1
Just came back from her Birthday Event in Kameari! I'll just do a short recap of events since honesty, there were lots of random talking bits in between the games and I can't remember them all anymore @.@
The mc was Sawayaka Goro and they talked a bit at the start. Nonaka said she was really nervous but that must have only lasted shortly because she certainly didn't seem it throughout the rest of the event; it seems to only be when she's singing. Apparently no one send her any birthday messages and she felt disappointed, but they had planned a surprise for her and had deliberately not sent anything, lol. Nomura Minami voiced in her happy birthday wishes and makes the audience sing 'Happy Birthday' to Miki, at a pretty slow pace to be honest, lol. Both Goro and Miki commented how she did it at her own pace. So Miki leaves the stage and Goro introduces the guest: Akanechin! Yay~! She came out in the typical kind of sports outfit Japanese students would wear and the belt she carried dropped to the ground, lol. Akane kept making fun of Miki throughout the show btw, she seems to like teasing her, but Miki just brushes it off with her sassiness.
So the theme of the event was a sports festival, because Nonaka being clumsy was a running thing throughout the show and she was going to have to pass several games to earn candy. Miki entered through the audience in her own sports uniform, taking ages to get to the stage, lol. As is common in Japanese culture, she held a speech at the sport festival on how they were going to play fair and blabla. Goro asked her to do it in English afterwards and she started off normally, before she went into a rant about how she loved candy and how she wanted this to be a nice day, etc. Sawayaka was like 'Wait, this speech wasn't nearly as long in the Japanese version, what are you on about?!'.
First game was her doing side-jumps(?) left and right, and she had to pass a certain number within a certain time-frame. First time around she failed, because not only was she slow, she actually slipped and fell at some point, lol. Goro gave her one more chance and this time she passed, earning herself some candy.
2nd game was measuring the power of her grip with this little thing she has to squeeze. It was suggested she used her pent up aggression while she was doing it, but I totally forgot what she shouted out in frustration! She did it again with her left hand, because well...that's her primary hand and she should've used it to begin with, lol. Goro commented on how she was so clumsy she even forgot what her strongest hand is. Again, she failed. Now Akane tried it out, shouting out 'Stop taking the futon~!', referring to how the last time she and Miki shared a hotel room and there was only one bed Miki kept taking the blanket to keep herself warm
. Her grip wasn't strong either.
In another game Nonaka had to throw signed balls into the audience and make them pass a certain distance. It was explained that Ikuta was the current champion in throwing them the furthest, but Miki was giving a lower distance than the current record held by Ikuta. She tried out both her right and left arms and did not make the distance, failing the objective. Before she started throwing she talked herself up, claiming that she was the god of throwing and then afterwards when Goro pointed this out she tried to cover it up by saying what she meant was that she can makes 'godlike' beautiful throws and it's not about the distance.
Next up they have to do an obstacle course throughout the audience. Akane tells Nonaka how she herself is actually pretty bad at sports and never ranked high in any festival, Miki makes fun of her by saying she ranked higher, since Akane has been enjoying herself too much seeing Miki fail. So they have to carry a large stack of boxes up the stairs of the audience (the pile was actually like 2 meters in front of where I was sitting, so I saw them passing by me rather closely), then pop several balloons on a chair at the top of the stairs, grab one of those cookies dangling from a string with their mouth, read out an attached question and finally make an audience member answer them. Akane is a bit slow, but doesn't drop any boxes on her way up. She takes ages popping the balloons though, while Miki keeps praising her saying 'Ah~ how cute! How cute! It doesn't even matter she's failing, it's still cute!'. Akane grabs a cookie and asks audience members the question but all of them deliberately give bad answers, lol. Someone finally answers correctly and she finished the course. Miki requests the audience to not kid around with the questions on her turn, lol. Nonaka heads up, with a single box dropping in front of her face, but she manages to keep it in between herself and the rest of the boxes. She pops the balloons a lot quicker than Akanechin and then grabs a cookie with the question 'What is my astrological sign?'. Audience fools around again, even more so than with Akane until someone answers it correctly (Libra).
I believe it ended with this game, so the live begins; she has a pretty good set list so look forward to it. There's a tribute to Riho in there as well. Afterwards she tells the audience how she picked out the costume she was performing in herself (red jacket on top of a glittering gold shirt). She wanted to dress as a foreign celebrity, so literally googled 'foreign celebrity fashion'. There were a lot of pictures of very simply white blouses and stuff and she felt like they only worked because celebrities wore them and it showed their charm. So she decided to pick her own outfit and ended up with what she was wearing. It looked a bit eighties and over-the-top, but she looked pretty in it! In her parting words she said that she really enjoyed the event, loved seeing all the purple and that she could see all of our faces really well, which greatly put her at ease! Everyone left the building and I waved her goodbye after saying 'Happy Birthday!' and receiving a 'Thank youuu!' in a very southern American accent.
I really enjoyed the event, and even though I wasn't first row center like at Risa's one, 3rd row 12th seat from the left might have actually been better. Goro as the MC faces the right part of the audience, but Miki herself faces the left part, so even though it probably helps that I'm foreign, she kept looking back at me a lot throughout the entire event, and it's very easy to tell with Miki too because she gazes for at least 2 seconds before she looks elsewhere. This is very different from Akane who, although I adore her to bits, only 'scanned' the audience and never looked at one particular point, even on the rare occasions she was actually looking into the audience instead of Goro/Miki. I'm not sure what they're both like during concerts/lives yet, so I'll keep an eye out for that (if I manage to take my eyes off of Masaki/Haruna), but it's interesting differences between members like these that show how comfortable they feel with their audience/fans that you don't discover on DVD Magazines and concert lives, because you have no idea what they're looking at.
Gotta say, my opinion of Miki greatly improved because of the event. I think the English speaking thing is entertaining but if it's overused it feels like too much of a gimmick and I don't enjoy how overconfident she acts when it comes to a language she isn't actually fluent in, but after today I realized that's just one part of her personality and she has a lot more to her (There was no English speaking, apart from the sports opening speech). I think a lot of foreigners (and girls especially) would love Miki if they looked a bit more into her simply because she is sassy as hell and pretty down to earth; definitely has some of that 'Southern charm' in her. Although she was very confident throughout the event, she was playfully confident and therefore an absolute joy to watch. Although Ogata might be considered the 'talker' within 12ki, she requires someone to play off of while Nonaka is more individualistic and could carry an MC and be more entertaining on her own. During DVD magazines and stuff Miki is often timid and her jokes don't always hit their intended mark, but I think this might be because she is suppressed by the presence of her senpai and she feels nervous trying to 'perform' around them. If she's fully in her element and nothing is holding her back she has a great presence and an endearing sassiness to her. Also, she had curly hair throughout the event and looked really cute~make sure to check out the DVD!
The mc was Sawayaka Goro and they talked a bit at the start. Nonaka said she was really nervous but that must have only lasted shortly because she certainly didn't seem it throughout the rest of the event; it seems to only be when she's singing. Apparently no one send her any birthday messages and she felt disappointed, but they had planned a surprise for her and had deliberately not sent anything, lol. Nomura Minami voiced in her happy birthday wishes and makes the audience sing 'Happy Birthday' to Miki, at a pretty slow pace to be honest, lol. Both Goro and Miki commented how she did it at her own pace. So Miki leaves the stage and Goro introduces the guest: Akanechin! Yay~! She came out in the typical kind of sports outfit Japanese students would wear and the belt she carried dropped to the ground, lol. Akane kept making fun of Miki throughout the show btw, she seems to like teasing her, but Miki just brushes it off with her sassiness.
So the theme of the event was a sports festival, because Nonaka being clumsy was a running thing throughout the show and she was going to have to pass several games to earn candy. Miki entered through the audience in her own sports uniform, taking ages to get to the stage, lol. As is common in Japanese culture, she held a speech at the sport festival on how they were going to play fair and blabla. Goro asked her to do it in English afterwards and she started off normally, before she went into a rant about how she loved candy and how she wanted this to be a nice day, etc. Sawayaka was like 'Wait, this speech wasn't nearly as long in the Japanese version, what are you on about?!'.
First game was her doing side-jumps(?) left and right, and she had to pass a certain number within a certain time-frame. First time around she failed, because not only was she slow, she actually slipped and fell at some point, lol. Goro gave her one more chance and this time she passed, earning herself some candy.
2nd game was measuring the power of her grip with this little thing she has to squeeze. It was suggested she used her pent up aggression while she was doing it, but I totally forgot what she shouted out in frustration! She did it again with her left hand, because well...that's her primary hand and she should've used it to begin with, lol. Goro commented on how she was so clumsy she even forgot what her strongest hand is. Again, she failed. Now Akane tried it out, shouting out 'Stop taking the futon~!', referring to how the last time she and Miki shared a hotel room and there was only one bed Miki kept taking the blanket to keep herself warm
. Her grip wasn't strong either.In another game Nonaka had to throw signed balls into the audience and make them pass a certain distance. It was explained that Ikuta was the current champion in throwing them the furthest, but Miki was giving a lower distance than the current record held by Ikuta. She tried out both her right and left arms and did not make the distance, failing the objective. Before she started throwing she talked herself up, claiming that she was the god of throwing and then afterwards when Goro pointed this out she tried to cover it up by saying what she meant was that she can makes 'godlike' beautiful throws and it's not about the distance.
Next up they have to do an obstacle course throughout the audience. Akane tells Nonaka how she herself is actually pretty bad at sports and never ranked high in any festival, Miki makes fun of her by saying she ranked higher, since Akane has been enjoying herself too much seeing Miki fail. So they have to carry a large stack of boxes up the stairs of the audience (the pile was actually like 2 meters in front of where I was sitting, so I saw them passing by me rather closely), then pop several balloons on a chair at the top of the stairs, grab one of those cookies dangling from a string with their mouth, read out an attached question and finally make an audience member answer them. Akane is a bit slow, but doesn't drop any boxes on her way up. She takes ages popping the balloons though, while Miki keeps praising her saying 'Ah~ how cute! How cute! It doesn't even matter she's failing, it's still cute!'. Akane grabs a cookie and asks audience members the question but all of them deliberately give bad answers, lol. Someone finally answers correctly and she finished the course. Miki requests the audience to not kid around with the questions on her turn, lol. Nonaka heads up, with a single box dropping in front of her face, but she manages to keep it in between herself and the rest of the boxes. She pops the balloons a lot quicker than Akanechin and then grabs a cookie with the question 'What is my astrological sign?'. Audience fools around again, even more so than with Akane until someone answers it correctly (Libra).
I believe it ended with this game, so the live begins; she has a pretty good set list so look forward to it. There's a tribute to Riho in there as well. Afterwards she tells the audience how she picked out the costume she was performing in herself (red jacket on top of a glittering gold shirt). She wanted to dress as a foreign celebrity, so literally googled 'foreign celebrity fashion'. There were a lot of pictures of very simply white blouses and stuff and she felt like they only worked because celebrities wore them and it showed their charm. So she decided to pick her own outfit and ended up with what she was wearing. It looked a bit eighties and over-the-top, but she looked pretty in it! In her parting words she said that she really enjoyed the event, loved seeing all the purple and that she could see all of our faces really well, which greatly put her at ease! Everyone left the building and I waved her goodbye after saying 'Happy Birthday!' and receiving a 'Thank youuu!' in a very southern American accent.
I really enjoyed the event, and even though I wasn't first row center like at Risa's one, 3rd row 12th seat from the left might have actually been better. Goro as the MC faces the right part of the audience, but Miki herself faces the left part, so even though it probably helps that I'm foreign, she kept looking back at me a lot throughout the entire event, and it's very easy to tell with Miki too because she gazes for at least 2 seconds before she looks elsewhere. This is very different from Akane who, although I adore her to bits, only 'scanned' the audience and never looked at one particular point, even on the rare occasions she was actually looking into the audience instead of Goro/Miki. I'm not sure what they're both like during concerts/lives yet, so I'll keep an eye out for that (if I manage to take my eyes off of Masaki/Haruna), but it's interesting differences between members like these that show how comfortable they feel with their audience/fans that you don't discover on DVD Magazines and concert lives, because you have no idea what they're looking at.
Gotta say, my opinion of Miki greatly improved because of the event. I think the English speaking thing is entertaining but if it's overused it feels like too much of a gimmick and I don't enjoy how overconfident she acts when it comes to a language she isn't actually fluent in, but after today I realized that's just one part of her personality and she has a lot more to her (There was no English speaking, apart from the sports opening speech). I think a lot of foreigners (and girls especially) would love Miki if they looked a bit more into her simply because she is sassy as hell and pretty down to earth; definitely has some of that 'Southern charm' in her. Although she was very confident throughout the event, she was playfully confident and therefore an absolute joy to watch. Although Ogata might be considered the 'talker' within 12ki, she requires someone to play off of while Nonaka is more individualistic and could carry an MC and be more entertaining on her own. During DVD magazines and stuff Miki is often timid and her jokes don't always hit their intended mark, but I think this might be because she is suppressed by the presence of her senpai and she feels nervous trying to 'perform' around them. If she's fully in her element and nothing is holding her back she has a great presence and an endearing sassiness to her. Also, she had curly hair throughout the event and looked really cute~make sure to check out the DVD!
