Shida Manaka (Mona) / Keyakizaka46 1st Generation

i wonder what the members closest to Manaka think about this situation especially Risa, it seems like there was a growing distance between them right up to the scandal

based on interviews Risa seems to really care about Keyakizaka's reputation and takes her job seriously.. not so sure about Manaka.

 

There’s video of Mona laughing in background while Akanen is sobbing in the foreground when it was announced they wouldn’t perform a concert somewhere.

I thought Mona was just relieved to take a break and not have to perform. But if others, like Risa, was also behaving weird, maybe Mona was having thoughts before all this.

 

thanks for pointing that out, i think there was another occasion where Takahiro was giving a pep talk and praising the girls, everybody looked touched by his words and most of them was crying, but Manaka looked stoic to me and even laughed when Akane was sobbing lol.. not trying to criticize her but to me it just seems like her heart and mind isn't really in Keyaki anymore? i dunno

 

From yugata paradise radio 6.11.2017 mona said top 3 members she call all the times. Is no. 3 nen 2- fuyuka and no.1 is yonesan.. She call yonesan all the times. To tell her about her feeling to yosesan.
I think risa is not a good listener to mona at all.

 

just want to add that i do think Manaka really cares about the other members, she says "minna daisuki!" on many occasions and to me she really means it... this is probably the only reason left for her to stay in Keyaki.

i just think she's tired of the job and being controlled

 

Whether or not you agree with it, it is well known that getting caught dating is the quickest way to end your career as an idol, short of being caught breaking the law. I wouldn't call it "slipping up" to willingly do the one thing you know is the death of your career.

 

i think it's normal to make a reasoning according to our status : as fans.

But to understand why nothing is changing, it is interesting to look from management standpoint. What are the consequences to change/revoke the love ban rule?

- Setting the love ban rule allows a standard where idol can rely on, what to do and what not do. It ensure maximum popularity of the girls (pure and cute image) and girls can focus on their idol work.
- Most of the time the girls self inflict the love ban rule because japanese culture is about responsabilities. When an exception appear, they decide according to the status of the idol in question (fired/cast out/nothing). To deal with punctual issue is much easier than amend the love ban rule completely.
- changing the love ban rule itself is more fair (it applies to all the girls) but it is the maximum risk. You can't say it's okay for one girl to date and say no to others. So you need to say yes to everyone. Do you really think management would take the risk when they aren't able to size fans who are okay with that? Also, keep in mind that fandom is not balanced : those who have the deepest fan relationship with girls (and the more encline to be affected by a scandal) are the one who spend the most. And those guys are precisely who management want to keep. The core of their business model.
- This is of their best interest to apply the not-get-caught-rule. Aki-p purposely create a blur in statement so fans don't exactly know what has been settled for the girls (no love ban rule/love ban rule) so they don't appear as a restrictive company, but keep control of the girls frame in that regard. (professional confidentiality) Fans need to remember that they are not taking any risk: management does. And it needs to be weighted in our debate.

For the moment, manaka has her activities halted, don't do handshake anymore, and expose herself in a decrease of popularity or the absolute worse, to break up from her dear comrades. She probably (and i hope) also self reflect on the consequence toward her keyaki nakama about what happened, regardless of what these nakama thinks (this is the same with matsumura sayuri). I count that as psychological pressure. As a matter of fact, it does impact negatively the group for the moment.

Shunkan has questionable method to get their scoop, but i'm not going to kid manaka either : there's like 10 years of idol history prior to keyakizaka, and she perfectly knows what happened to harada mayu at the beginning of the group. She knows what are the risk, and she took it anyway. Knowing the context of extreme exhaustion that zenkoku brought, seeing friends is more than welcome, but i'm not going to discard the fact that she made a risky choice.

We fans need to realize how difficult it is to change a rule deeply rooted in a pop culture, especially idol. We see the love ban rule as unfair and restrictive. Fair enough. What are the solution? If you come up with an idea that avoid the hazard to break their whole business model, probably management will hear you out.

This is not ironic. I actually believe there's an exit door, and it lies in Sakamichi fanbase itself : they are young. If management see that sakamichi fanbase are okay that their idols date (keyaki is a reflection of youth, youth want to enjoy they freedom like dating, keyaki can date), then they can come up with a daring new policy : dating is okay, but they are discrete about it and we focus on their idol work.

We need to step up our game and bring solution to the table instead of making a "good side/evil side" speech. Because there's no right or wrong in most of case. Everyone have reason to behave like such, whoever it's fan or management.

 

Personally, I think Mona and Risa got kinda paired together in the beginning as the ''cool pair'' but aren't necessarily as close backstage. Could be wrong about this, because we have no idea who these girls are closest to backstage.

 

The momentum shifted since Kouhaku and this incident is getting hopeless. Maybe she could comeback but that's a tall order. Can she survive the brutal HS event? What will her teammate think of her after this thing settle down? I wish I got a time machine and travel to 2019 to find out about her future

 

It's a long way off but the upcoming sakamichi auditions will be a good time for Shida to quietly slip back into action while the attention and hype is elsewhere.

 

man, these scandals are such nonsense when you really think about it... I hope Sony just decide to power through it, Sakamichi is really on the up and up now, so maybe they can just overcome this...

 

this just isn't true though. both sakamichi groups have over 55% of their fans over 30 years old, and both have over 55% fans as males.

and that's even assuming that younger than 30 year old males/females would accept idols dating in the first place.

This meme that sakamichi fans are mainly teenage girls really needs to stop. Those teenage girls aren't buying hundreds of cd's to spend more time at handshakes like older people with more income are. without these rules, none of these groups would make enough money to exist like they do today.

 

I am judging her as an artist/idol/performer, not as a person.

Liberalism is not leftist. PM me if you want to continue this.

I agree with your point on the composition of idol fans though.

Again, regardless of morals, it is her job, and she should have stayed professional. Japan doesn't care about morals so much as it cares about staying true to whatever responsibilities/duties come with your job. This has been a thing throughout Japanese history.

Historically, this could be seen in the various massacres commited by the Imperial Japanese Army- even though almost certainly, some soldiers and officers saw this as immoral, it was their duty to fulfill these orders in their job, so they did it.

Nowadays, this is seen in the "hard working" (as Western works often put it) work culture of Japan.

As much as it may seem harsh, this criticism of her (at least from management) is not given because some fans fantasies need to be kept pristine, but more because she failed in one of the responsibilities that comes with her job. The whole male fantasy thing is only a lesser part of it. If the whole male fantasy thing was the main reason behind this, she would have been fired by now and forced graduations due to scandals would still be a thing.

This isn't "slipping up" as much as it is a major risk she knew existed, she took it, and now she has to deal with the consequences.

 

I did a bit of research to fully understand why this is such a big deal

My appologies to anyone that was offended I get it now. It's a choice to be an idol a very lucky one to get picked and with that comes sacrifices. While I dont agree with people being mean to her (I saw some really rude stuff during my research) I think she should of had more self control as it's a bit selfish to ruin the image of an entire group because you can't have a bit of self control

 

Thanks very much for this, especially for the very informative pie charts: I'm not surprised that Keyaki has a 6% higher teen audience than Nogi; I am surprised that the female audience is 10% higher for Keyaki. Females 10% higher, males 10% lower. So females, and maybe teen/20s females, are higher for Keyaki...but not enough to be a majority or to make up for the money poured in by adult male fans. Do such charts exist for AKB groups? I suspect that the male fan proportion might be higher than 65% there. Is that the case?

I wonder if the business model for Keyaki (and Sakamichi in general) involves taking a base of adult male fans as a given, and trying to attract female and general-public fans to broaden the potential market. Neru's appearances on Sanma talk shows and quiz shows and in serious magazines, etc., seem to be aiming straight at that wider market, and the normal idol market is happy to see her anywhere they can.

 

here is a question

with the technology we have to put another face on someone else and make it look completely real, are we really sure this private photo is legitimate? I mean the stalkers still haven't used the photo on their main website have they? Dont tell me there aren't haters that wouldn't do something like this

 

Here you go:

 

That is possible. If you can find somebody else who would look like the girl in the purikura picture other than Mona, or an analysis of the picture that it is fake or tampered at, that would be good evidence. And that is while keeping in mind purikura effects. On the other hand, we have seen comparison between the purikura girl and Mona pictures.

 

you can put mona's face on anyone. since it's a private photo we can only conclude the stalkers got it illegally or from someone that means harm to mona. if there was legitimate confirmation it was her the picture would have been used a lot more than it has been

 

@Endu -- Thank you. Very interesting. AKB fans do in fact tend to be older, and there are few teen fans. But as for gender balance, there is a higher proportion of female fans than for Nogi! The percentage is almost as high as for Keyaki.

male/female: AKB 58/42, Nogi 66/34, Keyaki 56/44.

teens: AKB 4%, Nogi 15, Keyaki 21,
20s: AKB 13, Nogi 28, Keyaki 24,
30s: AKB 22, Nogi 19, Keyaki 18,
40s: AKB 25, Nogi 20, Keyaki 20,
50s: AKB 21, Nogi 13, Keyaki 12,
60s: AKB 15, Nogi 5, Keyaki 5.

Not sure how these figures were arrived at, but they're fascinating. The age figures certainly have a lot to do with when each group was formed and developed its base of core fans, but there may be more to it than that, in terms of the style of music and the ideology suggested in the lyrics. The gender balance figures are surprising to me. I expected Nogi to have the highest female balance, or at least very similar to Keyaki's, but it seems Nogi has the lowest of the three groups.