Yahoo! News article: http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20170105-00000174-sph-ent R-1 is a comedy competition and Nagisa passed the first round. I'm not sure how many rounds there are, and I'm not sure when it gets to televised round. According to the article, Maachun made it as far as the 3rd round and Rikanyan passed the 1st round. Nagi entered as NMR with Nagisa, Maiichi, and Rachel before but did not pass the 1st round. I'm excited about this but a little on the fence. With Nagi I'm never sure if I'm laughing at her or with her.
She apparently did Flip-Gei which is when you talk about certain topics and then use a flipboard with something written on it to serve as the punchline. Her topic was apparently "What if a <BLANK> was an idol" and her examples ranged from bugs to theater actors. She apparently did "ok" which probably means that we would have laughed at her jokes but still nowhere near where a pro comedian would have done. She even said she regretted how she wasn't able to project her voice more. Her getting through the first round was a given since she's a "name" and R-1 is still a entertainment event so they want the articles written and the idol-fans tuning in. Getting through the 2nd round will be hard since thats when it gets serious. Only Maachun has ever gotten through round 2 so it will be an uphill battle for her.
Yeah, passing 1st round isn't a given, if only because NMR didn't. But if I remember correctly the rehearsal for NMR that we saw was already terrible to begin with.
Nagisa talked a little about her R-1 experience during the latest Kataru-kun (and also some other magazine sources I will use) - She initially failed round 2 but got "saved" when they announced an additional group of passers. This apparently disappointed her since she was already celebrating a job well done with her family when she got the news that she had to go through to round 3. - It was apparently a super stressful experience for her to the point that even looking at R-1 yogurt (a yogurt brand in Japan) would stress her out. - She will never join again even if they force her She actually broke down crying when they asked her to talk about her experience which goes to show how serious the comedy world takes these competitions and how much pressure she was under. I get the feeling that NMR was a lark and no one expected them to go far and she came into R-1 with the same mindset but as she went further and further into the competition, it became way more real to her which freaked her out quite a bit. There are real professional "name" comedians who never reach round 3 so its a really big achievement for her.
didn't think she would make it to round three, but i'm glad she did her best even when it was driving her mad lol. i didn't think something like this could bring someone to tears, since we only see the comedy side of it, but i guess actually coming up with a good joke is a hard thing to do, rather than just saying something funny without realizing it.
If you have Netflix, the drama "Hibana Spark" is actually a good look behind the scenes of how cutthroat and stressful the comedy business is in Japan.
