Sayonara surprises galore!

The quadruple centers
Tomochin, Paruru, Mayuyu, Yuko

Yesterday was the official release day of AKB48's 31st single, Sayonara Crawl and as according to the AKB calendar, this is the summer single aka voting ticket single. A total of whopping 1.45 million copies of the single are sold in the first day alone. This is officially a new record for a first day sales beating their own previous record of the last voting ticket single which sold 1.2 million copies.

Of course, no surprise there since this is a voting ticket single. I for once never ever doubted the power of a summer themed single. What is there not to like about this single? Cute women prancing around the beach in bikinis, couples everywhere in the MV, Takamina getting her bikini top pulled by Mariko (was it?) the mood all and all was happy and energetic. It really reminds you the joys of summer. It's quite sad that there's actually no summer from where I come from but what the heck? Everybody loves summer.

Those who bought the single are eligible to vote for the upcoming AKB48 32nd Senbatsu Elections in June 8th. Surprisingly yesterday, the preliminary results were also announced.

Even more surprising, that hetare girl claimed top spot with more than 28k votes! No words can describe how utterly speechless I am at that time. 2nd is Mayuyu and Yuko ranked 3rd getting almost the same number of 14k votes. Yuko's vote tally is exactly 14k which I found rather amusing.

Does her fanbase really grew that much since last year even with the major scandal that made her move to HKT? Or do people just want something really new? Did she really worked hard to get people's attention over the past year? Of course she does! She's been appearing here and there in television. She can do lots of stuffs, mostly non-idol related works but that is what makes her more outstanding than others. 

2nd is the ever so ambitious, idol cyborg. Every year you hear her saying she's aiming for top spot but fell a little short. She came close last year at 2nd but still a far cry from Yuko's final vote tally. She is AKB's post Acchan current prominent center. Right now, she stands brightest among other members. I do feel after all these years, this is her time to own the spotlight. It is a trend in AKB's election where there has never been a successive winner. Even though it was only Acchan, Yuko, Acchan, Yuko. 

My oshi ranked third surprisingly. Is this possibly a strategy by her fans? Hell yeah you bet! Her total number of votes in the preliminaries last year was 15k which doesn't really differentiate that much from this year's preliminaries. In the end, she won with more than 100k votes. 

There's two more weeks left to vote. I don't know what surprises the AKB universe have in stored but mind this, I can never imagine someone beating Yuko in the elections. Her fanbase is almost as big as Acchan's and Acchan's fanbase was the biggest among the AKB members. 

On June 8th, the stage is set for AKB48 5th Senbatsu Election at Nissan Stadium. There will be a live coverage from their official YouTube channel and Google+ account.