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Produce 48 Recaps: Auditions Begin (episode 1)

When we left off in my probably-unnecessary-but-still-necessary Rewatch Recap of Produce 48, the 96 girls had made their entrance into the huge studio, and the judges were just about to reveal themselves. Let's get to it!

The judges come out!

First, it’s Lee Hong Ki, a powerful vocalist, here to teach them to sing. He’s from FT Island, and amazingly, was in the *second* K-drama I ever watched, You’re Beautiful, which was fun at the time, but which I cannot actually recommend. I will say that Hong-ki is the best part of it despite his, let’s say, broad acting choices.

The character he played on You’re Beautiful was named Jeremy, and I can’t help but think of him as Jeremy. So just understand that I will be calling him Jeremy for the duration of these recaps. Thank you.

Here he is as Jeremy. He’s ACTING!

Next, it’s Soyou, from Sistar. She was overshadowed by Hyolyn but is an excellent vocalist in her own right. She’s here to be the other vocal trainer.

It wouldn’t be an MNET show without this asshole:

I don’t want to learn his name but he’s that choreographer/dance teacher/ sociopath who always makes sure that all of the trainees’ mental health is hanging on by the merest of threads. I’m going to call him Psychopath. Seriously, fuck this guy. I’ll note that he comes across as sweet and loveable in this episode but I can’t forgive him for the shit he pulled during Boys Planet. Nope. Never. He has earned my undying hatred. To be clear, I do not support sending him hate messages or harming him in any way. I will just quietly, and personally, hate him on my Tumblr which gets maybe 5 or 10 readers.

And then there’s her:

Bae Yoon Jung! She’s also pretty intense, and I know she’s mean to them on the first day, but she has the capacity for normal human empathy, as I recall. I’m going to call her Dance Bae. That doesn’t mean that I co-sign on her casual cruelty. It’s just that it’s literally her name and it’s easy to remember.

I don’t remember this lady:

Her name is May J Lee and she’s also a dance trainer. She’s cute. Here’s to hoping she understands that the trainees are human beings!

It’s Cheetah, here to be the rap trainer! God, I love her song Villain so damn much. The video is great, too, but trigger warning for violence. “I could fix you, but I won’t.” HECK yeah.

And special one-day trainer, Kahi, who was the dance trainer for PD101 Season 2.

Kahi was in After School, then “graduated” in June 2012, right around the same time that Gaeun joined. They undoubtedly have spent time together, so it’ll be interesting to see if they interact much in this episode. (Maybe Gaeun being on the show this season meant that Kahi couldn’t really be the judge for the whole time?)

The judges glare holes into the trainees while explaining that they’ll be sorting them into groups -- A, B, C, D, and F -- based on skill level, with the ultimate goal of bringing them all up to A-grade. And now it’s time for these would-be performers to perform, and of course, they don’t want to actually perform.

41:50 The Auditions Begin

The girls are nervous. Yoon Hae Sol (윤해솔), 20, former member of Aqua, lets out a gusty breath. And this girl is nervous too, whoever the heck she is.

Kim Chaewon, it says on her nametag. Well, she’s cute. Meanwhile I’m fascinated by the shoe behind her. WHOSE SHOE IS THAT? WHAT IS THIS SHOE?

The AKB-48 girls are even more nervous. Oda Erina, 21, in a stylish bob and a blue, yellow and white jacket is intimidated by the Korean girls. Mogi Shinobu, also 21, a living meme with blue furry sleeves, is so nervous she looks like she might cry. We love you, Shinobu.

Time for the first audition! Or at least, the audition that the editors have moved to the beginning of the episode, even though it was probably not the first one to happen in real time! Because they wanted to front-load excellent Korean auditions to emphasize the skill gap between the Korean and Japanese contestants!

Audition 1: Yuehua

Kim Si Hyeon (김시현), age 18, in the long sleeved shirt, now a member of Everglow.

Choi Ye Na (최예나), age 18, with her hair in a ponytail.

Wang Yi Ren (왕이런), age 17, pink shirt with black edges. She’s Chinese and is now a member of Everglow.

We see a clip of the Yuehua girls back stage, where Choi Yena accidentally draws on the camera with red marker and then apologizes profusely. AND SHE NEVER WORKED IN KPOP AGAIN!!

Then we get a flashback of Gross Guy personally watching the auditions of all 96 girls prior to the filming of the first episode. He’s so gross. Ugh. He makes JYP seem like a sweet, safe guy. Anyway we find out that after Choi Yena performed her song, she asked to do an extra performance. She begins speaking in what sounds like decent Japanese and does a little miming routine with sound effects. She’s pretty charming, actually.

Cut back to audition day. The Woolim girls are backstage waiting for their turn when they recognize Sihyeon from her time on PD101, Season 1. Sihyeon interviews that she’s embarrassed when she looks back at herself on PD101 and that she’s gotten a lot better since then. In fact, as we find out later, she got an F in that season.

Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: Move by Little Mix

My Thoughts: They do great, in my opinion. Siyheon has a great clear, strong voice and her English pronunciation is mostly pretty good. Yena and Yiren don’t sing as clearly, but their dancing is great and they have a lot of presence. God, Yiren sparkles so much! I feel like she’s getting bad advice from whoever is around her now, because in more recent Everglow performances she always seems so muted. Seeing this, I can see she’s capable of great stage presence -- I hope she finds her way back to this. I dig Everglow and just want them to keep living up to their potential. I would have given Siyheon an A and the other two Bs, I think, though it’s hard without seeing the other trainees to compare.

The MNET Edit: The editing emphasizes Yiren and Yena more, but overall the editing is kind to all three. We see some of the Japanese girls saying “why is everyone so good”, almost as if this ISN’T the first team to go up. (Also, we see that other girls are already wearing their grade name tag, though they’re blurred out.) The judges give Yena an A and the other two get Bs, which I guess reminds us that as long as you *kind* of sing while you also dance a lot and are very charming, then…. you get an A. Anyway, A and B are fine.

The editors really want us to know that the Japanese girls are very worried about their auditions. It is true that they generally don’t have the training the Korean girls have -- I’m not commenting on their inherent worthiness, just their preparation. But the show really, really focuses on that. I’m sure at least some of the Korean girls were nervous too, but we don’t seem to be seeing clips of that on the show.

Auditions 2 and 3: Woolim and WM Entertainment

Next, the MNET editors decided to further confuse anyone who has previously confused WM Entertainment with Woolim Entertainment by overlapping these two agency’s auditions, same as they did when the girls entered the auditorium. Thanks, MNET editors! Thmeditors. We learn that Woolim manages Lovelyz, while WM manages Oh My Girl (their rivals), though now in 2023 I think we all know that Oh My Girl kind of won that particular fight. Apparently the girls view each other as rivals? ...? But do they, though?

Woolim is up first. They take a moment finding their places, and we learn that Eunbi is their leader/mom who brought them medicine and Japanese phrase books. What a good unnie!

Left to right: Suyun, Eunbi, Sohee, Chaewon

Kim Chae Won (김채원), age 17 now: Le Sserafim wearing a short sleeved white top, tie Kim So Hee (김소희), age 14 now: Rocket Punch wearing pigtails Kim Su Yun (김수윤), age 17 now: Rocket Punch wearing short sleeved black top Kwon Eun Bi (권은비), age 22 now: soloist wearing a tie, cardigan

Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: Ah-Choo by Lovelyz / Bad by Infinite

My thoughts: It’s always awkward when you have one member who’s 14 (and looks 12) and one who is 22 (and looks 25) -- they’re always going to sort of make one another look bad. But overall, this is actually a really good audition. I watched it multiple times and didn’t pick up on any mistakes or bad moments. All four of them had kpop acceptable vocals that didn’t stand out as fantastic or terrible. Chaewon’s a tiny bit shaky on the high notes, but they are really high notes. Little Sohee’s dancing was less powerful than the others’, even during Ah-Choo, but that’s fine considering she’s so much younger. I did think they looked a tiny bit silly doing that super powerful choreography to Bad while still dressed to perform Ah-Choo, but the goal was to display different skills and they did that. Knowing how deep the hole can go, I think I would have given all these girls As or Bs, maybe a C for little Sohee. It’s hard to know for sure since it’s not always clear what is live singing and what’s the backup track.

The MNET Edit is fair. The rest of the trainees appreciate their performance.

Backstage, Lee Chaeyeon says Eun Bi caught her eye the most. I actually noticed Suyun a lot too, but her time will come later.

The judges compliment their synchronization and ask to see them perform something else. They launch into a second performance, which seems equally well rehearsed. I don’t recognize the song off hand (if any of you do, feel free to let me know!) but they do a great job with it. Dance Bae says, in an almost irritated way, “why haven’t you debuted yet? You seem ready to me.” I think she’s speaking mainly to Eunbi, who smiles wide at the compliment. We won’t hear their grades until later, but I’ll tell you their grades now, because I just love subverting the MNET editing monkeys. Kwon Eun Bi gets an A, ChaeWon gets a B, and the other two get Cs. Maybe I’m just biased toward Suyun from knowing her now? It’s hard to say. But I still think a B would have been fairer for her.

Next, WM Entertainment. The girls come out on stage and the judges immediately tell Chaeyeon she looks familiar. She acknowledges having been on Sixteen with Somi (2015) and on Kpop Star 3 (2013). She says that this time she really wants to show us what she’s got. The other girls are excited to see her dance.

Trainees:

Lee Seung Hyeon (이승현), 17 now known as Riina in H1-Key, in the black shirt Lee Chae Yeon (이채연), 18, currently a soloist, in the pink shirt Cho Yeong In (조영인), 16, in the white Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: Shower, originally by Becky G

My thoughts: All three of them do well dancing wise. It’s not surprise that Chaeyeon would dance well, and she certainly outshines the other two, but Seunghyeon holds her own and Yeongin doesn’t look bad. I think vocally, Seunghyeon does the best job, but Chae’s belted note sounded good. Yeongin’s vocals were noticeably shaky compared to the other two’s. I think I would have given Yeongin a B or C, Chae would get an A, and Seunghyeon an A or a B depending on what the dance teachers said. Overall though it was a good audition.

The MNET edit is again pretty kind. Everyone focuses on Chaeyeon, of course. When they’re done, the judges ask her to freestyle to Instruction by Jax Jones featuring Demi Lovato, and she dances in a style that’s really appropriate to the song. Everyone’s impressed. The judges announces the grades. Chaeyeon gets an A, which seems completely correct. The other two get Bs, which is ok.

The editing is setting Kwon Eun Bi and Lee Chaeyeon up to be rivals. Surely, they must hate each other, if they’re both good dancers and their agencies are on the same street in Seoul!

In the audience, Kojima Mako says to her friend, “It’s so amazing that I’m not even nervous anymore. Our friend Juri says to Shinozaki Ayana, “I feel like I’m just watching a TV show.” Me too, Juri! We stan a relatable queen. But yeah, it’s more of the whole “the terrible, silly, weak Japanese girls are in awe of the mighty, powerful Korean girls” narrative that MNET’s editing monkeys keep pushing.

Auditions 4 and 5: The Very Pretty Girls

Next, we have the introduction of two Very Pretty Girls: Kim Min Ju (김민주), age 17 from Urban Works, in her colorful striped shirt, and Kang Hye Won (강혜원), age 18, from 8D Creative in a blue mini dress with a big pink and white collar. The other trainees think that these two girls look like actresses, so maybe it’s no surprise that now (2023), they are in fact both actresses. I renew my complaint from earlier that I don’t understand why certain girls are considered prettier than the others, and remind you that this isn’t an insult to them, as they are certainly very pretty, but more of a compliment to the others, who I view as equally pretty. Isn’t Kwon Eun Bi just as pretty? Is she not? I don’t understand. I will be saying that a lot in these recaps so I guess I’ll just call it my Particularly Pretty Problem (PPP) and leave it at that.

Agency: 8D Creative

Trainee: Kang Hye Won

In a pre-show interview, they ask her such questions as “were you always pretty?” and she says that yes, she is. This is the part of kpop I like least. She says that the position she wants is 청정 or purity. I guess I understand that -- there is usually a sexy member of a given group (see: Kai in Exo, Hyunjin in SKZ, Joy in Red Velvet, Soojin in G-Idle) and there’s usually a funny or approachable one (see: Chanyeol, Changbin, Wendy, Yuqi), so I could see there being a sort of pure or extra cute one. It’s not as crazy as it might sound.

Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: You and I by IU (2011)

My Thoughts: Well, that was pretty terrible. There’s room at the bottom, but she barely dances and she only kind of sings. The singing is breathy, faint, and pitchy. The dancing is half hearted and my grandma could have done this choreo even after her stroke. She has negative stage presence. Also, to me, she always looks confused. There’s something about either her facial features or her expression that make her look bewildered. I’m sorry if she’s your favorite. She may have charming personality traits that I don’t know about yet. She’s just not particularly skilled in either singing or dancing. She should get an F.

If you can’t handle me saying that about this audition, then I really suggest that you just not read any more of my recaps because I’m going to say stuff like this about bad auditions. I don’t care if she’s “pretty”. I don’t care if she has gone on to be successful. Other people -- Eun Bi, for example -- are pretty and they can also sing and dance. I believe that if you make your living as a singer and/or dancer, you should be able to sing and/or dance.

The MNET edit:They don’t do her any favors, zooming in on her non-dancing and focusing on the judges’ reactions to her shaky high notes and nearly stationary body. When she’s done, she stands there with this look on her face, which is the way I always remember this girl looking and how I recognize her in her more recent endeavors.

Dance Bae says, “Purity is all you have. F.” Done and done.

Agency: Urban Works

Trainee: Kim Min Ju

Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: No Matter What by BoA

My Thoughts: This was so much better than Hyewon’s audition. For one thing, she actually danced. She showed a variety of different actual dance steps, including legs, body, arms, head, face. She danced! The singing was extremely faint and I think a lot of it was the backing track, but this was leagues ahead. Without being able to clearly discern her singing, it’s so hard to tell, but I think I’d put her in C territory.

The MNET edit:They show the judges adjusting their ear buds and looking bored or put off, and focused on a part where she dropped into a squat and looked a little awkward. But that was just the dance move! This was originally done as a partner dance and it was adapted for a single person (I think? Unless it was just made new, whole cloth?), so maybe they should have just cut that squatting part out -- it’s not her fault. They also show a girl in the audience looking bored (maybe cut in from a totally different performance). It’s not kind. Minju, you deserved better.

They give her a D. I don’t know. Seems like they’re punishing her for being pretty. But maybe the singing was worse than I thought.

I’m not going to comment on it every single time it happens, but just assume that after every performance there will be a reaction/voice over from a Japanese girl saying, “If that didn’t get an A, I’m going to get an F for sure” or “the Korean girls are so much better than me” or something like that. It’s constant.

Auditions 6 and 7: The Punching Bags

These next two auditions are shown mainly to mock these trainees. Neither of them do a stellar job, but both deserved a little better than what they got.

We see a scrap of the audition from Shin Su Hyun (신수현), a 22 year old represented by FAVE Entertainment.

She’s performing Playing with Fire by Blackpink. I watched her full audition, but we only see a little bit of it in the actual show. She started off with rapping, which the edit doesn’t show; I think she’s going for a rap position, not a singing one, which helps excuse why her singing was weak. The dancing wasn’t great -- she was a beat or two ahead of the choreography (something I only noticed because I know the song so well). But I thought she at least had charisma. I think a C wouldn’t have been out of line, but I don’t know the rubric. The edit replays a part where she sort of does a chicken-dance wiggle during the chorus when that’s not quite what the choreo is like, but I had to go back and rewatch the original to see that the original choreo is different. The PWF choreography is kind of weird -- I’ve always thought so. What’s with the dogpaddling in the chorus, or that weird “drawing a line with your finger” at the end? Anyway, my point is that the edit makes her look even worse than she actually did.

They intersperse her audition with the audition of Cube’s Han Cho Won -- she’s only 15 here, but you may now know her as one of the most popular members of Cube’s youngest girl group, Lightsum. The edit here make her look like a complete idiot. If you watch her full audition, you’ll see that, yeah, it’s not great, but there are some extenuating circumstances.

The biggest problem is that the song was a poor choice. Red by Hyuna is a HYUNA song. Like a third of the lyrics are “red is Hyuna”, and there’s a whole 10 second segment where Hyuna just sits on the ground and flirts with the camera. It’s all about being sexy and having a nice body, specifically a nice butt, and the choreography is very core/waist/butt centered. It seems that Chowon just can’t quite move her body that way, and at 15, maybe just isn’t up the task of embodying the universal sex symbol that is a full-grown Hyuna. I don’t know who is!

Anyway, I think Chowon should have done Pepe by CLC, assuming she was going to stick to a song by a Cube artist. The song has a fun retro feel and it would have been more appropriate for a 15 year old who doesn’t know how to twerk yet. Or maybe Pretty Pretty by Pentagon -- I bet Hui would have helped her remix something for the show if the agency had asked him to -- he's a good sunbae -- and the song has quirky, funny choreography that might have made the judges smile. Sigh.

Poor Chowon -- it wasn’t a great audition, but I blame whoever either told her to do this song, or allowed her to do it if it was her choice. The whole point of having management is to get smart people to help you make decisions like this, especially when you’re fifteen. But that’s asking too much from Cube, I guess. Kahi even says that she had been at Cube briefly and that they don’t teach you anything, which checks out. Cube is just the WORST.

Both Chowon and Suhyun get a lecture on needing to learn (or review) the basics and both get a D. It’s not totally unfair -- it’s just that I know that there is so much worse to come.

More discussion about how the Japanese girls aren’t really given any training and just learn to perform by watching their sempai/sunbae/seniors. Dance Bae says it’ll be fun to watch them grow.

And now it’s time to see the AKB48 girls perform. We see that they’ve changed out of their entrance outfits -- those plaid monstrosities -- into different outfits, most of which are also monstrosities.

Audition 8: Get You!

See, it's a play on words because the song is called Get You and also MNET wants to get them

Agency: AKB48

Trainees: Oda Erina 21, and Nakano Ikumi 17

Erina, left, with the shorter hair and Ikumi, right, in the blue shorts.

The judges comment that Erina is known for her singing and Ikumi for her dancing.

Link to full audition on Youtube

Song: Get You! by Morning Musume (a different J-pop idol group)

My Thoughts: Well, this wasn’t terrible. They do sort of take turns either singing or dancing, and rarely do both at the same time. The choreography they do is mostly extremely simple and not super well synced, but they do throw themselves into it. They have a lot of energy, which I know is important in J-pop. If you asked me, “which of these is the singer and which of these is the dancer?” I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But neither of them assaulted my ears. Judged by J-pop standards, this was great. By K-pop standards, not great. I’d give them a C and see how they do learning the choreography for the signal song.

The MNET edit: The edit makes it seem much worse than it really was. Honestly, it wasn’t that horrific. They were more fun to watch than Kang Hye Won for sure.

The judges ask Ikumi to freestyle dance, which she agrees to with an English “Yes!” They play “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift. She tries to do a sort of interpretive dance thing, and I appreciate that she at least tried. She has lovely body lines and seems to understand rhythm and tone, anyway. They keep showing her trip a little on her platform sneakers. God, those things look hard to dance in. After a bit she seems to give up, pulling her hair over her face, and the judges call it. Her AKB-mates are impressed, but the judges aren’t.

Dance Bae compliments her on her energy, but says she seems to not know what to do with it. “I’m not sure that the fact that you danced to the beat warrants you having won first place in a large competition,” Dance Bae scolds. “If you keep continuing like this, you won’t ever be able to perform on stage.”

Ikumi gets a D, and Erina gets a C. We don’t actually see that, though -- I had to look it up. It’s not part of the narrative to see that neither of them got an F, I guess.

Next, we have a mini montage of various girls, especially Japanese girls, saying that Dance Bae is the scariest judge, known for her terrifying line: “You really want to be a singer?!?” Which I think is a fair question! So many people get into the Idol Biz because they want to be actors or tv hosts -- I wish there was a pipeline to celebrity for people like that that didn’t involve them humiliating themselves on a show like this.

Auditions 9 and 10: What’s Your Name and Knock Knock

We cut to another audition, in progress, with a caption that seems to imply that this is just a preview (“Coming up…”) but no, this is the actual audition, as much of it as we’re going to see.

AKB: What’s Your Name?

Here’s the original song being performed by 4Minute. Things were different in 2013 -- this was before Catch Me If You Can by SNSD came out so nobody yet knew that women were actually able to do intense choreo, I guess. But even for 2013 standards, What’s Your Name has easy choreo. I mean, it barely has choreo aside from just sort of bending over and displaying your butt. Also, the lyrics are three quarters “what’s your name/ ireumi mwoyeyo?” So it’s a really good choice for a rookie group!

Here’s their audition.

Left to right: Manami, Ayana, Chiyori, Miho, Shinobu

Ichikawa Manami, 18, in the blue top, red skirt Shinozaki Ayana, 22, in the light blue skirt Nakanishi Chiyori, 23, in the pink fluffy skirt Miyazaki Miho, 24, in the sparkly top, navy skirt Mogi Shinobu, 21, in the turquoise skirt, fluffy blue sleeves

We just met Shinobu earlier, when she was talking about how scary Dance Bae is, got her name wrong, an apologized profusely. She's our living meme and we love her. We also almost met Miho; she was the one who knows how to write in Korean.

My thoughts: Oh no. There’s something so incongruous about someone in a sparkly cupcake skirt and Mary Jane shoes doing a pelvic thrust. These outfits look like… Ok maybe this is a deep cut but do you know those fashion plate toys? I had my cousin’s old one and I was obsessed. It was like stencils, but you had a head and a top part and a bottom part, and you’d choose one of each and then stencil over it to make a picture you could color.

That’s what these outfits look like. Like someone went nuts with a fashion plate and glitter glue and then just brought it to life.

Left to right: Shinobu, Chiyori, Ayana, Manami, Miho

It’s so hard to pay attention to their performance in those outfits. And the shoes! Those shoes I noticed behind Chaewon earlier are Shonbu's! And I’m obsessed with Ayana’s red-shoe-and-patterned-socks combo.

Also Miho’s and Shinobu’s… furry… peplums? And the quilted skirts? And how none of the tops seem to go with any of the bottoms, even though they appear to be dresses? Question Mark? It’s so bizarre to me. What. Is. Happening. Each dress is awful alone, they’re worse together, they're even worse with the shoes, and they’re the worst in the context of this particular song, which is meant to be sort of swaggy hiphop.

When I try to focus on the actual singing and dancing, there isn’t much there to judge. The song itself is kind of a nothing-burger tune wise and there’s hardly any choreo to speak of. They have energy, I’ll give them that. No one strikes an obviously horrendously bad note or falls over. They manage to do what they’re doing in some reasonably high heeled shoes, and they’re singing a song that is at least mostly in Korean. It’s clearly not up to the standard expected from debuted Kpop artists. I feel like I’d have to see them in normal clothes to be able to really judge. None of them stands out as better or worse than the rest. I give them an E for effort and I’d probably give them all Ds. They were still better than Hyewon.

Dance Bae gives Chiyori and Miho both Ds, and the rest get Fs. (We hear Dance Bae saying that they all get Ds, but the on screen caption says otherwise, and my internet sleuthing agrees with the on screen caption.) I think, watching it back, that Chiyori and Miho got Ds for just taking on a big role in the performance and trying that little bit harder. Miho seemed to be the main vocal, sort of, and Chiyori was the center.

Ok, let’s take a peek at some of the youngest -48 girls, singing the Japanese version of Knock Knock by Twice.

Asai Yuka is 14 and from SKE48. We met her earlier when she walked in with Jurina. Umeyama Cocona is also 14 and is from NMB48.

Left to right: Cocona with the big bow, Yuka with the blue ribbon

My thoughts: Aww, they just little babies! They probably practiced by themselves in a hallway or something for a few hours with no help. There’s not much to judge here. They’re obviously underskilled for this show and would have to be given Fs but it’s not their fault. I’m not going to make fun of a couple of 14 year olds who signed up for an adventure, not knowing how hard it would be. I sense tears in the future.

I wrote that, and then watched Dance Bae give them both Fs and say, at a pre-show meeting, “I think these girls will cry a lot while they’re here.” Perhaps she’d be pleased to know that poor Cocona withdrew from the show before the second evaluation even took place! There's also some potential back story here. Per reddit:

From what I’ve heard (and I’m not sure how credible it is), Jurina and Yuuka planned to perform together for the first evaluation, but the producers wanted Jurina to do a solo, so Cocona got pulled from the NMB group [that performs Funny People] and her and Yuuka did this. That may explain why they did…particularly bad, to the point where it looks like they don’t even know the song.

That does sound like something MNET would do, and it also would explain how these two girls ended up in a performance together despite being in different groups (SKE48 and NMB48), giving it the ring of truth. So I'm going to be even more sparing of my criticism of the girls. They do come across as unprepared, but I think that's just because.... well, they were, through no fault of their own.

In any case, Cocona is one of the Japanese trainees who withdraws early in the process. It's probably for the reasons we'd imagine -- flying back and forth from Japan is taxing, and she's young enough to need to go to school still. She probably just wanted to go through so much stress just to get insulted and yelled at. Can't blame her!

Since we’re not going to see much of Cocona again, let’s find out what happened to her after she withdrew from the show. She went back to NMB48 and continued performing with them for a few more years, graduating at a special concert on March 26, 2022. She did some modeling for magazines in 2020, so she might still be pursuing that. Here’s her instagram -- she has 95,000 followers and seems to post influencer-esque content with lots of hashtags.

Ganbatte, Cocona! Happy trails and much success to you!

10 auditions down, about 30 to go! Thanks for reading so far -- feel free to do all the things: like, reblog, comment, share, blah blah blah. Tune in next time when we continue the auditions, and stay warm, my friends!

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