A Turn of Chance.

One of the surprising outcomes from AKB48′s 2011 Jankenpon Tournament (aside from Acchan, Yuko, Tomochin, Yukirin et al. getting kicked in the early rounds, and Mika Komori throwing the Vulcan “live long and prosper” salute out of confusion) was the amount of fan wailing over who “should or shouldn’t” advance in the tournament. Trying to call a winner, or declare one participant more deserving than another, in what is essentially a game of chance is like saying that you “deserve” to win the lottery because you always play the numbers of your birthday and your relatives’ birthdays and you’ve lost the last 457 times so you’re due for a win. This makes about as much sense as insisting that Rina Izuta “deserves” to make center because She Is An Adorable And Wonderful Human Being or that Mayuchi “deserves” to advance past the first round because she won last year. Look, even the Los Angeles Lakers have to play a full season of basketball and beat several teams in the playoffs before they can be crowned champions; they can’t just stroll in and expect to be The Winner Of The NBA every year, right? That’s a lesson they quickly learned from the 2010-2011 Dallas Mavericks.

In case my shitty analogies didn’t make it clear, jankenpon/rock-paper-scissors is a game of chance and nobody “deserves” anything. But I guess that would be too logical, and the whole point of being a fan (short for “fanatic”) is to be illogical! AMIRITE?

My understanding about the purpose of the Janken Tournament is that it is designed to completely scramble AKB48′s Senbatsu (“The Chosen/Selected”) system in an entertaining way. The tournament wipes the board clean and says, “We don’t care who you are, what you did, where you’re from, as long as you love how long you’ve been with the group, how popular you are with the fans, how many singles you’ve been featured in, how many theater stages you’ve performed in, whether your dad owns a chain of pachinko parlors, OR WHAT. You just have to beat your fellow performers at rock-paper-scissors 6 times in a row and YOU, TOO, COULD BE THE FACE OF AKB48 for at least one single.” It re-opens the promise of what was established at the group’s inception: that everyone has a chance to be a star.

As we all know, reality has a way of screwing with theory, and the idea of everyone getting a chance in AKB48 has been overthrown by the hierarchical seniority system of Japanese society. If you look at the CDs and music videos, the magazine covers, the commercials, the product endorsements, etc., it might as well be AKB07, the way the same famous faces get featured month after month because (1) they were the most confident/talented/marketable at the start; (2) management pushed them as lead performers; (3) fans latched onto them the most; (4) newcomers entered and management tried to introduce them as well; (5) [casual] fans only wanted to see the girls they were used to; (6) management ends up pushing the same personalities over and over because that’s what sells product. At this point the organization has locked themselves into a vicious cycle where as soon as Maeda, Kojima, Itano, Oshima and friends graduate, turn 27, get married and have kids, the entire ~48 system is FARKED.

Y HALO THAR Mayuchi!

The Janken event turns over all of that and says, Hey look! Even this 4-foot-11 undergirl who no one heard of until now can become the center of attention! Or it can end up like this year where one of the Super Senbatsu ends up making center anyway, but she has to step over a lot of nobodies (and MY WIFE) in order to do it. So say what you want about Mariko but she still earned it, in a way, by having a run of good luck.

Of course if you REALLY wanted to overturn the Senbatsu system and put the neglected members in the spotlight, it would be all too easy to reverse the General Election results and say that the girls with the least votes get center and everyone who made Senbatsu last time gets kicked out. But that is too harsh of a judgment—one that can be done by a computer and provides no entertainment or intellectual value. Besides, a senbatsu lineup with NO familiar faces would have limited appeal; it’d probably still move a million copies just by having the AKB48 name on it but I think many would feel put off and say “It doesn’t feel like an AKB single because so-and-so isn’t there.” Furthermore, the media hoopla surrounding the tournament itself—the preliminary “guidebook,” the ticket sales for the live viewing, the Asia-wide simulcasts in theaters—provide yet another revenue stream that management would be fools not to capitalize upon. Reversing the election results: can be done in 30 seconds in Excel. Holding a massive rock-paper-scissors foofaraw: makes a few extra bajillion yen.

You have been MINEGISHI-FIED.

And with a lineup that randomly mixes famous faces, mid-stream members, and the nobodies, it does a fairer job of realigning the system than listening to the mad, intoxicated cries of “Make Izurina center!!!!!11″ and “Miichan48 virus!!!!!” and “GTFO Mikapon!!” Everyone knows the rules of Jankenpon, a 5-year-old could play it, and so the event levels the playing field almost perfectly (unless you’re some weirdo with crazy good reaction time or you cheat). If this were a tennis tournament everyone would be complaining that Haruka Shimada was a lock to win, if it was a piano competition we would have Sakiko Matsui center every year, if it were a bodybuilding contest you might as well pencil in Sayaka Akimoto’s name already. But with a pure game of chance like this one, with an absolutely level playing field, you just don’t know, and that’s part of the fun.

((Of course, one could also try something logical like testing the members’ song and dance skills in front of a panel of professional judges, and having the highest-scoring performers get picked for senbatsu, but get that meritocracy-based Simon Cowell shit OUTTA HERE.))

To paraphrase a famous quote from TEH BIBLE that I heard just this past Sunday: “You say the Janken Tournament is unfair? Or is it your ways that are unfair?”

Tags: 2011, AKB48, Janken, Mariko Shinoda, Mayumi Uchida