Meet & Greet Tracker

Background

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the world have been forced to re-evaluate their face-to-face commitments. The idol industry was dealt a blow when their use of face-to-face interactions between idols and fans in handshake events (握手会) were cancelled due to new social distancing regulations.

Since then, online platforms have emerged as a stand-in for the once face-to-face, in-person interactions between idols and fans. The innovation of online meet & greets (オンラインミート＆グリート) allowed these interactions without the in-person contact.

With the easing of COVID-19 restrictions worldwide, we are seeing a return to in-person “real” events, but the online meet & greets continue to be a big part of Nogizaka46 and its sister groups promotional and business model.

Interpreting the charts

The charts that I have prepared are English versions of the charts by fellow Nogizaka-wota, ジーン, who has been compiling them for as long as I remember.

When a new single is announced, it is usually followed up an announcement of the dates for which there will be an online meet & greet event for that single. The lottery application schedule is also announced for usually 4-5 rounds at a time.

The dates of the events are listed across the top of the charts and each date is then split up into 5 blocks which represent time-blocks of the day for which the idol will be doing their meet & greet.

All the idols participating in the meet & greet are then listed down the left-hand side of the chart, with any dates or blocks marked “DNP” or greyed out if they are not participating.

As members start selling out their blocks, they are marked by the round number for which the block is sold out as well as highlighted in different colours, depending on when it was sold out:

Yellow highlighted cells mark the blocks sold out in the current round
Blue highlighted cells mark blocks sold out in prior rounds
Purple highlighted cells mark all blocks sold out for that member

Two charts are presented, one of which is the total blocks of the event and the other is the blocks listed by generation.

Note: Blocks sold are reflective of the previous round of applications, as that is the only information that can be ascertained when the current round of applications go up.