The Dreamer Who Refuses to Give Up – Viviyona Apriani

It was a very close fight between votes for Yona and Sinka in last week’s poll, but Yona votes managed to stretch for the win with a narrow margin of 6%! Final score: Yona votes: 48%, Sinka votes: 42%

Without further ado, we present to you Sammy’s profile for Yona JKT48!

JKT48 Member Profile : Viviyona Apriani

Next up from my list of requests is Team KIII’s Viviyona Apriani. Nickname = Yona! I have a soft spot in my heart for Yona, so I was really happy when she was requested, and I’m looking forward to sharing more information about her with you all!

Birthday: April 13, 1994
Catchphrase: “The dreamer who refuses to give up, I’m Yona!”

A truly beautiful soul within JKT48.

Yona is known for bringing a calm, cool, and collected presence wherever she happens to be.

Even though she’s regarded as a bit of an older sister among the girls, she’s peaceful and not much of an “enforcer” whenever she sees her younger peers acting silly.

Yona has a very adaptable, go-with-the-flow personality—although she admits that she can be quite talkative in the right company.

Beneath the calm façade, you might never guess that Yona is actually quite the adorable nerd.

Prior to joining JKT48, she was big into cosplay. She still is into the hobby today, and breaks out her cosplay for special occasions, in fact.

Yona explained that the reason she auditioned for JKT48 was because of her underlying interest in Japanese culture.

Since her years in elementary school, Yona has had a penchant for anime (her favorites are Durarara!, Ao no Exorcist, and Evangelion) and Japanese music, and she often visited Japanese cultural festivals (and frequently did so in cosplay!).

A big fan of Utada Hikaru, Yona claims that she wants the chance to meet the singer one day.

Vocally, Yona has a pretty impressive range. One of the first examples of her singing that I saw was her performance in “Pajama Drive;” particularly her unit, “Junjou Shugi.”

I assumed based off of her solo lines in this song that Yona had a lower range, but she really has a nice upper vocal range, too (you can hear her hit some high notes around 2:00 in).

Yona describes her strength as singing, so she’s been given the opportunity to really show her skills off quite a bit in a variety of styles—from slower and jazzy to upbeat and pop.

While she has a reputation as a calm, cool beauty… Yona has plenty of cute moments.

Whether she’s modeling on a runway in a cute style, making silly duck faces, or frantically trying to guess seasonings in a game, her cute side makes plenty of appearances.

Performance-wise, Yona has always struck me as extremely confident on stage.

In units, she’s typically placed in the darker and more mature songs like “Itoshisa no defense,” “Junjou Shugi” as mentioned before, and “Kinjirareta Futari” (wasn’t able to find a video for this one, sorry—well, other than this one!).

Yona finally got a little bit of decent screen time in a PV after she was voted into senbatsu for Gingham Check (she placed at #10!).

Outside of performances alone, Yona’s speaking ability seems quite strong. She’s completely comfortable, as evidenced by her skill performance, interacting with the audience—and even making a somewhat shy audience member work up the courage to speak to her in front of the crowd.

Comparing her confidence in her skill performance video to the time she auditioned, you can see her confidence in front of other people has grown tremendously in a short period of time (Yona’s audition begins around the ~57:00 mark).

This point really leads me into a story that gave me a good sense of Yona’s kindheartedness. Via Twitter, Yona posted a little tribute to a fan who passed away last year.

Last June, Azhar, a JKT48 fan and Yona oshi, tweeted to Yona, “Holla (≧∇≦) Good luck with the theater ma’am. Can’t go today, I’m not feeling quite well. Share a photo of you in yukata, please (laugh).”

He passed away a few hours later from a sudden heart attack; news of his passing spread fairly quickly in the fan community since Azhar was a regular at the theater, and within a few hours, Yona tweeted a picture of her in a yukata along with the message, “Each happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow.”

It shows just how deeply connected Yona feels with her fans—she was able to honor the last request that her fan made to her. (Thank you to JKT48Stuff for sharing these details—seriously one of the stories from the fan community that touched my heart the most.)

Miscellany:

• Says that her weakness is her shyness
• Wants to become a traveler in the future
• Her favorite word is “dreams”
• Her favorite memory in JKT48 was the first day of performing the ‘Pajama Drive’ stage
• Says if she was reborn as a boy, she’d want to try karate
• Wants to challenge herself in JKT48 and find her own character
• Is a Japanese Literature major in college
• Is skilled at art and drawing
• Likes to make soup
• Jokes that people think she’s airheaded because of her frequent blank stares.

My personal thoughts: Like I mentioned before, Yona is the sweetheart of JKT48 in my eyes. A thoughtful presence within the group, Yona brings an interesting mix to the boisterous Team K.

She’s certainly not out of place there, and seems well liked among the other girls, so it’s always interesting for me to see her interacting with the group.

I’m honestly really, really glad that she placed so high in the senbatsu election last year—after being a member that’s not really given much of a push to place that high in senbatsu, it’s really impressive.

It shows how hard Yona works, and how dedicated her fans are to her.

I feel like Yona’s quite skilled at showing off her talents/facets of her personality whenever she’s given the opportunity in many ways—for example, as I referenced about her skill performance video, not only did she show off her drawing, but she was able to show off her great MC skills too.

In her election appeal video, she shows her drawing skills and also shares a little bit about her personality (talking about “dreams” and holding up a sign that says “dreams”—and as she’s mentioned before, her favorite word is “dreams”).

I feel like she’s very methodical and deliberate in what she does in front of the audience… but it comes off so naturally for her.

On top of everything else… I can’t help but to admire Yona’s amazing cosplays!

As always, thank you for reading! Thank you for supporting JKT48, and I hope you’re enjoying learning more about the members! Photos are not my own and have been sourced from AganSam, razgriz2520, Idolgraphy, the JKT48 Official Site, and Twitter. Please check them out to see more great JKT48 photos!

-End of Sammy’s profile-

P.S: If you would like to find out more about Sammy’s member profiles, be sure to visit her site here!

Also, if you would like to volunteer to translate this article to Bahasa Indonesia, do let us know via the contact form or tweet us at @jkt48stuff!

Additional photos courtesy of Pitra.