is a big mistake. There will be many people that will want to vent out their hate and frustrations out on them so I hope I’m wrong but I’ve got a bad feeling that things will turn nasty. I think yesterday’s statement should have been it – you resign, thanks very much for your work and off you go. Surely both girls realise that they’re not going to get an easy ride in this handshake event. Talk about punishing yourself even more!!

Fans are still trying to come to terms with what happened yesterday with Nacchan and Yonechan so I think we should have some good news about AKB48 and there was plenty for them to celebrate at the 26th Japan Gold Disc Awards.

The Japan Gold Awards are gongs given by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for outstanding artists which have contributed to the Japanese music industry and are based on actual sales.

AKB48 won the Artist Of The Year which is no surprise considering how they dominated the Oricon Charts last year. In addition they also won awards for Best 5 Album (Japanese), Best 5 Singles, Best 5 Songs By Download, Best Music Videos and Single Of The Year.

AKB48 were not the only 000 group to win an award. NMB48 were also given a gong in the Best 5 New Artists (Japanese) category.

Congratulations to both AKB48 and NMB48.

A sick and very disturbed individual posted a worrying threatening entry on Wikipedia that he would set fire to the NMB Theater tomorrow night at 7.15pm killing all of the NMB48 members and it’s audience and then turn his attention to SKE48 member Jurina by setting her school alight midday on Monday with her in it. But that’s not the end of it as there’s also a threat to Kanon Kimoto by torching her house as well. Whether this is a strange joke or not, it’s not very nice to see things like this and I hope management take precautions. You just cannot take threats like this lightly – there are weirdos around who would do something insane like this. I only hope police catch this person quickly.

UPDATE: NMB48′s show today passed without incident which I’m very relieved to hear about.

It doesn’t look good for either girl right now but if there’s one of them likely to be fired it’s probably Yonechan. If any action is going to be taken by AKB48 management it’ll happen when Yonechan returns to Japan next week. The member that stands to lose the most is Nacchan as she’s more high profile. She could be axed from WH7 let alone from AKB48 entirely. Rules are rules and if you’re caught out doing something you’re not supposed to then you should be prepared to take the consequences.

UPDATE: Looks like some action might have been taken already with news that Nacchan won’t be attending a WH7 event scheduled for tomorrow. If this is just to prevent any embarassment to her or some kind of suspension I have no idea? Will Yonechan perform tomorrow at Singapore or will she pulled out as well?

UPDATE 2: It’s all over for both of them. Effective immediately as per a message from Togasaki, Nacchan has resigned from WH7 and AKB48 with Yonechan resigning from AKB48 too. I’m disappointed in both of them especially Nacchan, a 1st generation member who was beginning to grow on me. Both have apologised for the trouble they have caused to the other AKB48 members, staff and fans. While some fans will mostly blame Yonechan for this scandal, Nacchan also has to take some of the flak. Her private twitter account has been discovered with some incriminating photos. I hope the 2ch twats are happy now that they’ve caused this.

The PV in the first half of the song focuses on Baby Blossom performing for a selected audience in a hall (sort of like a mini-concert) before showing some clips which forms the storyline of the MV drama and ending with the band high-fiving each other just like they did in the Request Hour concert.

Enjoy the PV!

Just announced, all 109 members of AKB48/SKE48/HKT48/NMB48 under 18 years old that had been lumped together on the ‘Heyakko’ page have now been given their own Google+ profile page just like the rest of their teammates so for all of you that have been waiting for a profile page solely for Mayuyu, Lovetan or Jurina for example you’ve finally got your wish so get going and add the members to your circles!

AKB48 member and fashion designer Mariko Shinoda unveiled her latest fashion collection today at a press conference which were all bridal gowns under the name ‘Love Mary’ in collaboration with bridal creator KURAUDIA. She has created 10 gowns in total over a period of 6 months (some of them in various colors) which will be available for rental in July. Seeing as Mariko is a bit of a fashion icon for a lot of young Japanese women, you can be sure that many will snap up the chance to wear one of her designs if they have a Summer wedding planned. What do you think about them? Would you wear one of her designs for your wedding?

Last week saw Sasshi release her first ever PB ‘Sashiko’ and to everybody’s surprise it has outsold both Yuko and Mayuyu’s PB by quite a substantial margin in it’s first week. Sasshi even mentioned during a handshake event 2 days ago to celebrate the release of the PB that hers would never outsell Yuko in overall sales (Yuko’s PB has sold 190k so far). Sales for the first week was 57,226. Compare that to Yuko’s 41k and Mayuyu’s 45k during their first week of release and she’s done extremely well. She’s even broken the Oricon weekly chart record for a female solo in the PB category. If sales carry on being this good she may well overtake Yuko’s total. 2012 is shaping up to be IMO a fantastic year for Sasshi. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she improves on her placing in this year’s senbatsu election, maybe not enough to crack the Top 5 but I certainly see her getting 6th position.

Well done Sasshi.

Today the formation of NMB48 Team M was announced which will consist of 16 members. The members are a mix of the 1st and 2nd gen kenkyuusei. Unfortunately not all of the kenkyuusei (12 in total) including some of the 1st gen were able to get into the new team. Until Team BII is announced in the future or they’ll be added someday to one of the two teams currently active they’ll just have to stay as kenkyuusei. The captain as was expected to be of the new team is Rena Shimada.

The members of the new team are:

1st Gen Kenkyuusei
Ayame Hikawa
Rena Kawakami
Riona Ota
Natsumi Yamagishi
Momoko Kinoshita

2nd Gen Kenkyuusei
Rena Shimada – CAPTAIN
Eriko Jo
Keira Yogi
Yuuka Kodakari
Yui Takano
Mao Mita
Airi Tanigawa
Fuuko Yagura
Runa Fujita
Sae Murase
Ayaka Murakami

Many congratulations to all those that made it into Team M.

After the fans voted for suspended members Rena Shimada and Shiori Matsuda to return to NMB48 at the end of 2011, there was still one member that was yet to return to the fold namely Akari Yoshida. Last week fans were given a chance to do what they did before with the the other two girls and that was to vote whether to allow her back to work or leave her on the sidelines for a longer period of time.

The votes were as follows:

YES – 6,821
NO – 873

So the result means that she can come back to work. She will resume her duties with the group in mid-February.

Welcome back Akarin!