NMB48 Janken results and 5th single sub-units

Well a lot of things for NMB48 have recently happened and been announced. Here are some of the most recent.

First off NMB48 have done their group janken tournament which decided the six members of the group will participate in the AKB48 Janken tournament on September 18th. The girls are:

Team N: Kotani Riho & Shinohara Kanna
Team M: Kawakami Rena, Takano Yui, Hikawa Ayame & Yamagishi Natsumi

Hikawa Ayame was one of the girls from NMB48 that not only participated in that year's AKB48 Janken tournament but placed in the senbatsu so she seems to be pretty lucky. Hopefully she will be able to do the same this year as well.


Then we finally have the list of sub-units for the upcoming single, which is still untitled, and which girls will be in which sub-unit.

難波鉄砲隊其之壱 ("Namba Teppoutai Sono Ichi") (8) Kotani Riho, Yagura Fuuko, Yogi Keila, Yabushita Shu, Murakami Ayaka, Hikawa Ayame, Matsuda Shiori, Kato Yuuka

Akagumi (12) Watanabe Miyuki, Fukumoto Aina, Ogasawara Mayu, Yoshida Akari, Takano Yui, Yamaguchi Yuki, Okita Ayaka, Shinohara Kanna, Yamagishi Natsumi, Yamauchi Tsubasa, Hayashi Momoka, Akazawa Hono

Shirogumi (12) Yamamoto Sayaka, Yamada Nana, Jonishi Kei, Jo Eriko, Kondo Rina, Murase Sae, Shimada Rena, Kushiro Rina, Mita Mao, Azuma Yuki, Muro Kanako, Yamamoto Hitomi

So glad to see Nana return to Shirogumi. I missed her being with Sayaka last single for the Shirogumi song. Of course I have favorites in all three of the groups so this does not help me figure out if there is a version of the single I would feel fine skipping out on. That will have to wait until information about the DVD content comes out.

I am interested in the Namba Teppoutai Sono Ichi group, partly because there are some favorites, like Keila and Shu, in that group. But also because it is a group of girls that are not the most popular members so this looks like it could be a could chance for them to shine and rise in popularity some.


Also Team N's original stage has been given a new start date of August 19th and it is titled Shonichi.

I am really excited about this as it seems like such an important step for an AKS group to start getting their own stages for their teams. Especially as the songs will be for the members of the team and whenever another team covers the stage they will always be compared to those who did it first.

Get ready for Janken!

The date for the annual AKB48 Janken tournament has been announced for September 18th, taking place at Nippon Budokan. All team members of AKB48 will be in the tournament for that date while the AKB48 KKS, and the 48 sister groups will have preliminary rounds to send a select amount of their members to participate. The break down for those groups are 8 from SKE48, 6 from NMB48 and 3 from HKT48 and 1 KKS from AKB48.

This tournament is one of the big events of the year for AKS as unlike the senbatsu election that lets the fans decide which girls are the most popular and get to be in the senbatsu group for a single the janken (rock-paper-scissors game) leaves it all to chance. Each girl gets a single chance against another and moves on in the tournament until the one lucky enough to have beaten all her opponents in the tournament gets to be the center girl for the next AKB48 single. This way girls that may be unknown or never in the front get a chance to do just that. And unlike the senbatsu election the results are unpredictable.

IIRC, last year NMB48 was only able to send five members so it is nice that they get to send one extra this year. Especially since they managed to get two members into the janken senbatsu last year. And they will be having their own janken tournament for their group to decide who those six are on June 30th. So it will not be a long wait to know which NMB48 girls will be participating in the tournament. I hope girls that do not normally get pushed get in like last year as well.