Single Nogizaka46 9th "Natsu no Free & Easy" (14/07/09)

I'm not too discouraged by the sales figures; AKB's singles did increase sales in a regular pattern, but there were lots of cases where sales figures fell, for example Beginner broke the million barrier, and then Chance no Junbun only sold less than 700,000. Song quality might not be top of idol fans' priorities, but it still counts for a lot, and Ngzk are still establishing themselves. And if you compare the sales to AKB's 9th single, it's over 4 times higher. I think it's just a case of a weaker song combined with slightly unfortunate timing, publicity wise, and in the circumstances only getting a small dip is a good display.

 

Does anyone know the participating members for all the coupling tracks? No kenkyuusei used?

 

Do you feel their concurrency is unsuccessful?

Some good points. I think we should be a little concerned if Free & Easy had lower first day numbers than Barrette.

 

Natsu no Free & Easy's 9th Round HS Result

Spoiler: Graph Table

From left to right are: Rank, change in rank (compared to last round), blocks sold out, changes in blocks sold out, members' name.

01. (01.) 30/30 (+00) Nishino Nanase (sold out since 6th rnd)
02. (02.) 30/30 (+00) Shiraishi Mai (sold out since 6th rnd)
03. (03.) 30/30 (+00) Akimoto Manatsu (sold out since 7th rnd)
04. (04.) 30/30 (+00) Fukagawa Mai (sold out since 8th rnd)
04. (04.) 30/30 (+00) Hashimoto Nanami (sold out since 8th rnd)
06. (07.) 29/30 (+04) Matsumura Sayuri
07. (06.) 27/30 (+00) Sakurai Reika
08. (08.) 24/30 (+00) Eto Misa
09. (09.) 18/30 (+02) Wakatsuki Yumi
10. (10.) 05/05 (+00) Matsui Rena (sold out since 2nd round)
11. (11.) 03/30 (+00) Hori Miona
12. (13.) 03/29 (+01) Ikoma Rina
13. (12.) 02/30 (+00) Takayama Kazumi
14. (14.) 02/21 (+00) Nagashima Seira
　　　　264/788 (+07) Total
　　　　300/760 (-36) Last Single (Increases/Decreases by 9th Single)

Just gonna quote myself lol

So like I said in above quote, I Didn't Know They Were Still Selling KizuKata Individual HS Tickets! xD
This can explains why the non-top-ten HS performers are almost not selling out at all for Natsu no Free & Easy methink lol. I don't think they ever done this before..

Natsu no Free & Easy 3rd day sale: 8,602

　　 ぐるぐる　 　シャンプー　　Bicycle　 　 マネキン　　 君の名は 　 　ガールズ　　 バレッタ　　　片想い 　　夏のFree&Easy
　 12/02/22 　12/05/02　 12/08/22　 12/12/19　 13/03/13 　 13/07/03　 13/11/27　 14/04/02 　 14/07/09
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
月　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___
火　_84,905　　111,222　　150,056　　190,108　　204,281　　286,492　　347,244　　387,122　　374,832
水　_13,782　　_21,552　　_13,285　　_17,335　　_16,126　　_18,599　　_17,097　　_34,295　　_19,047
木　__9,254　　__8,238　　__5,923　　__7,425　　__7,129　　__9,443　　__7,866　　__9,945　　__8,602
金　__7,373　　__5,092　　__5,944　　__6,063　　____4位　　__7,638　　__8,548　　_11,932　　___,___
土　_10,901　　__4,123　　____4位　　__5,699　　____6位　　__6,694　　__8,055　　__7,928　　___,___
日　__7,524　　__2,993　　____5位　　__3,512　　____5位　　__6,261　　__4,926　　__4,792　　___,___
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
計　133,739　　153,220　　175,208　　230,142　　227,536　　335,127　　393,736　　456,014　　402,481
週　136,309　　155,677　　186,613　　232,961　　242,053　　337,138　　395,127　　457,837　　___,___
累　212,492　　223,448　　243,326　　309,208　　310,781　　456,114　　513,042　　538,090　　___,___

 

Guess I'll give my take on the single.

Natsu no Free & Easy (Song) 3/5 (PV) 2/5: It's okay. Nothing special. Decent song, decent PV, nothing to write home about.

Sono saki no deguchi (Song) 4/5 (PV) 3/5: Worlds better than NNF&E. The song is a bit repetitive after a while. The PV reminded me of Matsuura Aya's "The Bigaku", which isn't a bad thing. There were so many things going on in the PV, and yet, it was somehow still pretty bland. Sayuringo is pretty as usual

Koko ni iru riyuu (Song) 5/5 (PV) 4/5: Man this song is good, best song on the single for me. The PV was weird indeed, but the "food tour" was grand. [NOMMING ESCALATES]

Mukuchi na Lion (Song) 5/5 (PV) 5/5: Wait... maybe this is the best song. Argh! The lyrics definitely make this song, as so often happens with Aki-P songs. The drama is very moving as well, best PV.

Boku ga yukanakya (Song) 4/5: It's just a little repetitive and uniform, but it's definitely still a great song.

Nani mo dekizu ni (Song) 5/5: Damn, how does Nogizaka get quality song after quality song? Jeeeez. This one's good also.

 

Natsu no Free and Easy on Music station (140711)


if the video does not show watch the video here

 

yep, the sale of this single reach 400k today but i'm sorry that i'm not too easily satisfied (my bad ) the day the concurrency was announced some members were very upset. they expressed their disappointment on their blogs (Sakurai, Shiraishi ... ) finally they got through it afterward but I felt sorry for them and thats why i was hoping for something. if the exchange student program must proceed. the group should benefit something in return such as higher sale than previous one.
but the result is what we see may be i have to stand with it and learn to let it go

3rd day sale 8,602

total 402,481


thanks to @saylove32125

 

Hi, thank you, perhaps you're correct!
And Nanamin's T is from AC/DC, I guess.

 

I think it's too soon to see if their concurrencies have made a massive difference. We should let it play out more. I would like to think that there are some AKB fans, although not in droves, have come over and checked out Ngzk. I certainly see a lot of new faces in this forum that I suspect are AKB fans (I could be mistaken). Don't get me wrong, I too don't like kennin and I hope it's a one time deal but my gut tells me we may see more in the future.

Back on topic, I'm happy to see Ngzk back on MSta. It certainly is a good indication that their popularity is rising. Here's tonight's performance at normal speed.

 

It's purely circumstantial, but another look at the sales figures and handshake figures has made me think about a few more things. Firstly, I've never been convinced that the spending power of hardcore wota is as important as is often made out. For example, if I'm reading the handshake sales right, they're considerably down on Kataomoi's sales, yet the first day sales are down by only 13,000. While that's obviously a lot of singles, it's not a huge amount compared to the 375,000 sold overall. Secondly, if you look at the sales, easily the biggest jump came from Maiyan centring Girls Rule. There was a similar first day jump for Barrette, but if you look at the final sales figures you can see that Girls Rule improved sales over the previous single by 140,000, Barrette by only 60,000. Although Barrette is my favourite Ngzk single, none of Girls Rule, Barrette or Kataomoi was a noticeably weak single, musically. It's possible to infer then, that Maiyan's presence as centre was a large part of the reason for the increase in sales. Conversely, despite her accepted status as the most popular among wota fans, Nanasemaru being selected as centre didn't deliver a particularly big increase in sales. I wonder whether the management will look at this and consider selecting Maiyan as centre again, because it's circumstantially implied that she might be better for sales.

 

They're selling the members shirts that they wore for the jacket covers

http://www.nogizaka46-shop.com/

 

Yeah, you may be right there, it's near impossible to guess what motivates the buying public. I'm biased too because Maiyan is my favourite member, but I can't say I have any desire to see Naachan removed either, she seems a very lovely person.

The impression I got from Naachan centring again was that management actually wanted to switch to her as a centre full time. I hope they do continue rotating centres though, I think it'll encourage members to stay in the group if they think they have a real chance of centring.

 

4th day sale: 7,336
5th day sale: 5,925


　　 ぐるぐる　 　シャンプー　　Bicycle　 　 マネキン　　 君の名は 　 　ガールズ　　 バレッタ　　　片想い 　　夏のFree&Easy
　 12/02/22 　12/05/02　 12/08/22　 12/12/19　 13/03/13 　 13/07/03　 13/11/27　 14/04/02 　 14/07/09
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
月　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___
火　_84,905　　111,222　　150,056　　190,108　　204,281　　286,492　　347,244　　387,122　　374,832
水　_13,782　　_21,552　　_13,285　　_17,335　　_16,126　　_18,599　　_17,097　　_34,295　　_19,047
木　__9,254　　__8,238　　__5,923　　__7,425　　__7,129　　__9,443　　__7,866　　__9,945　　__8,602
金　__7,373　　__5,092　　__5,944　　__6,063　　____4位　　__7,638　　__8,548　　_11,932　　__7,336
土　_10,901　　__4,123　　____4位　　__5,699　　____6位　　__6,694　　__8,055　　__7,928　　__5,925
日　__7,524　　__2,993　　____5位　　__3,512　　____5位　　__6,261　　__4,926　　__4,792　　___,___
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
計　133,739　　153,220　　175,208　　230,142　　227,536　　335,127　　393,736　　456,014　　415,742
週　136,309　　155,677　　186,613　　232,961　　242,053　　337,138　　395,127　　457,837　　___,___
累　212,492　　223,448　　243,326　　309,208　　310,781　　456,114　　513,042　　538,090　　___,___

 

Only need about 4,300 more sales tomorrow to get over 420,000 first week

I'm about 50/50 as to whether or not I think Nanase will center 10th single.

On the one hand the reason why she was given center in the first place might have been because she took over 1st spot in HS. She still is 1st in handshake- although Maiyan sold out in the same round as her this time around. So one possibility is that her retention of center position is tied to her continuing to place first in HS. Another possibility is that management want a new period of having a stable center and chose Nanase to fulfill that role.

However, there is also the possibility that management never planned to fix the center position just yet and are still interested in giving more girls a chance to center. The big factor against Nanase being center again is single sales. On paper the singles with a repeating center have had only modest sales increases- or in this case a decrease in sales- while those with new centers have seen big sales increases. This is not necessarily a causal link, the 6th-8th singles were all very high quality and coincided with a period of rapid popularity growth , whereas this single had a much weaker A-side. Nevertheless, the drop in first week sales is the first in the groups history and I wonder if it will make the continuation of Nanase as center untenable even though I don't think the sales drop has anything to do with her personally.

 

^I don't think it's fair to remove Naachan as center due to low sales. Quite honestly, I am not sold on "the reason why this single sold so much is because XX was center." I can see her continue as center even though I feel she hasn't fully embraced the position because she's still very shy and not strong at MC. This is noticeable in some shows/interviews where other members are given more air time. I personally would like to see Nanamin as the next center then Ringo. As for returning center, definitely Maiyan!

 

something random but i think naachan is so adorable! XD maiyan is super beautiful too! either one center would be nICE!!

 

The management announced today that the talk event in Kyoto this weekend will be changed back again to handshaking event.
They seem to be embarrassed so much by the slight decline of the CD sales.
Also, the mini concert which was planned to be held during the Zen-aku is cancelled. (￣−￣)
The programmes for the events in September are not clear yet.

 

Thanks for the update! Is it possible that this is for reason other than the CD sales?

Speaking of which,
6th day sale: 4,418


　　 ぐるぐる　 　シャンプー　　Bicycle　 　 マネキン　　 君の名は 　 　ガールズ　　 バレッタ　　　片想い 　　夏のFree&Easy
　 12/02/22 　12/05/02　 12/08/22　 12/12/19　 13/03/13 　 13/07/03　 13/11/27　 14/04/02 　 14/07/09
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
月　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___　　___,___
火　_84,905　　111,222　　150,056　　190,108　　204,281　　286,492　　347,244　　387,122　　374,832
水　_13,782　　_21,552　　_13,285　　_17,335　　_16,126　　_18,599　　_17,097　　_34,295　　_19,047
木　__9,254　　__8,238　　__5,923　　__7,425　　__7,129　　__9,443　　__7,866　　__9,945　　__8,602
金　__7,373　　__5,092　　__5,944　　__6,063　　____4位　　__7,638　　__8,548　　_11,932　　__7,336
土　_10,901　　__4,123　　____4位　　__5,699　　____6位　　__6,694　　__8,055　　__7,928　　__5,925
日　__7,524　　__2,993　　____5位　　__3,512　　____5位　　__6,261　　__4,926　　__4,792　　__4,418
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
計　133,739　　153,220　　175,208　　230,142　　227,536　　335,127　　393,736　　456,014　　420,160
週　136,309　　155,677　　186,613　　232,961　　242,053　　337,138　　395,127　　457,837　　___,___
累　212,492　　223,448　　243,326　　309,208　　310,781　　456,114　　513,042　　538,090　　___,___