Since our favorite idol group is on ASAP, I decided to give them a watch as we, both MNL48 fans and MNLoves, were told that this would be a one of a kind concert experience. I already came in with the expectation in mind that this won’t be the case since a concert doesn’t consist of only one song and that’s it. What’s important is if we’re entertained or not.
Let’s see where this goes.
That Street Fighter thing…
I seriously don’t know the context of this one as this wasn’t promoted on the show but I decided to give this a try since I am a fan of anything CAPCOM related stuff (speaking of which, WHERE’S MY RIVAL SCHOOLS 3, CAPCOM?! You have the nerve to leave Project Justice on a cliffhanger and never revisit it again? How dare you, I need closure!)
The opening sequence looks cool and in a way, they were able to faithfully recreate Street Fighter II (sans for the Cammy-Guile hybrid and a cameo from “Shinsuke Nakamura”, who I know is not a video game character) and I don’t have any complaints on the performance per se but with the choice in music, they could’ve as well just ripped off Mortal Kombat, put in the famous MK theme song from the 1990s movies, and call it a day. All in all, I didn’t finish this segment.
The Main Event: High Tension
We open up with an introduction from the ASAP voice over that has been there since the late 1990s I guess. They’re being introduced as the Philippines’ first idol group, thereby confirming that HHE is retconning history to say that Kawaii5 didn’t exist.
In terms of choreography, the girls did their best and they are in sync most of the time. It’s just that, and I don’t know if this is me, but they are struggling to find their bearings on the first few seconds. Is it because of the camera or with how they’re positioned? Choreographers let me know.
Speaking of camera cuts, the cameraman did an excellent job in providing screenshot worthy moments and I’ll show the best one later on.
The costumes are what you expect from their HT era stuff except for Gabb who looks like she should be promoting SEGA’s Yakuza 6 basing on how cool/badass she looks with that pants and coat combo. She can scream kono yaroo at me anytime.
I guess the weakest point here is the backing track. It seems that the girls are lip syncing through the song but at the same time, you can hear their actual vocals on the performance itself. It’s like either the production crew just slapped the HT song and called it a day or they produced the girls so well that their live vocals sound like they’re lip syncing because their vocals sound like exactly what you hear when you play the song on Spotify or YouTube.
All in all, the girls did an amazing job at bringing their A game to the show and I hope that the other recording would make it the light of day…next week.
Rayas-WEB 