Let’s take a moment away from me talking about overseas members I am not so familiar with! I’m kind of obsessed with Shoot Sign right now, both as a song and in terms of the drama it represents. I’ll save you my thoughts regarding my watching the 1986 TBS drama, Tenshi no Uppercut about a girl who takes up boxing to defend herself against school bullies, and I’ll also save you my thoughts on 2022’s Doronjo, the plot of which still resonates for me, and whilst we’ve already spoken about Kojima Haruna and Miyawaki Sakura, both of whom are at the heart of this MV, I realise we have yet to mention Team 4 member, Iriyama Anna!



Born in ‘strawberry country,’ Chiba in 1995, Annin passed auditions for AKB in 2010 and debuted as a member of the kenkyuusei that year in March. Just over a year later, in July, she was announced as a new member of Oba Mina’s Team 4 at the Seibu Dome concert, appearing later in the revival of Boku no Taiyo in the theatre. Both Annin and Team 4 quickly won over the audience! You can see her in the most fondly remembered line up of the team in the Hashire! Penguin MV, and whilst she was transferred to Team A in the 2012 Tokyo Dome Shuffle, at the behest of fellow former Team 4 member and fresh lemon, Ichikawa Miori, and the original team was disbanded in October, Annin continued to win hearts, appearing in the media senbatsu for 2012’s summer single, Manatsu no Sounds Good!, a single I remember excitedly pre-ordering and then feeling very embarrassed about because of the cover.

Annin remained in Team A for ten years, almost her entire career in the group, which I am quietly amazed by. In April, she was one of the members selected to perform in Washington D.C., and this, dear friends, is the reason Annin is such a significant figure in my memory of the group at the time. Though I never got to go to the Paris, New York, or Washington concerts, the names of members who were marginally popular but not significant heavy hitters at the time became ingrained on my heart because they were our AKB; Iriyama Anna and Team 4 became the AKB we felt we had most in common with because we felt included in the celebration. A cursory glance at the remaining videos still present on youtube reveals the enthusiasm with which overseas fans and Japanese students studying abroad committed hard.

Upon her return, Annin was selected as a member of AnRiRe, joining Sashihara for her second solo single, Ikuji Nashi Masquerade. The year after, in 2013, she appeared in the media senbatsu for Sayonara Crawl, the beginning of what became a pattern of her on-off inclusion in the senbatsu for singles continuing until Jabaja in 2018. Both Iriyama and AKB48 were at the height of their popularity during these moments.

In 2014, during a handshake event in Iwate Prefecture, a 24-year-old man, Umeta Satoru, smuggled in a foldable handsaw modified by attaching boxcutter knife blades to the side, and, driven by what he described as envy during the trial later, attempted to stab both Annin and Kawaei Rina, succeeding in wounding both girls and a member of staff who attempted to intervene. The event left everyone stunned and horrified, and, as with the attack on shoppers in Akihabara in 2008, I remember feeling a sense of dull disbelief, a feeling that I had been an idiot for papering over the cracks with feelings for idols, that the world was a dangerous place, and, for a moment, I had turned away and forgotten this. In all the excitement, I sobered suddenly. For a while after, I stopped listening to idol music.

I don’t know if this was the right thing to do, there was a lot going on at that point for me. Maybe Kawaei Rina felt the same as she announced her graduation shortly afterwards, saying that she understandably could no longer attend handshake events after what had happened. We were all left in a kind of stupor, and it felt like AKB, which had grown so big up until that point, began to diminish itself slightly, to recoil, as if fearful of what more attention might bring. It made all of us question what we were doing. Yet if Annin ever felt like that, she never seemed to express it in public, remaining in the group, pushing ever forward with her dreams until her graduation in 2022

Annin is still active, you guys! She has a popular youtube channel in which she blogs about life in Japan and Mexico, one of her videos from 2023 is even about lucha libre, and she continues to appear in TV and movies! I buried the lede with this one, I feel, as she hardly appears in the Shoot Sign video, but I’d been wanting to talk about Annin for a long time



Every time I write one of these entries, I get closer to the point where I only have new members left to talk about, and that feels a little daunting. Next week: back to the anniversary single hype!

Title: Fresh Salt
Universe: AKB48
Prompt: not wanting the group to end because then heterosexuality kicks in
Character(s): Kashiwagi Yuki, Yokoyama Yui
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: It was hard to think of Yokoyama as being in her 30s, because to do so was to accept her own age, to accept the decisions she had made, the relationships that had never happened, the stages she had danced, danced, danced her heart out on. If there had been two of her, if she had been twins, one to embrace being an idol, one to enter womanhood, wouldn’t that have been kinder?
Length: 951 words
Author's Notes: Merry Christmas in July! #8. HAPPY BIRTHDAY YUKIRIN-SAMA!! 🎉 🍰 🎂 🎁 💖 🎊 Written for Teacher Teacher Fes and also bleak idol bingo. also: external link.



( Fresh Salt )

Title: From Frederica to You
Universe: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Mahou Sensei Negima!
Prompt: '—where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity'
Character(s): Konoe Konoka, Sakurazaki Setsuna, Frederica Bernkastel
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: “No one attends to this shrine anymore,” the woman announced, jumping gracefully down from the wall. “The deity here is sleeping.”
Length: 580 words
Author's Notes: Merry Christmas in July! #7. also: external link.



( From Frederica to You )

I am unprepared for this era in a way that is surprisingly exciting when it comes to my reading about members such as Patalee Prasertteerachai and groups such as BNK48, but it is maybe not as exciting for you, the reader, who maybe are expecting me to have some authority on the matter! Alas! I have none.



I have known about Bangkok’s BNK48 for a while now but it wasn’t until this year, during lonely lunchbreaks at my current job, craving some kind of connexion with the things I love as part of my daily routine, that I found myself watching a handful of BNK videos. Their 2021 cover of NMB48’s Warota People is probably my favourite, as it makes less sense than the original in an especially charming way, and the now sadly graduated Chayanan Jedpeenongruamjai, a CGM48 trainee, is probably my favourite member in that video. I don’t want to wish to mischaracterise Thailand’s culture with my lack of understanding, but I find the manner and style of the presentation of BNK48 to be very affirming. I’m writing this entry just at the end of June and the beginning of July, so I’m sure you can join the dots.

Patalee, nicknamed ‘Hoop’ by friends and/or management, I’m unsure which, had been with BNK for roughly a year when Warota People, the lead promotional video of the group’s third album of the same name was released. Already a potential candidate for the reality TV show, Idol Paradise, she didn’t follow through with it having applied for BNK at the same time, and, fortunately for us, passing the auditions. From early spring a year later, she began to appear more regularly in the group’s line-up, making it to the ‘front member’ selection of eleventh single, Sayonara Crawl, a cover of the AKB original, and finding herself promoted to Team BIII and with a concurrent position in Team NV a few months after, a position she held until 2023.

Patalee rose to prominence pretty quickly, you guys! With a number of B sides in which she featured as centre and a W centre with CGM48’s Vithita Srasreesom for a version of Kibouteki Refrain, she has more often than not, appeared primarily on the group’s covers, those releases I imagine that, due to familiarity, have the most crossover appeal for international audiences. A mere handful of months after gaining her official membership of BIII, she was made the group’s captain, becoming the overall captain of BNK48 just a few months later, in March 2024. Although this is a role she has now relinquished, it feels like there has been a definite push to keep Patalee prominent in BNK, so it should come as no real surprise that she was selected for the senbatsu of AKB’s upcoming sixty-sixth single—that attempt at crossover appeal was clearly the first step in what is happening now!

Friends, throughout these past few months, I have developed a soft spot for BNK. I don’t think I will follow them too closely, but they do inspire in me a sense of camaraderie in that, despite the appeal to fans of Japanese pop culture, they feel like they are striving hard to become their own thing also. I’m really excited to see what part Patalee will play in AKB’s new single!