AKB48 – Seishun to Kizukanai Mama PV

For those still lamenting the end of Majisuka Gakuen 2, here the full PV for the beautiful ED theme song Seishun to Kizukanai Mama. I love this song so much more than Yankee Soul. The PV features clips from the drama plus some behind the scenes footage.

Majisuka Gakuen 2 was an improvement over the 1st series but I absolutely hated the anti climatic ending. The series was building up for an epic finale and I really did enjoy the first half of the final episode but then everybody finally realise that they shouldn’t be fighting and they become friends with each other. It was a huge disappointment for me. I wanted it to end on a cliffhanger of sorts with perhaps just a hint that there could be a 3rd series but that lookly unlikely now. I would like to see more though. I’m sure there’s one more storyline waiting to be told at Maji High.

In the meantime, enjoy the PV and relive the memories of the drama.

Request Hour Best 100 2012 Details

The annual 4 day Request Hour Best 100 concert dates for next year has been announced with some changes to the event. No longer will it be held at Shibuya AX but to it’s new home at Tokyo Dome City. The dates for the 2012 event is 19 – 22nd January. The other big announcement is that you will not be able to vote for any unit songs anymore – only AKB48, SKE48, NMB48 and SDN48 songs will be available for you to choose. To compensate for any disappointment this may give fans,  there’ll be a special ‘Units Festival’ held on the following day after the final Request Hour concert night which is the 23rd January. It’s looking likely that a voting ticket will come with the next single (23rd) which is released on the 26th October as the voting period will be from the 25th October to the 30th November.

Yuko To Star In New Drama

Yuko Oshima has been given a prominent role in the new ‘Getsu9’ drama called “Watashi ga Renai Dekinai Riyuu” (Reasons Why I Can’t Fall In Love) which is due to start airing in October. Touted by some as the Japanese equivalent of Sex And The City, Yuko will star alongside model and actress Karina and Yuriko Yoshitaka.

The plot will revolve around the 3 women who have problems with their love lives. Yuko plays a character called Mako Hanzawa who annoys the men she dates with her clingy and serious personality so she ends up alone most of the time. She starts sharing a house with the other 2 women and together they strive to help one another as they tackle the problems of love.

No definite date has been given yet but it will air on Fuji TV on a Monday night at 9pm. I don’t think this drama will be anything like Sex And The City. If there’s one thing that would put me off from watching this would be seeing Yuko writhing naked with a man. I can’t see it happening though. It would horrify her male fanbase. Also no offence to Acchan or her fans but Yuko acts a whole lot better than her.

AKB48 – Flying Get 6th Day Sales – New Weekly Record

AKB48 broke through their own record today as they surged past Everyday Kachuusha’s 1st week sales which stood at 1,333,969. There was a dip of around 8k in sales which saw 39,418 copies sold. The 1st week total for Flying Get and the new weekly record stands at 1.354 million – 20k copies ahead of Everyday Kachuusha. I expected the gap to be a lot bigger – more like 100k if I’m being honest.

All that needs to be done is congratulate AKB48 once more on an outstanding achievement. Let’s hope the momentum can carry on during the 2nd week and there’ll be strong sales. I’m hoping for 150k+ to boost the grand total to over 1.5 million.

AKB48 are also the first group to have 3 consecutive million selling singles since Pink Lady achieved it 33 years ago. They also tie with Pink Lady for having 9 no.1 consecutive singles.

AKB48 – Flying Get 5th Day Sales

Today saw AKB48 close in on breaking their own weekly record as 47,208 copies of Flying Get was sold. The grand total stands at 1,307,117. Only 26,852 copies need to be sold tomorrow to equal Everyday Kachuusha’s 1st week total but I’m  hoping that it’ll be a lot more than that. It seems that King Records have been caught out by the unprecedented demand for this single as some people are having trouble buying it. Perhaps that’s the reason we’re not seeing a bigger gap in sales between this single and Everyday Kachuusha. We could have seen maybe 1.5 million sold otherwise?

AKB48 – Flying Get 4th Day Sales

The 4th day of sales for Flying Get saw 54,518 copies fly off the shelves to bump the grand total up to 1,259,909. It’s possible but highly unlikely that they will beat their own weekly record tomorrow for Everyday Kachuusha which sold 1,333,969 in the first week. As for comparison with that single at the same stage, Flying Get is 59,885 copies ahead.

AKB48 – Flying Get 3rd Day Sales

There was a significant drop in sales yesterday (90%) but would sales hold up today or would there be another big drop? Well there was nearly a 58% drop with 65,783 copies sold. This brings the grand total up to 1,205,391 so far. Flying Get is still 62,738 copies ahead of Everyday Kachuusha at this stage. Unless there will be an increase over the weekend, I doubt the 1.5 million barrier will be reached by the end of the 1st week.

SKE48’s Yui Matsushita To Graduate

After a prolonged recovery from a serious ankle injury, SKE48 Team S member Yui Matsushita has decided to graduate from the idol group at the end of September. Yui suffered the injury way back early last year and underwent an operation in April 2010. She was supposed to be out for 10 months but obviously things weren’t going quite so well. Even though she was brave enough to come back and start performing again on TV and radio with SKE48, the road to complete recovery is far from over. She will have an operation to remove a bolt from her leg and the rehabilitation from that will take perhaps several years. Yui decided it was best for her to graduate from SKE48 in order to concentrate fully on getting better.

It’s always sad to hear when somebody’s career is stopped by a serious injury. I wish her the very best of luck in the future and hope one day she will eventually be 100% fit again.

AKB48 – Flying Get 2nd Day Sales

After yesterday’s euphoric record breaking day, what kind of sales could we expect from AKB48 today? Naturally as it happens with every 2nd day with new releases there’s a big drop and that’s to be expected. So how did AKB48 do? They managed to shift another 113,656 copies of Flying Get to nudge the grand total up to 1,139,608. Compared to the grand total of Everyday Kachuusha at the same stage, they are 54,900 copies ahead right now.

Reading other people’s blogs last night, I’d kinda forgotten about the promise that one member of the idol group PASSPO gave the press.  She would shave her head if PASSPO lost to AKB48 as they have released a single at the same time too. The challenge itself was a no-brainer as they would never win against AKB48. I’m sure as soon as she saw the sales figures yesterday she had her head in her hands and regretting the day she every agreed to do such a silly thing! Will she go ahead and shave her head or try and think that people have forgotten about it?

AKB48 – Flying Get 1st Day Sales – Million Seller!!

I really didn’t expect AKB48 to sell over a million copies on the first day of  release for Flying Get especially as this single didn’t have a gimmick of sorts attached to it but this is what has happened. The official figure is 1,025,952 copies sold. The records keep on being broken for the unstoppable juggernaut that is AKB48. It’s an incredible achievement by anybody’s standards and tops even the first day sales for Everyday Kachuusha which was 942,475 and that was a senbatsu election single. I did think the only way they’d be able to top 1 million on the first day would be probably next year’s senbatsu election single. I did do a double take at first when I saw today’s figure but then a big grin broke across my face. If strong sales continue for the rest of the week could we see this single eventully overtake Morning Musume’s record for Love Machine which is 1.6 million. I hope so.

Congratulations to all of AKB48. I’m so proud of all of you. You couldn’t really have asked for this to happen to a nicer bunch of girls who work so hard to please us the fans.

EDIT: In the midst of all this jubilation from fans around the world, AKB48’s producer Aki-P has been acting all weird and said on TV Tokyo today that he’s actually looking forward to the day when AKB will lose it’s popularity. What the hell is wrong with this guy? Shouldn’t he be happy that his charges are doing so well and lining his pockets with so much money. I’m starting to lose my patience with him.