The Taiwan auditions for AKB48 in 2015 were an amazing thing, giving us both
Ma Chia-Ling and laying the groundwork for TPE48. 16 other girls also passed these auditions alongside Macharin, and amongst them was trainee,
Lin YuHsin, smiling up at the camera in
pictures taken that day, hair pushed behind one ear. In the long wait between the announcement of those auditions, Macharin's transfer to AKB proper, and TPE48 being announced, Lin YuHsin,
Reichi to Japanese fans struggling with her name, dropped out—only to return for auditions in 2018 and qualify for TPE48 once more as a trainee just months before the group was rebranded to the modern AKB48 Team TP and the release of their cover of
Mae Shika Mukanee.
I've been rooting for TPE48 from the start. I maybe never paid as much attention to them as I should have done, and I wasn't too keen on
Abe Maria being away for so long, but, in my mind, success for a Taipei based group might have paved the way for a Hong Kong group, so I really wanted TPE to take off... only they didn't. Between 2015 and the group finally releasing their first single, a lot happened in idol fandom, a lot happened in AKB alone, and, of course, a lot happened in my personal life. Meanwhile, Reichi was there for it all, from those initial auditions to where we are now, the month of
oh my pumpkin!'s release.
In 2019, Reichi made it back where she started, "promoted" to the group's first generation, only for something interesting to happen a year later. Team TP has never had defined teams, favouring instead the NGT model, but instead of remaining solely as generations, the group was briefly divided into three units, Daisy, Bellflower, and Sakura, of which Reichi was a member. Each unit released a recorded revival of
RESET, Team K's sixth stage before TP had another shake-up in 2022, folding up all three units and dividing anew into Unit T and Unit P, later renamed TIC TAC TOE and Peek a Boo respectively.
Like Liu Yu-ching, former audition finalist and the centre of
Mae Shika Mukanee, now a member of Taiwanese group,
KIRIS, Reichi and the early members of the group really weathered the storm. I was always resistant to SNH48 because Shanghai was such an unknown quality to me and I was a little intimidated by the sexy image of the group (says former SDN48 fan), but TPE felt the closest to "real" AKB to me, to a group that echoed the sentiments I associated with both AKB48 and Japanese idol music. I'm steering ahead here without going too much off on a tangent on Japan's influence in Taiwan and the terrible history of the 20th century, but it always seemed to me that the management of TPE understood the values of AKB best and were also the closest to providing what wistful fans abroad could not experience without embarking on a three-hour plane journey.
Whilst at work, I was watching a lot of videos of the sister groups over my lunchbreaks before
oh my pumpkin! was announced, and I deliberately didn't post about Reichi as I worried that everyone would think I am
predictable as she's basically the twin-tail girl. Now the cat is out of the bag, I fear!
It felt like a long journey to get us to where we are now, and all throughout it, Lin YuHsin has been there amidst the senbatsu. I'm really excited to hear what Team TP's solo version of
oh my pumpkin! will be like!
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tozka) wrote2025-08-09 05:14 am
