pdjp group battle thoughts

[isunshower]

basically i'm just gonna put 1. which team i liked better and 2. which trainee stood out to me the most in each team

how you like that: team 2 did good but it was obvious that they would have done better in a cute concept so it's team 1 for me.
team 1: nagomi is my favorite individually, but as a group, tsukushi CARRIED!!!! she really suits the song and handled the situation with her mic really well
team 2: mihaya has a GREAT voice, i'm a bit disappointed she only got one line
if i had been onsite, my vote probably would have gone to nagomi because i already liked her, but if not for that, would have been tsukushi

love dive: it's team 2 for me. overall, they seemed like they better fit the elegance of the concept, they were less nervous and more in sync, and they did better vocally.
team 1: HONOKA WAS SO GOOD i love her vocal tone and she seemed the most confident in her voice/lines and had the most strength. if she passes the first elimination i'm def keeping an eye on her
team 2: it's hard to pick! k. ayano did great, i'd had my eye on her before and this is really the first screentime she's had since the beginning of episode one so that's nice. she's very expressive and confident when dancing. rin was a great vocalist ofc and rio also did well! (also shoutout to matsushita miyu for the good leader edit <3 <3)
my onepick for this battle is probs honoka though... just because she stood out so starkly among her teammates.

seifuku no mannequin: yeah team 2 was clearly the winner. all of these matches have been so uneven so far!!!!
team 1: wow, ayaka and misaki really got put in unwinnable positions, huh. it's hard to pick a favorite on this team because they all did poorly vocally... their dance was good, they pulled that together, but the singing wasn't great. i liked the look of the center (kagura? i can't read japanese so i'm relying on face recognition for some and being able to recognize "ta" "yama" "naka" for others. it's not going great).
team 2: sae and mena being on my bias list aside... i honestly think my vote for this team (and my one-pick) goes to ayane here? which is weird. on broadcast she has no personality imo absolutely zero. but she's an incredible singer. sae and mena, while i like them, didn't really stand out in this performance. 
but i also might have picked sae for the one-pick, just strategically; she's low in the ranks and i want to see more of her. and she's a decent singer who looked like she was having a good time on stage.

hype boy: i choose team 1! team 2 struggled vocally and team 1 brought a slightly more mature vibe to the song that i really enjoyed. i'm annoyed by hype boy as a concept largely because of how... juvenile-ly newjeans performs it but team 1 here made it feel slightly more real.
team 1: despite the trainers saying tanaka yuuki didn't stand out i honestly thought she was the best here. this team was good but i definitely noticed when the other members were ahead of the beat, or the dance mistake that aki made. yuuki did everything right and contributed to the more mature vibe of this team.
team 2: their main vocal was good, shibagaki arisa. and natsuho's ballet move was also a really good choice that made her stand out! it fit the vibe of the song really well.
one-pick: tanaka yuuki. if she makes it through elims this week i'm keeping my eye on her.

fiesta: team 2. because i'm a singer, it's much easier for me to forgive bad dancing over bad singing, and team 1 just did such a bad job vocally.
team 1: wow wow wow this was so hard to listen to. i'm a singer yknow? but sutani yurara actually did pretty well considering her struggles in the edit. so i think she's my pick for this team. kataoka rio also did good and deserved more than 2 votes, just saying.
team 2: so, hina and ameli had been on my pick list previously, and yuka stood out to me during the edit. but nakayama honoka surprised me with how well she did, i hadn't known to look for her at all. hina did well as main vocal but she didn't have enough power and was a little too showy. (rimika also did good, but after that edit, i don't think i want to give her any credit... maybe i'll say she's my pick for this team but honoka is my one-pick for the battle.)

cheer up: this is hard to pick. team 2 had slightly weaker vocals and their dance felt low-energy but they also felt more sincere than team 1. honestly i'm going to give it to team 1 for fitting the concept better but team 2, like i said, felt more sincere and they did a really good job with the concept considering they're all girl crush members.
team 1: kitazume sakura was good, but i do feel like she fell into the trap of being cuter than this song is supposed to be. so my standout for this performance is actually otsubo karen, who was the second-best vocalist/performer and embodied the mood better.
team 2: hosoi ayaka was really good! she had this awesome low tone that i love love loved
one-pick is moro anon. her vocals were SOOO good

tokyo girl: team 2. obvi.
team 1: honestly there wasn't anyone on this team who stood out to me, so i'll just say that mana did good because she's on my pick list.
team 2: yeah shimizu keiko and her high energy was PERFECT for this stage that's my girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!

body & soul: team 1. what can i say, i love an underdog. like, this was just a nuclear killing... i do honestly believe that if team 1 was up against literally any other group of girls they would have won.
team 1: god this was actually so good! they embodied the vibe, rin made a great center, the rappers were awesome. but my pick here has to go to main vocal shizuku. yeah she sang everything in head voice but it was actually really attractive and made it stand out. but yeah im super attached to all of them now i want all of them to survive TT-TT
team 2: okay yes i'm a kokoro stan but also she bodied this. her stage presence is UNMATCHED. tsuzumi, yeah, her vocals were great but i stand by shizuku's falsetto being a better vibe.

also can i just say im sick of the avengers thing? it was old by, like, season 2. it wasn't even a good idea when ki heehyun did it. let it rest please dear god. i additionally hate the rule that let miu snipe members from other teams lmao it makes everything so unbalanced and less fair? i think they should go back to the s1 thing where you had 16 girls in a class and they all got to pick their teams so there was at least someone with good skill on each team because ever since s2 you get teams that are just unfairly stacked

i'm not doing this again btw trying to keep track of everything made it less enjoyable for me to watch the episode lmao.

elims drop tomorrow morning. moment of truth. h