S/mileage's 2nd round auditions (7/9/11 on Niconico) screenshots + download link

Finally got the time to record, encode and upload this. Although I'm largely against this audition, it was quite a treat to watch in live to see what the audition process really is like (too bad I fell asleep half-way through it last night. Thankfully I was able to get a second shot at recording it from Niconico earlier today).

It started off with a large group of kids (pictured above) who made it to the second round. They filed in one by one and lined up, waiting for Tsunku to call on them.

Once it was a girl's turn, she had to do a self introduction (which was mostly clouded out by S/mileage songs; probably on purpose for their privacy), quickly perform a special talent, and answer any questions that Tsunku had.

Once that was over, the girls spread out and danced to Yume Miru 15. Some stood out, while others seemed to lag behind.

Two of my personal favorites from group one was number 1063,

as well as number 260.

I liked 1063-chan because during the group dance, she seemed to be giving it her all and genuinely enjoying it, instead of looking scared like a lot of the girls were. 260-chan wins for being cute

Honorable mention goes to number 9,

and number 801 (the one who raided Tsuji's closet and stole half of her bow collection).

Repeat this process one more time and you have seen most (you'll understand more in a minute) of the second round finalists complete part one of this second stage.

For group two, number 857,

and massage-chan were among my favorites.

Afterwards, the girls were called back in to the room in groups of four for the next part.

After more personal information censoring, they were required to expose their foreheads and show their teeth.

Next was singing time (13-chan was amazing, especially compared to the girl after her),

followed by more dancing.

Just when this whole process seemed to get repetitive, some familiar faces appeared.

That's right, it's Mogi, one of the girls who didn't make it into Morning Musume's 9th gen (also one of the newest Eggs).

And it didn't stop with Mogichan. A bunch of Eggs tried out and made it to the second round (including her fellow 9th gen finalist, Aina). I didn't get the chance to truly sit down and watch this far yet, but even skimming through, it was painfully obvious how much better even the newer Eggs were compared to the fresh faces.

I was both thrilled and saddened to see Takeuchi Akari (pictured above) and Miyamoto Karin (pictured below) here. Of course, I am happy for the both of them to make it this far (though I'm not surprised; I consider them the two most talented Eggs right now), but I'd much rather see them in Morning Musume. Personally, I think they fit Morning Musume better than S/mileage, which is a common thought I had throughout this video.

One of the major reasons why I wasn't very happy to hear about the S/mileage auditions is because the S/mileage members are (talent wise) so alike, anyone who joins (even an Egg) will stick out. There were a countless number of girls (most of which I didn't list above) that I was impressed with, but I just didn't feel like they would be good fits for S/mileage. But honestly, that could very well be the point of these auditions - to find a fresh face or two that shakes things up. There are a select few that seem to be pretty good fits (Ribbon-chan probably is #1) and this audition doesn't seem to be short on talent, so at least it will be interesting to see what happens.

Download link (341 MB): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SIOHKLEZ

Here are a few notes on the encode itself:

The Niconico stream lasted for about 3 hours, but I edited a lot of the waiting (staring at a camera pointed at the floor) out of it, so the total runtime of this encode is roughly two hours and fifteen minutes.

It's a pretty small filesize because the video resolution is only 442x326. No use in making it huge and degrading the quality in the process. (You can just watch it in fullscreen if the small video screen bothers you that much.)

And finally, a couple of glitches are present. There are multiple instances where either the audio drops out or the video spazzes (or maybe something random that I didn't catch), but they don't last more than a second or two so they aren't major problems.