Japan Women's NT 2023

    Irisawa kinda fell apart as this match went on. Shows on her face

    Nishimura sliding along :lol:

    Good one by Inoue there :thumbup: Too bad it didn't pay off


    Irisawa coming alive now :super:

    All right . Mizuki closes it out


    Not as convincing all the way through as I had hoped for. Didn't even feel real Japan-y. But there were moments. Araki was a blast :rose: And I think the serve love is working

    2023.05.30

    Week 1 Match 1
    		 Set 1 Set 2 Set 3 Set 4 Set 5 Stats

    JPN 3–1 DOM

    25-23

    25-18

    22-25

    25-15


    97–81
    Quote from Rhaemon

    i miss the crowd back in 2019 that shouts the player's names. Much more... engaged


    Quote from Hassan Kadem

    FOR REAL. It's packed but like dead. I don't know if they are allowed to cheer though

    it is a Tuesday night, Japanese businesses are working and against a “team Japan should beat”.

    That combination just is not going to get you a big crowd.

    Friday-Sunday will be much bigger.

    Apparently this recorded 1000+ people in attendance is the lowest in history and is way below the minimum which was expected to be at least 5000 people


    Here are some tweets by actual people in the industry not random fans. Ironically Mayu Koga and Nagaoka's merch have all sold out this day 1 but someone said there are smaller merch booths outside of Nippon Gaishi Hall where fans can also buy without having to enter the arena.


    They need to do something about that


    https://twitter.com/masaki_karaya/status/1663557178945597444

    https://twitter.com/Tossy526/status/1663562453614198790

    This is another new team so it's a little understandable that there aren't enough core fans but Koga has some popularity in Japan her name alone should have generated the minimum amount of spectators but it didn't

    having sold out merch is no way an indication of how successful an event is especially if we're talking on site merch which are at the very least 100 stock of each item per member. some fans even hoard or mass buy merch to sell online at a higher price especially to foreign fans

    If you compare this to the 2018-2019 squad


    Mayu Kurogo popular toray duo highschool stars that teens adored

    Ishii and Koga popular ace duo

    Ishii Shinnabe and Nagaoka popular veterans

    Miyashita popular setter

    Miya Sato was a thing too


    Now

    Koga and Mayu are not a duo. They never had that kind of chemistry.

    Mayu and Momii would have been a popular duo.

    The other sub-aces Hayashi and Inoue are not popular at all.


    BUT it's useless to even worry about that right now they should concentrate on winning as much as possible. It can't be helped that Koga is the only popular player for this leg.

    Quote from sean1

    What did you think about Araki?

    Glad she finally made it to the main team. I think Manabe was initially expecting to see that kind of energy on Hammy but she couldn't block and she never made any clear moves.


    Also, I'm convinced that Araki becomes more confident once she puts on those goggles (that Foluke gave her btw)

    The first time she joined Saga her Nishi Nippon article said she had some anxiety issues that's why she cries easily and she wanted to grow out of that phase.

    thats alarmingly low especially in japan for an nt match no less it should put some pressure on jva to give the girls more exposure. that's less than nec's homegame audience

    Quote from gkv

    thats alarmingly low especially in japan for an nt match no less it should put some pressure on jva to give the girls more exposure. that's less than nec's homegame audience

    I disagree and TBS does so much for them already. Hayashi, inoue, seki and irisawa have all gotten their own episodes.The problem is the erratic player changes in the main team. There's very little time for anyone to even remember each player's names.

    yeah like last year manabe and eventually saori were hyping yoshino sato and she turned out to be a complete flop but so many people were already hoping she'd be the next ebata or female ran (depending on which gen you're in)