Stage Murayama Yuiri's [Let's Go Kenkyuusei! 16th Gen Stage] (2017/07/28 - 2018/07/07)

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http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2094814/full/



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http://akb48.blog48.fc2.com/blog-entry-24957.html


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According to Yuiri, the three members who didn't perform today didn't because they weren't ready. Until they are, this stage will continue to be performed with 15 members, with the ultimate goal of having all 18 16th gen performing together at full capacity.

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Okada Ayaka and Kitazawa Saki came to watch the dress rehearsal. Ayaka has a few additional comments about the stage in her replies to that tweet.

 

Nicely done Yuiri! I really like the setlist she picked out

 

Today Shoji Nagisa is missing. Suzuki Kurumi performed in Cross.

 

It is an okay stage.
Zukki solo is clearly the highlight and she did well.

Overall tho I feel they are still too raw.
Energy level's are good but the performance level still isn't there, yet.
Hopefully some of them get to under Team Stages soon. That's where they can finally measure/compare themselves with established girls.

 

I think they are trying to push Yuiri to follow Sasshi route. She will probably get some position when she's old enough.

Spoiler

And if she wants to go this route, she probably should enter in election since thats probably the only thing that keeps her from being in senbatsu and have more influence in the group

 

After a week (so the novelty wore off), a rewatch, and watching performances other than the shonichi, my opinion changed quite a bit… I felt I had to come here to say it.

It's not a very good stage. It's not a good stage, actually.

That would be sad in itself, but I find it especially bad because the old 16ki stage was in fact a very good one. I watched nearly all performances and I still plan to watch the 3 or 4 I have left. This new one, I already feel I watched it one time more than I'd have wanted, I can't imagine watching it again. It doesn't hold up to rewatching.

I fear it might have been a huge mistake to entrust such a big investment as the 16th gen (a large gen, and the first in years) to a completely unproved and inexperienced producer. Cristafari above says the girls aren't ready to make it pop and I've seen similar sentiment elsewhere; I posit the opposite, the stage is never going to pop because it isn't pop-able, but apart from that these are the girls the stage was made for; if it doesn't work, that's not their fault.

I know Murayama has a lot of fans and this “goddess” reputation, but one thing to keep in mind is: these girls have a few months more experience as stage performers than she has as producer. That's not a lot of experience, but it's greater than zero, and I see a lot of people — Murayama included — wilfully ignoring that fact. For all her lofty words about girls not being ready to be on stage, my impression is she's the one who's clearly not ready to be putting inexperienced girls on stage; it would have worked better to give her a limited-time special stage with more experienced members who could give her more synergy and mutual learning.

In the end, I think it's an ok, verging on mediocre stage, and a bad idea overall. I hope it doesn't stay on too long, because I won't be watching it and I'll miss watching 16th gen. Meanwhile I'll be over there watching the SKE KKS perform a professionally produced, Akimoto-written stage instead.

 

@Lalo Martins
Would you mind explaining why do you find the stage bad? Since you didn't do it in your post. So far, I've almost exclusively seen people be very supportive of the stage, me included - it's the best stage we've had in a very long time, imo.

 

i am dissapointed with this stage too, this stage setlist lack of cute idolish song, most of 16th gen member are still on junior high school but yuiri put to much cool and upbeat song into the setlist, this stage doesn't fit with 16th gen member image, they are still cute and adorable, better to shows their cuteness in the stage than have to let them perform a song like that, especially migiashi evidence, yeah maybe zukki looks very mature, but she is still 15yo now

 

I can try. But are you inverting the order of things? One needs reasons to like something. If there aren't any (or enough), one doesn't like it. So it's hard to explain why something failed to make me like it.

The honest answer, since I'm not a professional critic or producer or anything, is: I don't enjoy watching it. I don't feel compelled to watch it again. As I said, I watched the original untitled “RS16” a few dozen times. I also lost track of how many times I watched Party ga Hajimaru Yo, Aitakatta, Seishun Girls, or Dareka no Tame ni, in various incarnations, and I'd be up for watching a new performance of any of those any day. I watched less times Renai Kinshi Jourei, RESET, Himawari 1, and Thumbnail, but would also be willing to watch a new one any day. I've watched Let's Go Kenkyuusei! four times and I think that was once too many, I was bored and distracted quite a bit in the last two and honestly the last one I watched for the MCs. The only way I can imagine watching it again is if I happened to be in Tokyo and for some reason got a free ticket to see it on the actual theater.

Now, I'm not doubting you personally, but apart from this thread, I've also “almost exclusively” seen people who seemed to like it at first but after a day and/or rewatch realised it wasn't that good; or at least once I said it they went “you know what, actually yeah”. People who think it's really good, I wonder how many times they watched it.

But I concede there are enough opinions on the contrary, so let me see what I can find of objective objection.

First: making a 16-member stage for an 18-member team is silly in context of what 16ki means for the group, and honestly a bit arrogant. It will also put us in trouble when more than 2 of these girls inevitably leave and then we have not more, but less than 16.

As for the setlist, I've seen a lot of praise and I don't understand where it comes from. It's a lot of D-list songs with some B-list thrown in. These aren't songs that aren't well-known because they were never promoted, or “hidden gems”; they're mostly songs that aren't well-known because compared to the 48G baseline they're really not that good. I can't imagine anyone going to the performance for the setlist, and that was a big draw of the old stage; you have a chance to see famous songs live, and at the same time a chance to see fresh girls have their own take on those, and the not-A-list stuff was mostly good B-list. (And to paraphrase one of my fave technical book writers: feel free to understand this paragraph as referring to all the songs you don't particularly like except for your personal favourite, in case you have one.)

I remember writing here that I thought no A-lists was a “bold choice”. In hindsight, I was just being nice, I already felt it was just plain wrong at the time. If you have neither well-known members nor well-known songs, I don't see why people would go to the theater in the first place.

Can't say anything about the dancing; that's an art form that somehow completely escapes me, I can't tell good dancing from bad unless and until someone trips and falls over. I do understand objectively though that idol dancing has some specific points, of appeal and taiou (connecting); in this aspect I can't say I found it particularly bad, but certainly not as good as “RS16” which was pretty much a masterwork there.

The songs blur into each other. I don't know if they have an uniform “feel” or what, but looking at my chat log for the shonichi, I see that I lost track of how many songs were in the opening part. I was feeling there were already too many and it was taking forever to get to the first MC, and only once the MC started I checked here and saw that it was just the normal number of songs. The unit part (necessarily) has a bit more variation, but… if I have to remember songs without checking here or the wiki, the only things that come to mind are Team Zaka and Cross. And Cross only because (a) it was mentioned on MC and (b) I saw it yesterday on Request Hour.

My strongest memories of the stage are costumes and MCs. I used to think they were green in terms of MC but honestly, the more performances I watch from other teams, the more I feel they're actually already above average.

Props to Murayama on the costumes, though. That was nice, with the exception of Zukki's aberration of a skirt.

To go back to the top and flip it around: I haven't seen anyone give reasons why it's good. Even those who liked it seem to qualify it (“the girls need more work”) or vaguely praise the setlist without saying why. I've seen a review today that The Dark Tower is only interesting if you're already a hardcore fan of the series — I feel this stage is only interesting if you're already a hardcore Murayama or 16ki fan, and even then, well, “interesting” as in I'd check it out, not “great” as in I'd recommend it and rewatch it.

Wow, that grew long. Sorry, that tends to happen when someone asks for details from me (hmm, no apology emoji, let's go with » orz « for now)

EDIT: this too.

 

I don't know the vibe of 16ki. From what I can tell, I feel like they'll be a generation who'll take chances. They did perform River in AKB SHOW. If they wanted to perform River, I think they'll like most of the energetic songs in the stage. From the songs themselves, I don't know a majority of them them. So maybe that contributed with my boredom of the stage. However, I'm not going let that stop me from waiting to see what 16ki will do. Like every generation before them, they have to find themselves.

 

I have to admit that I love this stage because there are many unheard songs that I love being performed and it's not in a one off performance like RH (hell, Ai no Iro and Sono Ase never ranked in AKB RH) and it's just serving me a nostalgia. About the level of performance, they DO need more work, but hey, they're kenkyuusei for a reason. Also, the choice of some cool and some quite complicated songs is,in my opinion, a nice selection, since they're studying, and performing A1 or Boku no Taiyou on weekly basis won't get them anywhere and we might end up getting another "lazy" gen and well, people will complain again. (have you seen D2 bootcamp? they forced some of the girl to dance Kamonegix, this stage's hardest song to perform is just Hitonatsu Hankouki)

 

Well let's start then by saying I respect your point of view as well. Maybe you're expecting something from the stage different than I do.

And I'll leave aside the question of songs because clearly there's preference involved, so it's unlikely we'll agree. Even though we both have (possibly valid) points on that that are separate from preference, I think a discussion might be hindered by preference.

I just want to say though: the question of whether they “can pull this stage off” for me is not a valid one. We can discuss whether they can pull off A1 or K5 but this stage, well, it's written for them. Sure performances need some challenge otherwise it's boring, and especially if they're in a phase where they're focusing on growing their skills. But if they don't come even close, that will be the stage's fault, not theirs. In my line of work, if a team fails to deliver a project in the promised time, the responsibility lies with the manager first and foremost. I have to plan for the team I have, and/or what I realistically think I can hire. That's the main point where I think Murayama's green-ness shows; it feels like she just wrote the stage she wanted to see, and not one specifically suited for the team she had. It doesn't bring out the best these girls have, and I think that's sad.

EDIT: reading your Experience post, I get the feeling you didn't like it as much as you think either?

Also, I have to point to this:

Is it really the audience to blame? To hammer on the same point, this is the audience we have. You make a shonichi full of less-known songs, people won't know them. And then they'll probably find it a lot harder to get into the flow of the show.

 

It's not supposed to be a 16-member stage.

Unfortunately the Shonichi took place alongside a kami-tier Kimi Dare, so I really need to rewatch the stage, but haven't had time yet. So, hopefully I'll be able to reply in more detail later, but I can see where you're coming from. The opening run of songs is ... not that great. Essentially this:

My impression when watching the stage for the first time was that they were all conservative schoolgirl songs. Maybe she tried too hard to make them all fit, and also to choose songs that hadn't gotten enough love. Contrary to what someone else said above, the opening run is too idolish.

Spoiler

Watching short bits of later performances, it's also really messy and out of sync even days after the Shonichi. Although getting better.

You don't remember Migiashi Evidence? Or you just don't know the song's name? If the latter may I humbly suggest the problem there is not Yuiri-P's

 

I think it's more like I was too distracted by that “skirt” to pay attention to the song (I suppose I did pay attention to the dancing too, but that's as much focus as I could muster)

aside: I love that I started constructive, friendly, flame-free discussion here. I was afraid I was going to kick a wasp's nest. Much love to everyone involved, this is much better than normal for this forum, let alone the internet in general.

Edit: damn, you brought up some good points, now I have so much more to say.

I think I have a concept of “idol song” more in line with yours than Madscientist's. What I did agree with them though is there was a lack of “cute” songs, which would have been nice to bring more out of the lolis in particular, and of course the fisher. I don't really consider cute songs my “platonic standard” of idol music, but the stage did lack there.

As for remembering Zukki's perf — the unit part didn't “blur together” in the same way the opening did. The opening felt like one, excessively long medley. The units were kind of the opposite, a parade of units where the song itself didn't make much of an impact or leave much of an impression. I got a kick of the Watarirouka Suberitai, I felt Cross was probably one of the high points of the whole thing, and got extremely distracted by Zukki's costume… ahem, also thought she put up a good performance. But not really the songs themselves.

And as for the dreaded skirt let me go on a tangent here a bit. It's not the costume as a whole, and I'm not blaming the producer because I imagine it's not an original costume either. It's the skirt. What is that even? I can't imagine what the intended effect was. I don't think that thing would look good on anyone period, but on Zukki, well, she has thin long legs, so she kind of looks like a transvestite on a budget. I don't mean this to be homophobic, but you know, there's a specific look associated with someone who wants to look feminine but doesn't have the right body and doesn't have enough experience and/or budget to pull it off. That's what I'm referring to. I think the costume, and the performance with it, would have looked better with the skirt a little lower or longer. Or no skirt at all (short pants domme look). To be fair though, it looks betterless bad in the Sunday performance, maybe they adjusted it?

 

I like this stage because stages made up of just "A-list" songs are songs that we've seen performed 10000000+ times before and I am SO bored of them. I don't really want to see "Party ga Harjimaru", "Glass no I Love You" , "Heart Gata Virus", or "Aitakatta" performed AGAIN. Even "Team whatever Oshi" has gotten really old.

I don't think Yuiri just picked random songs from the back catalog. I think she picked some really good underappreciated songs along with a few of the more idoly and frequently performed songs. Maybe the KKS need work to really make this stage great, but what is wrong with that? They are supposed to be in training, so giving them something they can work up to and improve on is a good idea. Giving them only songs with really simple choreography and their only emotion is "Smile!" won't help them get much better.

 

the fact is she produced a WAY better stage than most of the other special stages like that yoshimasa one. Can't wait to see what yuiri will come up with next.

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