Not sure, but what I just read on her blog seems to indicate she has a solo dinner show tonight.
Probably a scheduling conflict or something.
I actually didn't notice she wasn't there until you told me.
That would explain why Captain was the subject of Tsunku's trolling of the audience.
He came onscreen, started talking solemnly about Shimizu Saki, and right when you thought he was going to announce something big...
...he told everyone that yesterday was her 20th birthday.
SUCH A TROLL LOL
If she was there herself, I think the joke might have been ruined.
Also, I've read on some tweets that they had to extend the handshake event time limit to 7:30pm from 7:00.
For reference, that's more than 6 hours after the concert started.
Also if there's people with handshake tickets left over by the end, I heard that they were going to hold future handshake events for them.
Of course, they likely won't have every member available due to scheduling and the winter concerts.
Some other highlights of the MCs were:
Harunan's self-introduction: "I love games, manga, and Michishige-san!"
Masaki's herp derp self-introduction: "Nicknamed Satou Masaki, I'm Satou Masaki..."
She really is the most airheaded member, isn't she?
Luckily she caught it and fixed it, "Nicknamed Masaki, I'm Satou Masaki!"
This girl is seriously cute!
Sayu was introducing S/mileage's new song and forgot the "postwoman" part of the title.
Devoted H!P fangirl Fukuchan was standing behind her and reminded her what it was.
Reina's gag from the math drama trailer: "Sine, Cosine, Mentaiko!"
Yeah, it was pretty dumb...
Judging from the grumbling of the crowd, they thought so too.
This prompted Reina to go, "Hey, I'm talking here!" to a whole crowd of 7,000 people while she was preparing to do it onstage.
Such a yankee.
Momoko did her "forgive me-nyan!" gag.
Yes, in front of thousands of people.
Kanyon's Cinderella Revolution (bang-bang-bang-bang!): for the last bang, she walked over to Kumai and directed it straight at her.
In case you didn't know, Kanyon is known to be a huge Kumaichan fangirl.
Chisato said something about supporting Miyabi as a fan as well. (I wasn't paying full attention during this part.)
There was quite a bit of H!P fangirling going on onstage, now that I think about it...
After Tsunku's first trolling VTR, they sang happy birthday to Take-chan since it's her 14th birthday.
Then Gaki told everyone that there was another Tsunku VTR.
The dude's trolling has gotten outta control this year!
Luckily it was just saying that they're going to do a H!P trainee audition.