What. A. Show. Love the results or hate them, it really was something else. I think we can all agree on that.
My thoughts and stuff:
Future Girls- Nakanishi Yuka made it again. Pretty fun surprise. And I thought that would be the biggest SKE surprise if the night. LITTLE DID I KNOW WHAT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.
- Kinchan made it too?!

Okay, surely THAT will be the biggest SKE surprise. Surely...
- Nacchan ranking at all was a bit of a surprise to me, but I figured if one ranked, it would be her and just barely. I honestly did not expect any of the grads to rank. I think Oshima Mai, Ono Erena, even Kasai Tomomi's solo careers so far show how quickly the AKB bubble bursts for them once they're out of the group's umbrella.
- Mio ranked unbelievably low. I thought for sure she'd at least be in the upper 30's. Wow, I'm shocked.
- Kyon(Isohara Kyoka) ranked?! Best. Sosenkyo. Ever. That was seriously an awesome moment. At this point I gave up counting the SKE surprises. :lol
- Sucks to see Wasamin fall 23 spots. She's way too awesome for that.

She needs some more solo activity, and also some idol promotion. She could be the first enka gravure idol!

- Meru ranking low is a bummer for the HKT camp, but I don't know if I'd call myself surprised. I've come to like her quite a bit, but her push still feels really artificial in a lot of ways.
- Happy to see Maachun still ranked in! She even doubled her votes and went up a few spots. Yay!
- Aamin fell several spots. No! D:
- Yoshida Akari ranking is pretty cool. Girl's pretty awesome and I always enjoy her rather dangerous Google+ pictures.

- Shuu as Future Girls center is a nice surprise. Team BII really needs some hype. It also fits the title of the senbatsu group.
Next Girls- KoAmi ranked as well?!?!?! The fuck's going on here? I don't know, but I really like it. The power in SKE has shifted for sure! This is GREAT!
- I'm really surprised to see Muto Tomu actually ranked UP. I've seen her like nowhere since Show Fight.

She's cool, so I'm fine with it, but definitely a surprise.
- Fuuko is IN! Not much of a surprise, maybe a tad lower than I had hoped, but still awesome! Or should I say... Wonderfuu!
- Lovetan going up a bit is welcome. I think she does a great job in HKT. She's really tried to make herself work in that group and be a good addition. In my opinion, she's totally succeeded.

- Saito Makiko ranking is.... SO overdue. I've loved this girl since the old KII days and seeing her name in here just warms my heart. What a great thing to happen.

Honestly, I was so overwhelmed when she was announced I didn't know she ranked until she gave her speech.

- Matsurina as well? What the... okay, awesome. Very unexpected.
- Jonishi Kei ranking in and a LOT higher than I would have thought. Kickass!
- Umemoto Madoka ranking in is another one of those heartwarming moments. She's dedicated herself to Team E and I'm glad that it was
finally rewarded. Awesome stuff.
- Haruppi ranked way lower than I would have preferred, but not too bad a spot.
- Wow, Mocchi took a pretty decent drop.

Her votes stayed around the same as last near. Bummer, she's too fine to drop down.
- Haachan manages to gain 14 spots and have a strong showing yet again. Makes me so happy. She's like my original Team B representative. I want to see her do great in everything she does. <3
- Not sure how to feel about Amina's rank. She went down a bit but she gets Next Girls center. Even-ish trade?
Undergirls- Reinyan went up a bit, hurray! We need more Reinyan gravure, dammit!

- Kanon shot up quite a bit. I'm surprised, honestly. I don't see what she has done to go up twenty-friggin'-five spots, but good for her. <3 ~
- Annin going from not ranking to 30 also quite the accomplishment.

- Masana about in the same spot. I'm glad she's at least holding steady. She's such a lovely woman.

- THE RISE OF YAMADA NANA BABY! She's so cool. I'm glad she made undergirls.
- Airin also in a stable spot. Represent us Gundam fans well!

- Sakura landed about where I realistically expected her to be, and I'm fairly happy with it. I hope she gets even higher next year, though! I also hope that being the second highest HKT girl gets her in a better spot for HKT's 2nd single.
- Kawaei making a SUPER STRONG showing for her first rank-in. Sasuga baka center.
- Kaotan went up? I'll be honest, she's gone way down in my personal rankings and her appeal is starting to be lost on me, but good for her. She has worked really hard to be entertaining in her own way.
- Churi about in the same spot as expected. I expected as much after her comments about the sousenkyo, and since Rie's SKE concurrency was terminated, the fan push didn't happen.
- Yuria going up doesn't surprise me at ALL. With all the recent graduations I was sure she would pick up support from the SKE fans. No doubt in my mind.

- Wow, Rie's votes went up some but she still flopped right out of the senbatsu. Harsh reality on this one. I can sort of understand why her support hasn't increased to a major degree though. She's been doing some fairly un-idolish things on camera the past year.

Plus she cock-blocked Tecchan! Props to him for still supporting her, though.
FYI I'm mostly joking.- Akicha falling doesn't really surprise me. Her snoody comments last year were kind of a downer and Harugon has been lapping her in JKT participation. She's lucky to have gotten that high in my opinion.
- Miichan fell out of the senbatsu but her votes still went up. Kinda hard to read. It seems like her support merely stayed around the same where others around her increased. I'm not sure if this is symbolic as it may seem just looking at its face value. This could have very easily happened with no scandal in play. We always comment about how we don't understand how a girl doesn't like being undergirls center instead of at the bottom of the senbatsu, but you can tell from Takamina's and others' reactions that there is something very, very valuable to them about being in that senbatsu. Lines really are drawn between this groups. I feel bad that the girls seemingly stress on that so much.
- Shibata Aya is someone I've always had the corner of my eye on for some time. That lovely voice, that great smile, them awesome overall looks, and of course those crazy bug eyes.

She seems like a sweet girl, and somehow her fans showed up in fucking force. This was a truly epic surprise. Even with NMB and HKT taking up some of the spotlight, it just goes to show you don't fuck with SKE, man.
Senbatsu- Akarin fished her way into senbatsu. Not too surprising. She is another I expected to go way up after the recent mass graduations.
- Speaking of fishing, I am kinda surprised to see Milky lose to Sayanee. I love them equally so either outcome is fine with me, but I thought for sure Milky had the hype to get it done. I still think this will be the new fight to watch for each year. I can see their rankings duking it out just like Jurina versus Rena.

- Yui was freaking out bad before her name even came up, and I totally laughed my ass off when the usher knew to go ahead and go get her and take her down the stairs.

But she did pull it together for the last of her speech. Such an awesome girl, I'm glad she went up a couple of spots.

- Paruru in senbatsu, well whoopie. I was expecting her to be around 19. Honestly... meh. It doesn't bother me but I honestly just don't see the charm, either. Whatevs.
- Tomochin gets a pretty crappy sendoff, going down a few spots. Oh well, could've been way worse.
- Sae in the top ten is how it should be.

- Haruna going down is a bit surprising given how she's on a lot of media regularly and gets a lot of work. She didn't look too happy, either. Maybe it's because she knew she lost to them dirty Nagoyans.

- Takamina out of the kami 7? Fuck that shit. How can soukantoku not be in kami 7?! Injustice!

- Jurina and Rena continue to duke it out, but it looks like Jurina is the dominant force once again. Honestly it makes sense. Jurina has gone from being a hype machine to an idol machine. She's really become great at what she does. And there's also her
awesome recent pictorial work. I still would have preferred Rena to win for the trololol's, but this is fine too.
- Mariko in the same spot isn't too surprising seeing the INSANE amount of support she got at Request Hour. Then she drops the fucking bomb on everyone by saying she wants to graduate? BUMMER. I was hoping she would stay and defy the artificial idol age limit. Looks like that task is left to Sato Mieko now. I don't wanna see her go, Mariko's so cool(and so hot.)

- Yukirin had a strong showing. Her votes went up about 25k and I'm happy for her. I personally still think she deserves to outrank Mayuyu, but like the song goes, you can't always get what you want~
- Mayuyu should be happy about how she did. She broke 100k and those aren't small potatoes.
- Yuko had a strong showing as well. Her votes went up around 28k and she seemed alright with it. I bet here is some relief to not being the center. Yuko handled it in typical awesome Yuko fashion. I love how she just rolls with the punches and has fun with it. Some of the fans out there could learn a thing or two from her.

- I was totally spamming #Sasshi2013 but I honestly did not expect it to happen. When the announcer said "AKB48..." for #2, I didn't jump, yell, scream, anything. I just put my face close up to the monitor and fisted my keyboard to send random characters to the IRC to display excitement.

I was in total. fucking. shock. As someone who has been a Sasshi fan since the AKB48+10 days I couldn't be more excited. She's my kamioshi and she won the sousenkyo. Of course I'm thrilled. I understand some people aren't Sasshi fans in general, and that's fine. There are those out there that don't like that she had a scandal, and while I don't really care about the loveban rule I at least try to respect that. But there is a lot of... to put it nicely, utter nonsense about Sasshi in this fandom about how she mercilessly took over HKT48, is some kind of diva, and other complete bullshit hateful comments even I, Datalanche, inventor of #ParuPie, wouldn't repeat. To all that, I say: I devour your delicious butthurt tears for breakfast, lunch, dinner and fucking dessert.

ANYWAYS, all I can say is this news makes me extraordinarily happy. There's really no words to properly express my excitement. This really does signify something big for the 48 Groups and it's new page in the history books. I totally love this outcome. It's a surprise, it's something new, it's something exciting and I am going to relish in this moment and cherish it probably forever. This might be the highlight of my 12 year JPop fandom. There is no doubt in my mind that I will own every last version of this single.

What am amazing ending to one crazy night of awesomeness. I know the sousenkyo puts pressure on the girls but it's a spectacle that I really enjoy seeing. I really love how we have all been able to see it live the past couple of years.
I have to say, though, this year's stream had some trouble. It was really overproduced to an insane degree. We didn't need commentary, we were all doing that ourselves in skype, IRC, at meetups, and so on. The fan comments thing was a neat idea, but it took up a bit too much screen space. A ticker at the bottom could have been a lot nicer, in my opinion. The fan youtube clips also seemed thrown in, and they played some three or four times. Surely they got more submissions than that. I think next year they should scale it back a bit. Also, while I definitely, DEFINITELY appreciate them providing an English stream, it was just unwatchable this year. You had the left channel with audio translating the show, the right translating the commentators, sometimes one channel would die out, sometimes the translators would just get lost in the mess of Japanese teenage girl language...

I gave up on it after 15 minutes. It made me dizzy hearing translators talking over other translators talking over commentators talking over a show.

Still, I still enjoyed myself and am eternally grateful to AKS for giving us the ability to see the event live. Much love, much props.
Pretty fun event. Thrills, chills, and lots of surprises. AKB continues to entertain like no other.

I don't often rewatch stuff, but I think I'm going to try to rewatch this show. I was so busy reacting to it that I probably missed a LOT of stuff. Plus seeing as how it was 3AM to 8AM when I was watching it, the details get a little fuzzy as the brain wonders why I'm up at such a nutty hour.

Fun times!!!