[GENERAL] The AKB48 Thread

The senbatsu for the 63rd single

 

https://www.billboard-japan.com/charts/detail?a=sales_year&year=2023

AKB48 ranks at the Billboard Japan 2023 Top Selling Singles chart:

1. Life Goes on / We are Young (King&Prince)
2. Tapestry / W (Snow Man)
3. Koko ni wa Naimono (Nogizaka46)
4. Dangerholic (Snow Man)
5. Ohitorisama Tengoku (Nogizaka46)
6. Hito wa yume o Nido Miru (Nogizaka46)
7. Doushitemo Kimi wa Suki da (AKB48)
8. Idol Nanka Janakattara (AKB48)
9. One Choice (Hinatazaka46)
10. Shouninyokkyuu (Sakurazaka46)
11. Suki ni Nacchatta (SKE48)

 

Happy 18th Anniversary, AKB48!

source : https://twitter.com/___run222/status/1733119342492176889

Lots of painful restructuring this year, but hopefully it's all for a better, more successful next year!

 

Tonight's award winners:
https://okmusic.jp/news/541603

 

I just took a look at some of AKB's "active" stages (i.e. the ones who never had an official senshuuraku) and used the extremely useful 48Directory to see when they last performed these stages. Do you think AKB will ever hold a senshuuraku for any of these?

7th Special Stage "Thumbnail"
> Shonichi: 2017.05.12
> last performance to date: 2019.06.20
this stage seems the least likely to get a senshuuraku because it was made into a Team 4 stage, which did get a proper send-off

10th Special Stage "Yabai yo! Tsuite koren no ka?!"
> Shonichi: 2018.04.17
> last performance to date: 2019.10.17

12th Special Stage "Boku no Natsu ga Hajimaru"
> Shonichi: 2019.06.30
> last performance to date: 2021.08.11
IxR used to perform this stage a few times so I feel like this stage sort of died with them... the unit was also fairly popular (cough cough Yuiyui cough cough), so it's weird to me that they just went poof when some members graduated. Could've done with a proper good bye stage, they even did it for SenSuality

13th Special Stage "Nankai Datte Koi wo Suru"
> Shonichi: 2021.09.06
> last performance to date: 2023.09.22 (very recent tbf!)

 

The schedule for the second night (12/13 18:30 JST) of '2023 FNS Kayousai' on Fuji TV has been released:
https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20231213-2839896/

AKB48 will perform 'Idol Nanka Janakattara' in the 21:00 - 22:00 part of the show but before then at 19:00 - 20:00 Yukirin will perform with Morning Musume '23 their song 'Ren'ai Revolution 21'.

 

Just want to add,
Team8's 4th stage, Yuasa Junji Produce Team8 [Sono Shizuku wa, Mirai e to Tsunagaru Niji ni Naru.] (or just Shizuku stage) is an interesting one.
Our wiki48 says that it had senshuuraku on 2023.4.21 but I remember it was never called a "senshuuraku", just the last Team8 Shizuku stage before hiatus.
(reference : https://ameblo.jp/akihabara48/entry-12798639499.html)
In fact they kept performing it after that, just erasing Team8 name Mostly for Eito members' grad shows.

The actual 'last' performance was Takaoka Kaoru's grad show on 2023.8.29, with members on MC stating that it would be the last Shizuku show, and Yuasa tweeting about it.
(reference: https://twitter.com/yuasajunji/status/1696467398348730868)

Still it is not 'senshuuraku' in traditional AKB announcement, so perhaps they can revive it for either Hiichan, Odaeri, Rinrin and Oonishi's grad show?
Perhaps if some of them are busy and can't have time to learn Boku no Taiyou, for example.

 

I think it would be fun to see this stage with 4 pairs, each doing a different unit song. there was a slightly different setlist for eitos and regular members.
my favorite pair: gyoten and serika

 

How would this one get a senshuuraku exactly It didn't have a proper shonichi either, in the sense that neither the official blog nor DMM gave the first performance any special distinction, unlike with other stages (compare the shonich of Boku no Natsu with the first performance of Nankai Datte).

Numbering this as one of the "special" stages also seems pretty silly.

 

How would you categorise it?

 

Given how the stages are currently categorised, I'm tempted to stick it at the end of the Social Distance Stages table, as it's basically just a more structured take on the same idea. Of course NKDS did have audiences, while the 2020 stages didn't.

If I were to go back in time, I'd put Thumbnail in its own category too. Album Stages or Sousenkyo Stages. All the other "Special Stages" are Celebrity Produced (Kojiharu and Yukirin more than qualify) and made up of old songs, while Thumbnail was the stage version of an album released that same year. Not sure it's worth changing that now.

We will need a new category for the upcoming new stage.

 

I think this can just be "AKB48 Stages," like we do with STU48 and NGT48

 

Can AKB48 have sousenkyo in 2024?

 

Without a broadcaster / sponsors / general public/ etc .... interest, it's not goig to come back anytime soon

 

AKB48 is set to join the new years eve CDTV Live SP to welcome the 2024

https://twitter.com/AKB48_staff/status/1736748175443296580

 

lmao, they choose 3 sashihara's group over AKB's sister group

 

=LOVE's Kono Sora ga Trigger from this year was part of the top songs chosen during karaoke. Also, =LOVE and ≠ME have released 3 singles each this year (≠ME's 3rd is about to go on sale tomorrow) and each single so far has performed better than the previous one - ≠ME even outsold =LOVE this year, so it makes sense that ≠ME would be invited if =LOVE is going.

I can imagine, when it comes to Niajoy, that Sasshi might have pulled some strings because they're currently teasing their debut album and it'll be good for them to appear and promoted their new single on CDTV - either that, or CDTV sees the potential interest the group already has.

When it comes to JPN48 groups besides AKB that I think would deserve to go based on Charts performance, I think it's either STU48 or SKE48, but not necessarily any of the others. Suki ni Nacchatta has been SKE48's best single in years, they're close to 2016-2017 sales numbers right now (the single even outsold Miyazawa Sae's last single Chicken LINE), and STU48 has been doing really well since Hana wa Dare no Mono? got released. Unfortunately for HKT and NMB, their 2023 singles were gradsingles of really important members (Yabuki Nako and Shibuya Nagisa respectively), but HKT didn't even get a weekly #1 position for their single, and both singles didn't even rank in the top 50 of the weekly charts by week 4 (as for daily charts, they both already dropped out of the top 30 in the 2nd week). For both of these groups, it's really the fandom holding the sales together but GP doesn't seem to be interested in them at all... NGT also released a grad single for an important member and it barely just made the 100k mark, way less than their 2022 single with 124k total sales.

 

More TMI:
SKE release only one single this year, of course there are one stage album either but there are no TV show promotion for the single. They haven’t performed Suki ni Nacchatta on any show, even the PLAYLIST which HKT and NGT still invited.