Two weeks ago, MNL48 held its 2nd General Election in the ABS-CBN Vertis Tent, Quezon City. It was both an amazing and heart-breaking experience as you celebrate the start of a new year for the group, while at the same time, witnessing twelve members being cut from MNL48.
The event’s significance wasn’t lost on me, or probably most of the fans. None of the other 48 groups have ever incorporated eliminations in their respective Elections. The General Election was supposed to be a festival wherein fans will vote who will be in guaranteed positions in the group’s next single. Instead, MNL48 decided that it will be a matter of “life and death” for its members.
It is also one of the hardest events to write about. This is my ninth attempt over-all, and the second over-haul. The eighth version was supposed to be the ninth version, but the draft kept messing with the gallery I am putting in place to showcase the wonderful pictures shot by Sarah Jane Galit, who I brought with me to the event as our photographer. The previous articles were very emotional, and originally started as an account of the proceedings, which later changed into more reflective notes as time went by.
The biggest reason for this is because I was very emotionally affected by what happened, even though I knew beforehand what was coming. I don’t think anyone can actually prepare themselves emotionally for such an event, and I could almost consider a person to be very cold-hearted if some of those tears didn’t bother them.
There are many factors at play during the General Election. There’s the actual rankings which will directly influence the next single. There’s the indirect effect of the rankings on the kind of promotion the girls will receive which either exists only in the fans’ minds, or serve as a ready-made list for when the management becomes lazy when picking who to promote next. There is also the natural effect on the fans because their oshimen ranking high is a mental and emotional affirmation of the girl’s status. And then there are the girls, who have been put through extreme physical, mental, and emotional stress for having an Election that will directly affect their employment. If that is not enough, they’re going to have to face the music that they do not have enough fans willing to vote for them.
Because let’s face it: 48 Group General Elections have always been about who has fans with deep enough pockets and the right amount of determination to campaign on behalf of their oshimen. It is a popularity contest with a very expensive twist. The main difference is that MNL48 raised its stakes higher at a time when their actual popularity and activities cannot yet allow them to make their elimination concept run properly. Ideally, an idol needs to have activities both in and outside the group in order to secure acareer for herself. There’s the big names and there’s the not-so-big names, but during AKB48’s peak even less popular members have a gig or two that they can theoretically use to gain more fans. That’s the reason why members like Miho Miyazaki and Shizuka Oya still thrive even though they’re not prime members.
With MNL48, the promotion is skewered towards one way that the lower-ranked members generally do not have any opportunity outside of playing around with their social media accounts. While the group has events, it isn’t often that the non-senbatsu girls areutilized. So instead of a purely popularity contest, the girls who have big spenders for fans really had a huge advantage. In short, there were some girls who just didn’t stand a chance.
The day is divided into two parts: the mini-concert, and the General Election proper. The mini-concert was just like most any other MNL48 live which consists of waiting in line in a hot and humid environment two hours after the event was advertised to begin, another thirty minutes or so of waiting for the actual program to start, and two hours of happy entertainment. The main difference this time is that you can feel the energy in the performances dip slightly in spots. That slightly worried because it shows that at least emotionally, the girls are running on fumes. It is also a possible indicator that their morale is running pretty low, which, if you consider what they are going through, is quite an understatement.
That said, it is still a good performance overall. Not quite what I know they are capable of, but still notable. Sure, they performed the same songs again and again, and did not even perform some stage songs that had been staples in the past concerts and mini-concerts, but it was still a showcase of their abilities. The highlight of the event though, was the group performances of non-48 group songs. Performances that were said to have been put together by the girls themselves with the songs chosen to represent each group.
They were actually memorable, and provided a refreshing distraction to the usual flow of MNL48 lives. My personal favorite was Team L’s rendition “Titanium“, and that’s not because the team is just bursting with members I particularly liked, but because itwas a powerful performance. Team M-II might have all the “aces” and center-material girls, and Team N-IV might have the favorites, but Team L’s team-work shines through all the time.
One very important memory for me from the concert was when Kay, Dana, and Ruth stood side-by-side during the second singing of “365 Araw ng Eroplanong Papel” facing me. It would be remembered that I wrote articles about all three of them, and to see them togetherin one line in a major event made me a little too emotional than I expected. My articles about Sheki, Dana, and Ruth, were supposed to herald a new phase for this blog, where I would write about individual members especially their idol journey (my articles about Kay were….of a different sort and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t). But a lot of issues came up between “Living the Dream” and the General Election, that I wasn’t able to push through with my articles about Cess, Jan, Brei and a proper one for Kay.
In many respects, I should have pushed through with my plans, because I do believe that these girls’ life stories can serve as an inspiration to many. Following MNL48 for me has turned out to be not just about idols, or the music, or the frantic chase for new photo-cards. It is about the journey, the challenges the girls face and how they overcome them. Maybe for other fans, it’s more about the culture than the girls themselves, but to each his own. For me, knowing and understanding the life journeys of these girls add flavor to my fandom and my personal respect for them.
Obviously, knowing such intimate knowledge about their lives can also lead to being emotionally invested in them. That’s a risk that I would like to believe a lot of us know but tend to ignore anyway, but that’s a “fan” for you. The real problem comes when there’s something like eliminations involved and having your oshimen drop in rank or worse – going unranked and getting booted out of the group altogether, is going to make you see red for quite some time.
As we were waiting for the General Election proper to actually start (back in the lobby I call “Purgatory”), it’s not that hard to think that HHE will be pissing off a lot of fans here, who can just leave it altogether. That’s a real issue that I find a little too hard to just sweep under the rug, or cast aside as some very loud and entitled fans. Rage-quitting fans isn’t exactly uncommon in any fandom, but their loss is potentially bad for business. Especially since they do have a legitimate grievance against a system that is too arbitrary for anyone’s taste.
Even allowing for the fact that all these rage and firestorm both in Twitter and beyond barely results in any significant real world action, I believe that making the fans distrust the management is generally considered not good for business. It’s the same principle underlying the issue AKS is currently facing with the fallout from the Maho Yamaguchi incident. In their desire to preserve status quo, they undermined the account and welfare of an assault victim. For all their behind-the-scenes machinations, it is the defiant refusal of the victim to submit and conform that is starting to be their undoing. NGT48 basically lost almost all its sponsors and endorsements, and it seems even their home city seems to no longer trust them. NGT48 will perform again, but I doubt everybody else will see them in the same light. HHE’s upper management would do well to learn from this issue. Whenever the fans love the girls but absolutely dislike its management, it means that the project is reaching through to people but the perception of the management turns a lot of them off.
The General Election program tried to fuse both Filipino and Japanese elements. The latter featured the girls entering one by one with placard bearing their names. That’s generally what we expected, and the lay-out of the stage does mimick the visuals of AKB’s General Election. The Filipino side of the program was both the folk dance at the start and during the unveiling of the throne, and how the event was hosted. Pretty happy to see Hashtag Luke back because the fans do appreciate how he handled being the host of MNL48’s old shows.
Unlike the normal flow of the General Elections, they decided to announce the senbatsu first making Rank 48 the final announcement of the evening. If I remember it correctly, this was to increase the tension because if the program started at Rank 48, the eliminated girls would have known already that they’re not going to make it.
I personally do not like this style of announcement because it only added to the stress and distress of everyone. In what should have been the moment of “triumph” for the senbatsu and and the new center Aly, it turned into a moment of despair and sadness. Let me make this clear: the whole proceedings itself was unecessarily cruel. Playing on idols’ emotions is part of their job description, but there’s this feeling that things got a little too far.
The event was the first time I went home from an MNL48 event feeling miserable. There were far too many times during the trip home when I questioned myself why I am still here. Utimately, it’s really about the girls and the fun and enjoyment I get from watching their lives. But I could not shake the feeling that something was irreparably damaged, and that for many, it would be their last straw.
To say that the aftermath was pretty chaotic and difficult for an MNL48 fan would be an understatement. Some fans have decided to release their photo-cards at bargain prices. Some were furious and up in arms about the whole thing, and even organized a soft protest during the Graduation Live. Some have even contemplated legal action. And there were those who decided that they have had enough of HHE and left the fandom altogether.
I am personally not against the Election format per se, but my position is that it is too risky given that HHE’s top management does not have good credit with the fans in terms of trust and credibility. That is why in my first MNL48 article for the year, I reasoned that MNL48 needs to build its name first before they do some over-the-top stuff that will use up a lot of good-will. People are beginning to flock to MNL48 slowly and surely, and the way the event was handled does not inspire confidence in their handlers at all. This is the kind of event you do many years down the road, when the group has had a decent run at dominating the local idol scene.
The troubling thing is, it happened because the MNL48 management wanted it to happen, and AKS allowed it to happen. It’s all business in the end, and they were probably be betting that people will eventually move on.
Because it’s all business when you think about it. The management is in no mood to wait for the potential of the girls to be realized, they want it NOW. They want girls they vetted themselves, girls they think we’ll like, and if early reactions to some of the new ones are any indication, they were right.
But that doesn’t make us feel any better about it either. And it shouldn’t because some girls who spent a year working hard in the group just lost their places like it was a judgement on their worth. Sure, three of them will get a second chance with TGC (from Tokyo Girls Collection) as a trainee/sub-unit of MNL48, but you have to wonder why it had to happen in the first place.
The sad truth is, the fans will definitely move on, because we have to. It is a vicious cycle because although a lot of us want to hurt HHE by boycotting the shows and refusing to buy merchandise, it’s the girls who’ll get the short end of the stick. Because even if the company is bound to shoulder the member’s salaries, low revenues means cost cutting, which means a lot of things for MNL48 none of them good.
At the end of the day, it will always be about the girls and if the fans are still willing to stay and support them. With all that is happening, it’s always the girls the fans will return to. Sure, I like their music, but ultimately it’s how connected I feel with the members that will determine if I am either going to remain a fan, or just an observer.
The MNL48 management dodged a bullet on this one, but they can’t keep doing this forever. One day, their unnatural fondness for a pasabog is going to backfire. No fan truly wants reality-TV type mechanics. They just want MNL48 to run like it’s sisters: an idol group. Let them do what they are supposed to do and watch them shine.
1 Comment
CONGRATS! ^_^