Meetan & Noro Confirmed For SDN48

It’s all kicking off this coming Saturday (25/7/08) for the new SDN group at the AKB48 Theater. On Friday night it was confirmed that Noro Kayo and Megumi Ohori will be added to the new mature group. They are not leaving AKB48 at all.

Namida Surprise 3rd Week Sales

During last week, an additional 9,573 copies were shifted of Namida Surprise bringing the total up to 134,034. It looks unlikely that they’ll reach 150k but it’s possible they could top the 140k mark.

Updates

Updates will be few and far between during the next two and a half weeks as I’m heading off to Japan tomorrow. Normal service will be resumed on the 1st August.

Miki Fujimoto Now Officially Married!

Congrats go out to Mikitty and her comedian husband Shoji Tomoharu who got hitched on July 3rd in Hawaii but only got their formal marriage registration yesterday.  They held a press conference to tell the happy news. Damn you Miki, you should have waited for me!!!

New AKB48 Unit – Natto Angel!

I didn’t know that July 10th in Japan is designated as Natto Day.  I’ve gotta say that I hate natto beans. They’re absolutely disgusting to eat but 3 AKB48 members love them so much that a new unit called Natto Angel has been formed consisting of Miho Miyazaki, Tomomi Itano and Tomomi Kasai.  Their song “Natto Punch” has been playing in supermarkets to help natto being sold. It’s probably only a short term unit I’d imagine. Nothing’s been announced whether “Natto Punch” will be released as a single.

C-ute Bombshell – Kanna Leaves H!P

This piece of news has come as a complete bombshell for me and I really didn’t expect to hear today that Arihara Kanna who was on sickness leave for bunions treatment has quit C-ute and H!P altogether! But is there more to this story that meets the eye? It was way back in February that Kanna disappeared from the scene for treatment which was only supposed to last for 6 – 8 weeks at the max but she never returned and there hasn’t been any progress report on how the treatment was going and when she was scheduled to return. There’s some rumours going around that Kanna might have been snapped by some paparazzi with a member of the opposite sex and we all know that their contract specifically implies that any H!P idol is not allowed to have any boyfriends. The official line from UFA is that she wanted to return to a normal life but that sounds a bit iffy. So was Kanna pushed out of H!P or not? We might never know the truth but I wish Kanna the very best of luck in the future. I shall certainly miss her.

Shukan AKB – Premiere Episode 090710

Somebody has been kind enough to post the premiere episode of the new AKB TV show which aired earlier on in Japan. I quite enjoyed it and I can see this becoming a good show to watch alongside AKBingo. See the links after the summary below.

The show is set in a mock classroom which is way too pink for my liking. The main MC’s are Acchan and Takamina but I’m not sure if that changes each week. They also have 2 comedians (don’t know who they are) as guests. I thought they were useless.

The first segment is a challenge to Acchan, Kojima and Mariko. They have to stand near a crossing in Omotesando, Harajuku for 15 mins and see if anybody passing will recognise them. They’ll get points if somebody goes up and says hello, ask for an autograph, get a handshake but will lose points if they start trying to get attention to themselves, saying AKB48 out loud or get pestered to do a survey.

Mariko gets no points at all, Acchan gets 4 points and Kojima gets 8 points. I thought Kojima was funny singing a few bars of Namida Surprise to gain attention. Mariko asks for another go due to her failure in the first. She does get some points but loses a lot of them for also blurting AKB48. A wota who spotted Mariko the first time she did the challenge but was too scared to say anything to her finally plucks up the courage to go up to her the second time round. Despite all her efforts, it’s Kojima who wins the challenge.

Next up – Sae gets pranked by a party popper that springs out of a microphone!

The girls have to design a logo for the show as homework.

Some news follows about the national tour that AKB48 is doing in August, the senbatsu result and the position that Namida Surprise achieved in the Oricon charts.

Yuko Oshima also gets pranked when she’s all set to do an interview and sits down on a whoopee cushion!

Finally we end with a preview of next week’s show which is all set in a theme park.

Part 1/3
Part 2/3
Part 3/3

EDIT: As willx24601 kindly pointed out the links to the episode have been removed. I’ll have to look for alternative links. There’s bound to be somebody that have posted all the episodes so far on Youtube. Once I find something I’ll update the links to this episode.

AKBingo – 090708

Links for last night’s edition of AKBingo now up. I’m afraid I haven’t got the time to do a proper summary so I’ll just do a very quick one. This week’s episode is set during a cultural festival at a high school. Several members disguise themselves in order to get into the school without the pupils finding out about them. Yuko Oshima’s cover is nearly blown when Sae crashes her trolley into a building as Yuko is hiding inside a box! 3 male pupils are led into the library and get surprised by Acchan. One of them confesses to being a big fan of hers. There’s a mini concert from AKB48 for the school pupils before a preview of next week’s episode which is another Summer fashion extravaganza.

– Part 1/3
– Part 2/3
– Part 3/3

Namida Surprise 2nd Week Sales/Election Results Are Out!

AKB48 sold an additional 20,281 copies of Namida Surprise during the past week to push the grand total to 124,461. With some more handshake events planned this week it’s possible they could push those figures up to 140 or even 150k.

Finally we have the results of the senbatsu election. I’m surprised by one person that’s missed out on making the cut for the a-side but very happy that Sayaka fans finally pulled through for her. Here’s the final results:

30 – Matsuhara Natsumi
29 – Matsui Rena
28 – Katayama Haruka
27 – Sashihara Rino
26 – Harajima Natsumi
25 – Matsuda Yuka
24 – Ohori Megumi
23 – Takajo Aki
22 – Yonezawa Rumi

21 – Kuramochi Asuka
20 – Ota Aika
19 – Matsui Jurina
18 – Miyazaki Miho
17 – Urano Kazumi
16 – Minegishi Minami
15 – Sato Yukari
14 – Miyazawa Sae
13 – Kitahara Rie
12 – Akimoto Sayaka
11 – Ono Erena
10 – Kasai Tomomi
9 – Kashiwagi Yuki
8 – Sato Amina
7 – Itano Tomomi
6 – Kojima Haruna
5 – Takahashi Minami
4 – Watanabe Mayu
3 – Shinoda Mariko
2 – Oshima Yuko
1 – Maeda Atsuko

I’m shocked that Meetan didn’t make the a-side, I really thought her fans would vote her in but there we go. And as for Jurina from SKE48, although a lot of Western fans dislike her she’s obviously got her fans in Japan as she’s made the cut too.

AKB48 Heading To New York?

There are rumours flying out of the Paris Expo that AKB48 could be making their North American debut in New York in September.  Nothing’s been confirmed yet by the group’s management but the Japanese media are saying that it’s happening and they could be special guests at the New York Anime Festival which takes place between September 25th – 27th.  I’ll try and keep everybody posted on this exciting development.