Minegishi Minami (Miichan) / 1st Generation

I don't think she wants that, I'm not knocking on Indonesia, but there's of course a huge cultural difference between Japan and Indonesia.
I even doubt she would want to try and break into Korea. She's been working on her network in the entertainment industry in Japan and she must have loads of contacts there, I see no real reason to abandon all that for a new start in a foreign country.
(and if she wanted that ... she should migrate to Amsterdam )


and no matter how you look at it, the fact is she's in the autumn of her 'pure idol' career, she should enjoy the time there is left (be it one, two, three or more years) and prepare for the time after.

 

For people criticising other people's grasp of English there is just one reply .... so, how well is your Dutch, French, German or Bahasa Indonesia?
with regards to the latter, my father speaks it because he was sent there after the war as a conscript and made an effort to learn it.
The few words I know are 'Trima Kassi' (thank you), 'Orang Belanda' (white or dutch man) atjeng (dog) and some words regarding food, as indonesian food is pretty well known here, babi (pig) ajam (chicken) pisang (banana)

and I think boesoek means bad (and yeah, nowadays you would spell it busuk it think)

 

Now there's a bold statement if I ever heard one :/

If Miichan had ranked in the low twenties ... I might hold out my hopes on that .... but rebounding from 32 ... I don't really see it happening unless she gets much more AKB related exposure in the months running up to the sousenkyo
because thats' what was lacking this year of course ... not being able to participate in the request hour, not being included in the last single ... which had probably to do with her acting job in the drei grosschen oper, that will not have helped.
And yeah she started a SHOWROOM offensive, but that was pretty late in the game, I don;t think that generated many extra votes (it did show that there were key AKB/ex-AKB members supporting her)

I must add ... I think in the long run her part in the drei grosschen oper is more important than the sousenkyo, that could bring other long term opportunities.

 

In the end it boils down to this ... 48 Group is a business .. and they will go where the money is.
And however much they may, or may not, personally like Miichan, it might be optimistic to assume a Miichan graduation concert will fill Tokyo Dome.
otoh ... you might discard you first gens when there are still plenty left ... but it would be kinda honour less to not acknowledge the last man standing.

more even, as Indonesian or Japanese is so completely different in structure from Germanic languages and unlike the Philippines English is not widely spoken I think (but then again the Philippines were an American colony)
(the Dutch never really bothered to try to get everyone to speak Dutch (or convert them to Christianity) )

 

Another pic from the pond draining tv show from Miion's twitter
https://twitter.com/mionnn_48/status/1008951567288922112

 

Apart from that, I'm pretty sure JKT has developed it's own dynamic and has it own senpai.
It's ok for an AKB senior member like Sae to go to for instance SNH and say "This is how we do things in AKB ... and that's how we are going to do it here!", but I think it's a completely different thing to send senpai like Miichan or Shiichan to groups that are already established, with their own 1st gens.
There's a distinct possibility of tension and conflict, other countries don't have the senpai-kouhai thing ingrained in their culture, if Miichan would be part of say AMS48 ... well, Dutch people are taught we are all equal and everyone has as valid an opinion as anyone else and we have to get to an agreement.
That would drive Japanese people up te wall
(to be honest, that can be pretty annoying/tyring if someone without solid experience/knowlegde thinks his idea is just as valid as mine, me having much more experience and knowledge .... and yeah, that happens ... and no, people will not think it ok if I tell that someone to just shut up, I have to convince the other of the validity of my idea (sometimes several times over) )

But the bottom line for members like Shiichan or Miichan is, what is in it for me, what will this do for my career?

 

some nice pics in that article ...

And from what I gathered (yup, google translate) Miichan isn't too heartbroken about her ranking, because as she states yeah the number of people supporting her may have decreased but she's getting little by little into tv (in think it's more than just little, but ok)
She also mentioned the prelims where she was the only one that didn't rank (of the people appearing in the announcement broadcast) and she thought maybe people would be sorry for her "poor thing" and it made her think about her ambitions in the election (to rank in senbatsu?)
All in all, I think Miichan, like many of us, wasn't all that surprised by the drop, although we all ('we' being Miichan's fans) wanted it to turn out otherwise.