#murakawa bibian

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I desperately need context but please nobody give it to me

[jpidols]

[boysplanetrecaps]

The Great Produce 48 Rewatch: Ep 2, Signal Song [Part 2]

Hey there, National Producer! (That's you, you cutey-pie!)

When we left off with this ridiculous(ly important) project, we were watching the trainees rehearse for the "signal song," Nekko-ya. In this post, we'll finish off talking about their rehearsal period. It's a comparatively shorter post. Woot woot!

We pick up with the girls in F class, who have noticed that the letter F, in the mirror, looks like a Korean double K (ㅋ) . Used alone, ㅋ can mean “LOL” or “ha ha”, so they jump up and down and laugh seeing the equivalent of “LOLOLOLOL” on their backs. 

They’re in the middle of joking around when Dance Bae comes in. Immediately, they quiet down. They’re all scared of her, but here’s the thing about Dance Bae -- she’s not a total psychopath. She just has no patience for untalented girls using the show as a springboard for their acting career. If you try hard, and listen to her, she’ll treat you with basic kindness. 

She notes that most of the girls are Japanese and tells them they’ll have to work hard. They try the chorus, working on their synchronized dance, and she says that they’re doing better than the C class, which makes them feel great. She congratulates them on how hard they’re working, saying “I thought you’d be a mess since you’re F-class. But you’re doing a lot better than expected, so, fighting!!”

I love how Ahn Ye Won, the YG KPlus model, looks like an actual giant in this photo. She’s only 5’7! 

A lot of this segment focuses on Chiba Erii, aka Sailor Mercury, second from the left in the photo above, shown in what is apparently some kind of glitch mode. She does not know how to sing, and she doesn’t seem to enjoy learning to dance. A lot of these girls find this process difficult but still seem… I don’t know, interested? But Erii is barely there. I’m not accusing her of laziness. I’m saying that she’s so miserable that she’s checking out. It’s kind of uncomfortable to watch. One really wonders why she came on the show. 

She doesn’t normally have such a full upper lip, so maybe she was having some sort of allergic reaction or something here. That might explain why she was so out-of-it. 

They dance in a group, and Dance Bae notices how disconnected Erii is. She asks Erii to dance alone, and Erii, fully enmeshed in this nightmare from which awakening isn’t possible, complies. It gives off vibes like someone should have edited in really loud sneaker noises. It only takes a few moments for Dance Bae to stop her, saying that Erii is just as bad as Sohye (from Produce101 -- a girl who obviously just went on the show to launch her acting career and accidentally won). Dance Bae tells her to work harder if she ever wants to get out of F class, and Erii begins to cry, hiding her face in her shirt. 

The other girls don’t seem to have much sympathy for Erii. 

Left to right: Yabuki Nako; Bibian; and Tanaka Miku. We haven’t really met Nako or Miku before, because they sang the Banana song together that was just too hot for MNET!

Here’s another shot of them from earlier in the scene so you can see what they look like from another angle. Left to right, this is Bibian, Nako, Natsume, and Miku.

Anyway, to go back to what I was saying about the girls not seeming to have much sympathy for Erii as she’s crying. The look on especially Bibian’s face is very much… not… sympathetic. I am not saying anything bad about any of these girls. I have no idea if Bibian and Erii hate each other. I have no idea if Bibian even had this expression on her face at that moment, in reaction to Erii crying. What I do know is that if there is animosity among AKB48 girls -- and there definitely, objectively, factually is -- it is caused by the AKB48 system itself, which is (or at least was) designed in such a way that animosity runs through the whole project like fudge ripples through a fudge ripple. They’re always competing in the General Elections (or at least, they were doing so at the time this aired), and always competing for who will sing on the A side or even a B side of a single. I’ll talk more about this later on with regards to gravely-voiced Noe and some rumors about her, but there are lots of stories about AKB girls physically attacking each other, or hiring other people to do so, and/or starting malicious rumors, really nasty stuff like that. I just have to be glad that the worst of that seems to be in the past, and that for whatever reason, you don’t tend to hear about stuff like that in Kpop these days. I also think it’s sweet that when put in an environment where people tend to help each other and cooperate, the AKB girls very quickly adjust and begin to adapt that perspective. It shows that at heart, most people really want to be friends. At least, I’d like to believe that that’s true. 

Ok, back to it. Erii crying kicks off a montage of other F-class girls crying. They know that if they don’t move up from F-class, they won’t even be allowed to stand on stage during the big performance of Naekkoya. Honestly, they get to me, because most of them, I know, are working hard and it has to be so stressful to be so young, so far from home, working so hard on so little sleep. Bibian’s comments might be the saddest: “I can’t even be in Class F. I’m so much worse than that.” As if she’s heard what they said in their interviews, Dance Bae tells them, with unexpected softness, “Let’s all go up to the higher classes. I really want to see you all perform on stage…. Let’s pull the A graders down! Let’s go. Fighting!” See, I told you from the start that she’s not the psychopath around here. 

Then there’s a really cute montage of the F-class girls working together and trying to encourage each other. A Japanese girl offers Hyewon a sweatshirt, pantomiming “being cold”, and Hyewon understands and accepts it.  Matsuoka Natsumi interviews that the Korean trainees came over to talk to her when she was crying. 

I'm pretty sure that that's Ahn Ye Won, the YGK+ model, comforting her.

As the Love Theme from Produce 48 plays, they all say that they’re working the hardest because they know they have the furthest to go. Even Erii is working hard! I’m here sitting on my cat paw cushion shouting at the computer screen. FIGHTING, girls!! FIGHTING!!! Also please get some sleep!!!

Heading Into the Final Eval - 1:36:53

It’s the night before they will record their individual performances of Naekkoya for their final evaluation. Some of the girls are lying in bed, practicing the lyrics and hand movements. Others, like Takeuchi Miyu’s Korean roommates, are still practicing, leading her to wonder out loud, in slow Korean, “Don’t the Korean trainees sleep?” Sakura notes the same thing, that they seem to just keep practicing instead of sleeping, so she’s doing the same. She’s embarrassed that seven years after her own debut, she’s not nearly as good as the other girls. But it’s obvious that part of the problem is that she’s completely exhausted. Girls! Listen to your unnie! You need to sleep or you’re going to have a complete brain collapse tomorrow! 

Choi Yeonsoo, one of the YGK+ models, tries to help Minami, aka Sailor Mars/Lemon-chan’s mom, who looks like she’s about to drop. She’s only 14, for heaven’s sake.

Yeonsoo uses little drawings to try to communicate.

Side note: to any of my lovies who are studying for something, remember that your brain is part of your body and if you don’t take care of your body with enough sleep and stuff, your brain also won’t work well and it’ll be hard to learn. Please try to get some sleep! Your health is important.

They are all working together and trying to help each other. Most of them want to make it to A class (or stay in A class) so that they could be in the center. As if it isn’t obviously going to be Sakura. 

Ok, that’s it for this post! In the next one, we’ll begin talking about the grade reassignments. See you then!

[flipnot]

[kpopmultifan]

[J-Pop] New girl group CANDY TUNE has released a set of artists photos ahead of their upcoming debut.

[jimpluff]

Former HKT48 idol Bibian Murakawa at the Evangelion x CASETiFY installation in Shinjuku [x]

[ujuro]

I missed that like a week ago queen murakawa bibian announced she’s debuting in a new idol group under the same agency who has fruits zipper the group who went super viral last year. good for her

Also she slays

[hoseyuka]

⌗ BIBIAN, MURAKAWA BIBIAN PACKS

⌗ HKT48 Graduate

like if you save/use

@hoseyuka on twitter

[punkish48]

HKT48 Generations

[san0ir]

 like or reblog if you save

[imvus]

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-58REjHKRr/

[jpidols]

[sun-and-yue]

48 48Group songs

My Top 12 B-Sides

#6, Make Noise by HKT48, from the single 君はメロディー

[marx48]

[jnopsd]

like or reblog if you save

[jinribaby]

⌕   MURAKAWA BIBIAN ༝   produce48/hkt48  %  ｡ ⌗  𝒊𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔! ✧⠀𓂅

҂⠀like or reblog if you use/save｡⠀ᨒ⠀🌾｡