NMB48 YNN: Fuuchan makes Ice Cream

BOSS

I’ve been following this YNN series with Lemon, Yamarina, Maokyun, and Fuuchan.

I’ve always felt Fuuchan had this latent character that is highly amusing, but it gets deferred for the stereotypical (boring) idol personality. It’s starting to come out here.

In the last episode she got really bored with the resin decorating and started trolling everyone. This time it’s her thing, so let’s see what happens.

Apparently, she was raised on a farm. You wouldn’t know it based on how her face is caked with makeup.

Yo dog, just chillin’

They literally drive out to the middle of the countryside to make ice cream. That’s… an interesting choice. Especially nowadays, with all sorts of ice cream technology. Gelato has become especially interesting lately. Do you know the difference? Gelato apparently doesn’t mix in that much air so it’s a lot more concentrated.

And look at all them flavors!

When I graduated university, I wanted an ice cream maker, so my older brother bought me one… like a $30-40 Cuisinart model. It does its job. It’s actually quite fun, at least, before I discovered my lactose intolerance. Well, that was fun while it lasted.

However, that doesn’t stop me from being quite educated on how to make ice cream. Yo, I watched the Alton Brown Good Eats episode on ice cream. That makes me an expert over the internet!

Miorin gets the sake-flavored one. What is she thinking?

When I made ice cream, I was told there were two types: Philly-style, which is just milk and cream, and a custard-style, which requires the annoying process of tempering and heating egg yolks but gives a smoother, creamier product. I don’t know if I ever did the custard-style properly. There’s this thing where you have to check if it coats your spoon and I never understood how to tell if it was right. Well, either way, at least I made some good ice cream.

By the way, basic vanilla bean ice cream made at home is so good. So good.

Strangely, their recipe uses powdered milk, which is something I haven’t seen.

They use Philly-style. I am aware there is no Philly in Japan. I wonder what they call it. After heating and mixing the base, they cool it in a tray of ice cubes. Not sure why they went so old school. We just stick in the fridge.

After that, it’s time to mix the ice cream.

Now, you want to talk about old school…

So to get the creamy part of the ice cream instead of just a frozen block of milk and cream mixture, you need to provide some agitation while the mixture freezes. This allows the sugar to bind in between instead of staying separate… I think. I forget. Alton Brown, help me please. For my ice cream maker, it uses a bowl that has to be frozen in advance, and then it rotates on a machine with this funny sort of spatula stuck in it, which provides the agitation. The old school days had a bucket trapped in another bucket filled with ice and operated with a hand crank.

These girls?

They have their base in a bowl, they put that bowl in a bowl of dry ice, and manually stir.

Yeah.

Sounds like a pain.

Fuuchan stains herself 3 times. Insert all the funny jokes with a milky white liquid on her apron.

The work is so annoying that Fuuchan employs child labor for the task.

Then they all eat ice cream and everyone has a grand ol’ time.

When I think about it, Team M has a lot of characters who I wouldn’t rank among my favorite, but who I’d follow if I see them on TV. It seems rather unfortunate for them. Maokyun is one of them, Renapyon is one of them, and I’d probably say Fuuchan is the queen among them.

Also I miss ice cream. I really do.

NMB48: I Want to Become a Model Episode 1 — Watch girls walk for some reason

Let it be known that I have absolutely no interest in modeling or high fashion.

This is definitely not the show for me.

But it has an interesting cast!

Actually, I decided to watch this for two reasons. One of them is Akarin, who I’m very curious to see how she develops especially when she can’t lean on SayaMilky but has to lead on her own. Akarin typically displays a ko-akuma character, which literally translates to “little devil,” but I like to metaphorically translate it to “bitch”.

I don’t really like bitches.

On the other hand, she’s also shown that she’s capable of being nice and even a leader in certain circumstances, such as in MCs. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her really take off one day.

The other reason I wanted to watch was to see how Rippi fares. She has a really sharp and entertaining tsukkomi, but when it comes to her actually doing stuff she seems really clumsy and/or shy. Can she get out of this looking good, I wonder.

She’s also stated aspirations to be an actress but says that she judges her acting skill based on how many scripts she’s gotten: none.

So they get to the modeling school.

Wow.

They squeal over their long legs. Forget that, some of them are quite hot, lol.

Their teacher belongs to the promotion company erg-Au. What? Who comes up with these names?!

Rippi ejects here. “Look at me, there’s no way I’d become a model. My chest starts where their legs start.”

The classic Rippi tsukkomi. Well done.

One thing that really bothers me, and I don’t know if it’s just the way she puts on make up, but she looks like she’s sad all the time, giving us the dreaded Jaden Smith look. Man, that look bothers me so much. It makes me worried about something for no reason.

The three girls get to practicing.

And she laughs at how bad they are.

They get hella schooled, but it looks like they didn’t even really want to try when they did their example walks.

Meanwhile, Rippi goes to clothes design school.

This dress looks like it’s made of toilet paper, lol.

And then more boring walking lessons.

“I think my chest got bigger.”

I can’t imagine this series being that entertaining, especially since they were mostly quiet. Haru complained a lot but that’s nothing new, and generally there wasn’t a lot of talking except when they were in the car.

I also can’t imagine any guy being interested in this. Maybe a biomechanics major or something, but learning about how to walk like a female model is just not a very useful thing, nor is it particularly interesting. Oh well.

 

NMB48: I Want to Play with Animals! Ep. 1 – The Island of Kawaii

I’ve been trying to write another one of those NMB spotlights, but it’s really tedious when you want to include video clips and subtitle them. It’s like, it’s in wmv, but you have to convert it into avi, but sometimes you have to convert into mp4 first, and… arggggh.

I should be able to get it done this weekend.

 

Anyway, the latest program on NMB48’s channel features an interesting cast.

Team N, yeah yeah but WHAAAAT EMICHI?

Not only is Emichi appearing alongside studs like Milky and Keicchi, she’s also the lead of this segment. Her wish was to ride horses or something because she really likes horses, Milky wants to play little baby chickens, and Keicchi wants to play with lizards. Uh, you do that…

Milky’s wind-battered hair is hot.

If there’s anyone who I always switch sides on, it’s Milky. When I see her perform, sometimes her lip-synching is just terrible and it seems like all she wants to do is look cute. Her singing ability is questionable and nasally. On Geinin 2 she seemed to fail almost all of her jokes but got away with because she was cute (or wasn’t as bad as Nana).

But then sometimes she shows this really passionate side of her. Like that translated post, where she wants to bring NMB to be competitive. I’m almost certain her work ethic is second-to-none, and you wouldn’t expect someone like her to be able to pull off something like UZA with World Order, but she does it. When she’s on variety, she’s unrelenting. If you look past the cuteness and observe her a little more closely, you can see her absolutely dedicated to steering topics and jokes to the way she wants. And that Milky is awesome.

So, our lovely trio takes a trip to the farm.

Milky pointing with her middle finger was a little bit disturbing though.

Milky’s belief that horses look like and think like a pervert all the time.

The talk inside the car was actually pretty interesting. You get to see how Milky and Keicchi interact with Emichi, and it’s not very often you see that (which is kinda sad, but that’s another story).

I probably wrote about it before but I’m glad that Emichi and NMB in general is taking full advantage of her push and luck from Janken. You look at Harukyan and Uchida Mayumi and they weren’t really able to take the Janken single anywhere, but Emichi is getting a huge push and helping to carry B2.

I also really like her infectious cheery demeanor. I wish I could be that happy-looking all the time!

Keicchi is a big fan of how Emichi looks in a swimsuit.

Another interesting thing that came out of the van conversation was that Emichi wants to become an actress. I mean, a lot of people want to be actresses, but one thing that surprised me was that she participated in a musical before. There may be hope for her yet!

I do remember the topic of acting coming up once in a discussion on S48. It is kinda sad that the only drama acting experience was Keicchi in Poison, a late late night Kansai drama, and now Nana in another late late night Kansai drama.

We’re here. Nice duds, Milky.

Nothing really happens at the farm in this episode, except for constant outpouring of KAWAII by all the girls.

Even this dude, who was “#1 scariest dog” gets KAWAII treatment.

KAWAII

KAWAII FOR THE CAMERAMAN

The next episode seems to have Milky playing with the chicks, Emichi riding horses, and Miru showing up for some reason.