Akb48

Before we dive into this we need a little bit of background. Akb48 is short for Akibahara 48, strangely enough I knew this.  Their home base is the Don Quixote that is located in the same area. This DonQui, as it’s called by the natives, is also home to one of the most popular maid cafes(the @ home Maid Cafe). In 2008 a colleague and myself visited this one. We did try going upstairs but we couldn’t get through the massive line of fans that they had on the top floor, so we did what anyone would do just dismiss it and try again later. We never did and I do regret it because I would have been better prepared for today’s show.. In any case the group is comprised of 48 members you can find a in depth history here or here

There is no group on the US side that is  anywhere remotely close to what AKB48 is. The only thing I could even think of is Bang (X) Camaro and even then these girls have them in numbers by twenty eight.  So what do you do with 48 members in your group? You break them into to teams and overwhelm your audience with cuteness.  These girls did just that. They range from ages 14-21 which was interesting to see because you could clearly see some girls were way better than others or more comfortable performing.

The show itself was very up beat. I was amazed at how well they managed all 48 members and how smoothly they transitioned between ‘acts’. Their costumes ranged from hard to define(some sort of frilly ballroom skirt sort of thing) to extremely cute(animal costumes!) to semi provocative (think Trinity from the Matrix meets Tifa from Advent Children). The performed their singles/hits and told anecdotes between songs in some cases. Since their English wasn’t too strong at that point I can imagine they have tons of stories in Nihongo and they probably wanted to tell us but we didn’t understand. One story was about the monkey woman, how she had short hair and looked like (wait for it) a monkey. She could climb trees and do all sorts of monkey things. Then they girls revealed that they were just kidding. They had some die hard fans in the audience from Japan that flew out to NYC just for this show. I think that was pretty incredible.

Their performance took roughly an hour and forty five minutes. Considering that we didn’t start on time(nothing ever does here anyway) that is pretty good. I wasn’t too surprised when they did a three song set encore. However they also did a second encore comprising of one song. I can imagine these girls were spent. There were no live instruments present so I’m left to wonder if they lip synced or not. I would not blame these girls for doing that because quite honestly they were dancing and constantly moving for the full hour and change. They also gave out props at the door which in turn were used within the performance. That’s pretty cool, it gives us a we’re part of them feel.

“Will these girls ever make it in the US?” Was a question I was asked post performance by a Japanese reporter. I told him it would be tough. There is a niche market but these girls definitely couldn’t tour they’d need to be stationed either in California or NYC.I say NYC because they would be easily accessible because they could set up a returnable or some sort of cafe that ties in with this. So they could perform and build a fan base here. Webster Hall is a bad venue for them because of the poor set up. It’s more for clubbing and dancing rather than something like this. Roseland Ballroom, Irving Plaza or even the Blender Theater would have been better choices for something like this. Also the American music scene is slightly different due to the cultural aspects. The age of these girls would no doubt attract some unsavory individuals state side and no doubt cause some problems.In any I wish these girls the best.

I’ve noticed with 48 members it’s not hard to pick a favorite. Who does phire love? Well it’s Sayaka Akimoto, I picked her because she stood out the most to me because she was the tallest. It sounds wrong but it’s true. From where I was seeing she seemed to be the most high energy one and attractive to me.With further googling she is revealed to like basketball and Aikido(I used to study it in the past) ,looks like a match made in heaven no? I’d love to play her one on one in basketball or have train a little bit with her in Aikido, I think I’d get back into that full time just in case.

kawaii desune? <3