It would seem that success as an idol does not necessarily lend itself to success in other areas of Japanese celebrity life.  Recently, Watanabe Mayu starred in a Fuji TV drama titled, “Tatakau! Shouten Girl”, where she takes one of the lead roles.  Unfortunately, even Mayuyu couldn’t save the show from terribly low ratings.

Unlike AKB singles, which for the most part seem to achieve million-seller status regardless of quality, the jump of AKB members into other forms of media has not always been of such quality.

“Tatakau! Shouten Girl!” started with a reasonable enough premise (by Japanese drama standards at least): two main leads, both female, one in her 20s (Watanabe Mayu’s role), and one in her 40s (played by Inamori Izumi).  The drama features the two butting heads, showing the how each girl, respective of their age groups, handles difficulties in work, love, and life.  The drama sells itself as a “female life drama”.

The first episode achieved ratings of 6.2%, and achieved an all time low of 3.3% by episode seven.  Overall however, ratings were about 4.7%.  For comparison sake, Oshima Yuko’s recent drama, “Yame-goku”, achieved reacting sod 9.1% in the first episode, and it’s lowest ratings were in episode five, at 5.2%.

Even further comparison, most regularly broadcast variety shows seem to achieve double-digit ratings in the low teens, as we previously noted.

Source: http://www.cyzowoman.com/2015/06/post_16283.html