As you may have have noticed I’ve watched a fair amount of AKBINGO even before I started these reviews so I’m just going to talk about some of the more regular events.
In the early days, and presumably beforehand, there was a game where 4 members, with mouse ears and painted on whiskers, in order to win some prize (food) had to choose from one of 5 mouse holes, corresponding to one of 5 options, the aim either to guess which of the options was either the real one or the made-up one, if all 4 got it right they got the food, if one of them got it wrong all of them already in the holes had flour dropped on them. The one I best remember was the 5th episode of ‘AKBINGO’, where the girls had to guess which of 5 women Kyoto’s mother was, complete with us learning that his mother had left him at an early age and he’d gone into entertainment in the hope of drawing her attention. (They spoke for the first time in years just before recording.) This is also the only one I remember the girls winning. I also remember for one hint the prospective mothers were all asked to pick which member they would pick as a wife for Kyoto, and one of them (possibly even the real one) picked both Itano and Kasai (both have given name of Tomomi).
Another early game had a team of 4 girls compete against a team made of Bad Boys and two others, with the game being led by Oshima Mai and a man in a dog helmet. Each team was presented with an image with something missing, and if you guessed incorrectly what was missing your thrown into a pit of flour. One two-part instead had 8 AKB members compete against 8 members of Idolling!!!, which I best remember for involving Morita Suzuka compete against Tomochin, and not only did she not realise what was wrong with Itano’s one (thinking Subway should be Moss Burger) and then thought the Hollywood sign was missing a period, (it was an L). Sometime later the AKBIdolling!!! Single was released so yeah.
There was briefly a cooking battle, where two teams of 6, in sets of 2, prepared various recipes in 3 stages, sometimes with ingredients missing and having to guess what to use, they were then judged based on how well they turned out.
AKBest 10 featured 10 members demonstrating some talent of theirs, or rather we were told what 5 of them were (Kyoto in cosplay was always 10) and then saw 4 of them actually demonstrate the skill, before a special spotlighted skill, before the number one skill. This notably led to Kuramachi Asuka, after telling her stories about a fighter/wrestler was invited, by the wrestler, to watch one of his matches (his team lost).
There was also the fashion show, where a few members (it started as 4 but later was 3) demonstrated an outfit based on a theme, and a fashion guru would then rate how fashionable they were.
Danso has happened twice to my memory, one member is dressed as a boy, and then acts out a romantic scene with another member, and then the viewing members vote for whether they liked it. My greatest memories involve Kasai look like she was about to jump Mariko and just start making out with her (to be clear, Mariko was in danso), and one girl actually broke down in tears because the boy she’d just seen on stage didn’t exist.
Dodgeball battle is fairly simple, dodgeball, between two teams. The interesting part comes with the punishments, marked on the ball, that you get when it by the ball. Possibly the most common one is the bizarre food eating punishment, where they have to eat something odd. I remember one episode had Yokoyama Yui made to eat some spicy food, and Maeda Atsuko was reminded of when she’d had to eat spicy food (along with a few others) and ran straight for the water. Yui just takes the curry and eats it like its no-one’s business, so Maeda and a few others try it, and run for the water. The other was Tomochin, who was given what I think were some little bugs. She ate them and simply declared them delicious, but I’ll go more into that in a minute.
There is also the Moe game, where a girl will act out a scene alone, in an effort to make 5 men a little ‘hot under the collar’ I seem to remember two winners, one was Kasai as a nurse, the other was Mariko in a girl Santa outfit which she removed the top of (she was still wearing clothes underneath though. If you fail you get a punishment game with this guy who makes you do something really off-putting (what varies).
We also see Shojiki Shogi/Truth Chess, where two girls compile a list of statements about the other they think is true, and choose which questions to use in an attempt to prove three of them are true using a lie detector (the other person has to deny the statement is true). I remember Acchan once getting the statement she couldn’t right Thursday in English, I don’t remember if she got away with it, but she wrote it as Sathday. Another game, Mayuyu against Kojiharu ended with Mayu causing sadness to Minegishi, Yuko and someone else, maybe Takahashi.
The last regular I’ll talk about is the fast world battle which features the girls as rival chains Boss Burger (Orange) and Kiyotaki (pink). When it first appeared they were told a character, and had to form a word of some specific category beginning with that category, another starting with its end character in another category, and then again. Later we got one which involved staring with one character, and each of 6 girls had to take as many pieces of bread, one per character, so they cleared the tray when it got to the end, one piece had a specific character attached. There were also ones where the first 5 members are given a word, and have to represent it in an image altogether using either drawing or clay; if the 6th member guesses the answer incorrectly they get sprayed with carbon dioxide. Alternatively they have to give a hint of the word and the last member guesses the answer from the hints. One time the answer was Kashiwagi Yuki (and Yukirin was first, I think she said French Kiss) I think Ichikawa then said the answer was ‘next to me’.
There are only two one-time deals I feel like talking about. The first was a segment revolving around Tomochin’s terrible sense of taste, as she claims everything she eats is delicious. Sata and Yukirin therefore took her to a Noodle shop with terrible reviews, which Sata admits he’d eaten at before, and the owner prepares two bowls of food. Yukirin says it’s awful, while Tomochin claims it’s delicious and even whips out a seal of approval.
The other was a one-episode feature of hypnotism, which featured Sae feeling like she was being pulled backwards, Mai first forgetting her name, and then giving a different name, the event I mentioned before involving Rena, her arm, and some catchphrase. Takamina was hypnotised so a food she’d always hated now tasted wonderful, even changing the taste while it was in her mouth. Maeda was hypnotised into finding a lizard cute (a fair few other girls ran away when she came close with it, she even put it on her shoulder) and then when she was snapped out of it she freaked out. And finally Mai was given an infatuation with Sayaka, before this was also done to Maeda, causing the two girls to literally fight over Sayaka.
The last thing to talk about is the prank segments, of which there have been 3. 2 of them were for New Year, though I don’t know if the middle one was, as I’ve only seen one prank from it, where Yuko brakes a guitar they’ve just been told is important Sata (Yuko was told to) and she then blames it on Takamina, who accepts the blame before Sata reveals the truth. The first one had the girls given a note from Bad Boys saying the girls were alone for the recording, while they were in fact, along with Acchan and Mariko taking bets on what members’ reactions would be to things, which Mai, helped organise. I specifically remember Yukirin being asked to read some lines from a card by one of the crew, and while he wrote his hair started slipping (he was made up especially for the prank), and Ohori Megumi’s phone falling into a bowl of ramen. This year’s New Year had Bad Boys, along with Tomochin and Mayuyu backstage, after Bad Boys announced their retirement from the show to the girls, with farewell speech and being given flowers and everything. A new comedy duo was brought in as the new hosts, while Miichan was working as a spy for the backstage lot. Among the happenings was Kasai being hostile to the new presenters, a repeat of the hair incident but using Kitahara, and the stage crew instead sweated profusely (again especially made up), with the bonus of the water making what he’d written illegible. They also had one of the duo’s tearful reunion with his estranged mother (having shown literally a complete recreation of the Kyoto’s mother story from 2 years prior) just to see how Takamina (she’s quite empathetic) would react, before announcing the guys brother was also coming, and we get an awesome shot of Sata’s silhouette before he’s revealed, and it’s here the girls realise they’re being played. Amusingly Takamina is resting on Miichans shoulder immediately before Sata reveals Miichan was working for them, causing Kasai and Takahashi to chase her round the studio.
No comments:
Post a Comment