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The Great Produce 48 Rewatch: Ep 4, Short Hair (AOA) Challenge

Hello and welcome back to the Great Produce 48 Rewatch Recap Thingy! We’re chugging along through our first group challenge mission. We already saw the Love Whisper team, and in the previous post, we saw the Great Peekaboo F*ckup of 2018! Now it’s time for team Short Hair. What terrible, unforgivable, barely noticeable mistake will the MNET editors pick up on this time? Only one way to find out. Let’s dive in!

We pick up at 16:53 in to episode 4. (Or use this link for it with Spanish subtitles -- best I can do right now, since hte other link doesn't seem to be working.) The whole Peekaboo performance was actually just a pre-credits sequence, as it turns out, and now the episode will… start, I guess.

Lee Seungki calls the two teams up to the stage. Oh no! They all forgot to wear pants! It’s just like that dream I had the other night!

Team 2, who I’ll call “blue team”, introduce themselves as “High Class.”

Left to right, they are:

Lee Sian, 19, from Idol School, who fell from C to D and was ranked 18th in episode 3.

Hasegawa Rena, 17, who auditioned alongside Noe, fell from D to F and was ranked 54th.

Imada Mina, 21, from theNever Ending Ferris Wheel group, who rose from D to C and was ranked 64th.

Ahn Yewon, 17, one of the YGK+ models, who has lived in F and is ranked 88th.

Matsuoka Natsumi, 21, also from Never Ending Ferris Wheel, who rose from F to C and was ranked 55th.

(Originally, Tanaka Miku was in this group, but she had to leave due to an injury.)

The red team introduces themselves as “Sneak a Peek.”

Left to right, they are:

Yu Minyoung, 18, the always squinting mint polka dots wearer in Celeb Five who moved from A to B, ranked 32

Jo Yuri, 16, future soloist, the one who fell from A to F, ranked 19th.

Takahashi Juri, 20, future member of Rocket Punch who auditioned with Mako, rose from B to A and is ranked 29th.

Kim Minseo, 15, yellow polka dots in Celeb Five, stayed in C, ranked 39th

Kojima Mako, 21, auditioned with Playing With Fire, rose from C to B and currently ranked 23rd.

Kim Sihyeon, 18, future member of Everglow who rose from B to A and is ranked 13th.

Dance Bae notes that Red team has a lot of popular members, but that we never know who will win until the end.

Subtitles: now with 100% more Spanish!

We zoom back to the practice of group 1 (red team), When we left off, this group was getting along really well and had chosen Juri as their center despite her polite protestations. We go to dance practice, and Dance Bae is NOT HAPPY with Juri’s performance. She stops and asks the group, “She wanted to be center and you let her? But it seems that she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing.” There’s supposed to be a “domino effect” movement -- where each moves in turn down the line -- and Juri is off-beat, ruining the effect. Since she’s in the middle of the line, it really has a major effect. Oh no!! Juri!! Dance Bae makes them do it again and again and again.

I should note that I love Juri from having watched Queendom Puzzle. In the now-times, Juri has a beautiful, smoky-toned voice, a ton of stage presence and charm, and a hilarious 4D personality. She’s just great. But back in 2018, maybe some of this hadn’t settled in for her yet.

Juri feels terrible about making her whole team anxious.

Dance Bae says, “I’m sorry but… you’re doing a bad job at the moment. This will hurt your feelings, but I don’t have a choice. With Juri here, you girls will have a problem. “

The editors splice in a picture of some rain to indicate how we’re all feeling.

LTR: Kojima Mako, Kim Minseo, Juri, Yu Minyoung, Jo Yuri, Kim Sihyeon

Sihyeon stammers a bit, as we hear her voiceover saying that she feels like she’s been doing a terrible job as team leader, and that she’s worried about how sad this is going to make Juri. Before Sihyeon can say anything more, Juri says -- starting off in Korean and switching soon to Japanese -- that though she appreciates the opportunity, she thinks they should change positions to help ensure that the group wins.

Though Juri holds it together when talking to her group, bowing out gracefully, she interviews that she is upset that she didn’t do a good job despite how hard she worked.

They decide to vote for a new center, so they can show Dance Bae something different next time. They’re about to vote (and MNET does some annoying editing, whatever) when Jo Yuri says, “Actually, I think that Juri really suits the center from what I’ve seen, and I know she can get better with more practice.” Everyone seems to agree, and Juri begins to cry in earnest, harder than she cried when she thought she was resigning.

“Juri, please don’t cry!”

“You can do it!”

Sihyeon says, “It has to be so hard for her. She had to learn a song she’d never heard, and on top of it she was the center. My heart is with her. I think she’d be feeling angry and discouraged if she had to give up the center position this way.”

Juri is grateful for their understanding. She tries again and works hard. Ganbarimasu!

And then… it’s time for the performance!

Here is PD48 Editing’s blessed edit.

Mako, Yuri, Minyoung, Minseo, Sihyeon, Juri

Clockwise from bottom left: Minseo (kneeling), Minyoung, Mako, Juri, Sihyeon, Yuri (kneeling)

Jo Yuri: main vocal Takahashi Juri: Sub vocal 1 Kim Sihyeon: sub vocal 2 Kojima Mako: sub vocal 3 Yu Minyoung: Rapper 1 Kim Minseo: Rapper 2

My thoughts:

Overall, a really good performance, though not necessarily mind blowing or anything like that.

Vocally, they sounded really good on the whole. Yuri hit the notes cleanly and well, with a nice vocal color, though she didn’t hold the notes quite as long as I think she should have. I mean, she’s 16, it’s fine. Juri’s voice wasn’t like it is nowadays, and that’s ok, she still did well.

The two rappers, Minseo and Minyoung, actually had a lot of energy and sounded about as good as you could hope they would. They also brought a surprising amount of charm and confidence.

As usual it’s almost impossible to tell if their dance was synchronized because the camera work was focused on their faces, but what I could see looked mostly fine. Here and there I think I noticed Juri a tiny bit behind the beat, dance-wise, unfortunately.

Stage presence wise, Mako, Juri and Yuri were the weaker spots. Mako had a cute smile that didn’t quite fit the “sexy” feel of the dance, and Juri looked a little scared the whole time, like maybe she was thinking about the dance steps or something. She wasn’t connecting to the performance. Yuri also sort of was just going through the motions. The way she sort of sang a given note and sort of stopped gave this energy:

If I could have stepped in and just changed things, I think I would have put Sihyeon in the center. She performed this like she was a lost member of AOA -- smiling, pouting, flirting, hair flipping, the whole nine. She did great.

The MNET Edit:

We get a lot of reactions to Yuri’s various high notes, and some shots of the audience loving it in general. Not really any annoying instant replays, either.

The judges gush about how good Yuri was. Soyou says, “I’ve liked her since the beginning.” Dance Bae adds, “She’s a good dancer, too.”

And that’s where we leave it for now, as Team 2 takes the stage.

Team 2 (Blue Team)

One more time:

Lee Sian, 19, from Idol School, who fell from C to D and was ranked 18th in episode 3.

Hasegawa Rena, 17, who auditioned alongside Noe, fell from D to F and was ranked 54th.

Imada Mina, 21, from the Never Ending Ferris Wheel group, who rose from D to C and was ranked 64th.

Ahn Yewon, 17, one of the YGK+ models, who has lived in F and is ranked 88th.

Matsuoka Natsumi, 21, also from Never Ending Ferris Wheel, who rose from F to C and was ranked 55th.

(Originally, Tanaka Miku was in this group, but she had to leave due to an injury during this rehearsal period.)

When we left off, the Japanese members of the team had chosen Mina to be center over Sian, out of fear that making Sian the center would make them “Sian and the girls.” We were left with the question of whether that was a good decision.

We dive right in with a voice over from Sian, saying: “At the beginning, I didn’t think it would be that important, but I felt it when we chose the center. The fact that you’re not from here could be an obstacle.” This overlays the shot of the Japanese girls choosing Mina, and this shot…

… Sian trying to teach herself the choreo while the other girls are sitting working on the lyrics.

There’s also this shot:

That’s not a mirror -- that’s a frosted glass wall. Some girls are practicing in the room, and some are practicing in the hall outside. Again, not working together.

Sian interviews, “I didn’t even know what to do.”

We go to dance rehearsal, and Dance Bae is NOT HAPPY. Their formations are all off, and their synchronization is non-existent. It really shows how little they rehearsed it together, and Dance Bae says that they’re all basically just doing their own thing. “How could it be so bad if you practiced? Have you practiced hard? Together?”

Rena interviews, “We couldn’t practice dancing together as a team. The Koreans focused on practicing the choreography, but we Japanese were focusing on memorizing the words.” With different priorities, they were dividing up their time differently.

We see the girls at dance/rap practice. It’s not great. Mina in particular is clearly having a lot of trouble with the fast rapping. Soyou give them this look:

Then she says, “I don’t really have much to tell you because I couldn’t really hear you well.” She sings a single line twice, once in full voice, and once in a breathy, hard to hear voice, to demonstrate the difference between how they should sound and how they actually sound.

Cheetah, that queen, says, “You’re not really close, are you?” And Sian thinks to herself, oh God, they noticed. It’s my fault because I’m the leader. I kept torturing myself like that.

That night at the dorms, Ah Yewon tells Sian that Cheetah was right -- that they’re not going to get anywhere the way they are, that they have to open up to each other and get closer. Sian decides that she’s right, that they have to try to practice openly together and try to understand each other.

The next day, they’re in one of the rehearsal rooms, and I think they must have a translator there because Sian is speaking in full speed Korean.

One of these people has to be a translator, right? Also, note that there are still six girls on the team.

Sian says, “It’s not like we didn’t want to be close. The problem is the language barrier.*

*Me typing this translation of a Spanish subtitle of a Korean sentence spoken to some Japanese speakers is so many layers of language barrier. It'd be even funnier if you, dear reader, are a non-native speaker of English. Especially if you also don't speak Spanish, Korean, or Japanese.

Mina says, “I’ll try more.” (I can’t tell if she’s speaking Japanese or Korean because there’s another sound at the same time she’s speaking, and she speaks really softly.)

Sian says, “I’ll try to learn some Japanese,” and Mina waves her hand from Sian to herself and back again. Sian adds, “I hope we can build up our team work.” The Japanese members nod in agreement, and then Sian says, “Oh god, they scolded us so harshly today! I hate getting negative comments!” And all the girls stand up for a big group hug. Yay! Oh no, it looks like Natsumi is crying! Boo!

Natsumi voiceovers that she wants to help Sian build their teamwork. Yay team!

More “hwighting” and less fighting, please.

The next day, Sian gives the Japanese girls something she made/wrote down, to help them remember the steps. They thank you and Natsumi reaches out to touch her hand in gratitude.

They all interview that they are working better as a team now.

No one mentions it, but at some point Miku got injured and had to leave. That sounds really dramatic, MNET. She wanted to stay, from what I heard, so it had to be a pretty bad injury. There must have been a lot of tearful conversations on the topic. Maybe you’d want to show that? Or show the girls scrambling to redistribute parts and learn new formations…? Oh, but you can’t show it, because it makes you look irresponsible, like you’re not taking good enough care of these young girls and letting them get hurt because you push them too hard. Well, thanks, I guess.

Anyway, by dress rehearsal, there are only five of them. The judges don’t smile much as they run through their performance, but at the end, Soyou tells them that they more stable than group 1, with good pronunciation and good teamwork. And Dance Bae even comes back stage to tell them that their hard work paid off.

“I’m very grateful!” … “I want to cry….”

Sian congratulations her team, and Natsumi begins to cry again. Who is this girl? Is she me?

Sian interviews that she made themselves believe that they could do it, and then they did it.

But can they do it on stage in front of an audience? Let’s find out!

The performance:

Here is PD48 Editing’s blessed edit.

Natsumi, Rena, Sian, Mina, Yewon

Clockwise from bottom left: Natsumi, Rena, Mina, Sian, Yewon.

Side note: What are these shoes? Are they… high heeled loafers? What is happening?

My thoughts: First off, how does Natsumi get her hair THAT glossy?

I mean, all the girls have really pretty hair, but Natsumi’s is on another level. It’s like her hair is made of black onyx, or a dark iPhone screen, or something. It’s wild. Check out her fan cam to see it in action.

Anyway, this was not quite as good as the other team, mostly because of the vocals. They were all on key, and no one made any obvious mistakes, but listening to them sing, it was impossible to imagine that this is a professional debuted group. They sounded like a high school talent show group.

Lee Sian was brave to take on main vocals when that isn’t her area of expertise, so I don’t want to ding her too hard -- she sang well enough to be a sub-vocal in a real group. And that’s a compliment, I swear! So good job, Sian! Did she knock my socks off? No, but she did alright-right-right.

The other four also did well considering, but it’s not as if I want to put this on a playlist and listen to it over and over. Of the three Japanese girls, only Rena seems to avoid the characteristic nasal sound common in these AKB48 members. Natsumi and Mina both have unpleasant vocal color, but at least they are on key, so they’ve made big progress. Main rapper Yewon raps kind of off key, which I know sounds crazy but part of what a rapper does is pick up on a tone to rap in, and Yewon didn’t do that quite correctly.

Dance wise, I don’t really know, because the camera work is obstructive. Nothing really obvious goes wrong, I’ll say that. I think that

Stage presence wise, I think this group has a slight leg up on the first group. They all have pretty good to great facial expressions, and they’re all reasonably confident-seeming. Yewon is a bit…

… too much.

Mina has a great trick of letting her eyes close a little, and then opening them wider suddenly. It’s like, a power-smize!

It works.

Revisiting the issue of center, and whether or not putting Sian in the center would have made it “Sian and the girls,” I think it’s relevant to note that Sian was the main vocal. If your center is also your main vocal, then it starts to feel like Destiny’s Child. So, yeah, it makes sense for someone else to be center, and Mina was the best choice among the remaining girls. I think they should have raised that issue during the discussion of who should be center, but maybe they did, or tried to, and had trouble with the communication.

In the MNET edit, we see the judges praising their pronunciation, and praising Sian’s ability to look right at the camera. We also get a few instant replays of some of Sian’s high notes.

When they’re done, the judges are proud of them, and Cheetah looks so cute.

“I’m proud of them.” “Me too.”

Dance Bae says that they, the trainers, think that Team 2 did better than Team 1, but notes that you never know how the audience will vote.

“Good job, everyone!”

The girls hug backstage, and Sian said that they’re hoping for a miracle.

For this part, I have a link with English subs.

The girls teleport to the locker room Results Zone…

More power to the transporters! We’re losing the signal!

They’re sitting on like, foam rubber blocks. MNET, seriously, WTF?

Sian, Rena, Mina, Ahyoung, Natsumi

Natsumi’s face (far right) is so expressive.

It’s time for the results. The background music is the same music they always used in Face Off when they were revealing the creature makeups, which is so funny to me.

As usual, they reveal the results in a “versus” format -- Main vocal versus Main vocal, etc. What’s kind of strange is that we find out that there was no “sub vocal 1” on the blue team…? I guess that had been Miku’s part, but it’s not as if no-one sang those lines, so I’m confused. Anyway…

Both the main vocals, Jo Yuri and Lee Sian, get a ton of votes -- 152 and 148, respectively.

That’s fair as they both did well and are also pretty and popular. The second highest vote getters on each team were Japanese -- Mako on Red with 120 votes, and Natsumi on blue with 90. Juri is ready to blame herself if her team loses, but neither center did exceptionally well; Juri got 52 votes, and Mina got 36. Here is the full list:

Team Red (win):

left to right:

Yu Minyoung 28 Jo Yuri 152 Takahashi Juri 52 Kim Minseo 26 Kojima Mako 120 Kim Sihyeon 64 Total: 442, Average 73.67

Team Blue (lost):

Very classy of them to applaud for team red.

Left to right:

Lee Sian 148 Hasegawa Rena 50 Imada Mina 36 Ahn Yewon 16 Matsuoka Natsumi 90 Total: 340, Average: 68

Juri interviews, tearfully, that she feels bad about the whole thing. Her team was so nice and believed in her, and she feels like she let them down. “It’s because of them that I was able to go so far,” she says. “I’m so grateful to my team.”

You know, my friends, if I wasn’t already a Juri fan from getting to know her on Queendom Puzzle, I think I’d kind of hate her at this point. MNET shoving her in my face, and focusing on her storyline above all else, it just makes me kind of irritated. I know Juri is awesome-sauce, though. So this is just further proof that MNET is The Worst. Thanks, dumbasses. Thumbasses.

And with that, we’ll wrap up for now! Thanks for sticking with me so far! See you next time, when we cover Team Mamma Mia.

#bpr recaps p48 #produce 48 #akb48 #rocket punch #iz*one #Jo Yuri

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