I remember reading about this movie showing in Japanese cinemas some time ago and I believe they've got a part 2 that's coming out soon. If you follow Japanese pop culture, there's no escaping AKB48. Somehow they've worked their way from a niche otaku idol group to exploding all over the country and showing up in everything. I don't think Morning Musume back in 99 was even that big.
My knowledge of AKB48 consisted of listening to their early very suggestive songs ,playing the two PSP games and watching them in doramas so I went into the movie withsome knowledge of who they are but not their personalities since I haven't watched Japanese variety shows since the good old days of Momusu on Utaban and Hello Morning. The PSP games did provide me with more information such as who liked anime and who had a famous father but its acting for a dating sim.
So Documentary of AKB48 starts of with the main girls eating around the table, having a conversation and the camera rotating around them. Tells me nothing about who they are and what they do and the too scripted nature of the introduction is boring. Then we get right to a short clip of the main girls miming, I mean performing before showing the girls very excited at the 2009 Kohaku and then distributing heat packs to fans lined outside the AKB theatre a happy new year on new years day. That's interesting because what makes them different is that they're a more accessible idoru group.
Then the documentary takes a turn for the worse by doing various interviews with certain cast members talking about nothing. There's plenty of crying and stuff about members changing groups but I was just fucking bored because they is no good damn narrative. Whoever made this documentary had no fucking idea how to make one. If someone who had no idea WTF AKB48 was they would be even more lost than me and would probably fall asleep thinking why should are care about these girls when it doesn't introduce them to me and tell me what they do?
Not that there's no introduction. The documentary shows their names, which generation they are from but asks them fluffy questions that fans probably know the answers for. Why not bloody start with the main girls talking about how they started and how they worked for years as an indy group? How the group is different in that the fans get to interact with them a lot and how often they have to perform. Documentary of AKB48 lacks a starting point to hook the viewer in and then meanders around having no idea what to impart of the audience.
As can be seen from the screencaps, Documentary of AKB48 looks bloody gorgeous but someone forgot to spend money and hire an editor who could make sense of the footage. Avoid it like the plague. Documentary of AKB48 is a marketing tool that for some reason only markets itself to the most hardcore of fans.
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