[GENERAL] The Sakamichi Series group thread

Best solution would be a new group then.

 

Well it looks like Keyaki is going to be in a "rebuilding year" so I guess they can split these girls between Hinata and Keyaki.

 

I think it's necessary for the group, if they release two singles at least this year and starting auditions or adding kks for Keyaki next year, I think it'll be fine. This should be the year for gettiing the spotlight for all the members including 2nd gen. I think it has to be done because if they keep thing like things I'm afraid the group will be more and more disrupted.

 

Keyaki could definitely use some new members but I just love Hinata the way they are right now and don't want any changes to the group, at least for another year or so. There's some ultra-talented all-rounders in that group who aren't getting the attention they deserve, and a herd of new girls entering the group surely won't be good for their morale. You can sense Hinata girls are super ambitious and unified right now; they really don't need any more members, unless for some reason, they desperately want to raise single sales (which are already pretty good at the moment).

 

Well I think Hinata could be more understanding about adding more members, If it weren't for that then the 11 members from the first gen would have been in Hiragana forever. Maybe next year would be a good year to add more members. The thing is that Hinata doesn't go to the same point Keyaki is right now, and I think adding more members is the only option.

 

I feel like its a sure thing that Hinata will get a new gen after this single. Probably by the beginning of summer.

Because Sony wants to make money and based on how fast Hinata sells out handshake tickets its obvious they can sell a lot more with more members. You can bank on them getting more members before next single IMO.

 

Best and worst at the same time... LOL!

IMO it does none of the kenshusei any good to hold them back. I wonder if they knew that this is what they're signing up for?

On this day, at this moment, it seems like it's not a good time to add more members, but I think the members themselves would readily accommodate new additions. They'll make it work. The four generations of Nogizaka would make it work, I don't doubt the merry band of misfits that is Hinatazaka couldn't not make it work, and regardless of what's happening to Keyaki-chans, the members themselves would make it work, too. Now management? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm gonna bet that by their 2 year anniversary they'll know their fate.

 

I have some kss picks to enter nogi if there are some other 1ki/2ki announcing their graduation. Sure it will be tough to enter senbatsu but you'll have reliable and more experienced senpais for moral support.

If S&F learned from their mistakes a complete kss would be fine entering hinata too so they can move on to senbatsu system and hopefully a center or w-center change.

keyaki is on a rough patch right now. hopefully there's no more 1ki graduations to follow if a 2ki center happens. My take on the sudden departure of techi is maybe there's internal conflict inside the group after all. Because i'm sure S&F would rather a choose a short promotion of the original 9th then a hiatus if it's about health problems over the continued delays and a sudden graduation of the group's face.

 

I think we should be careful to speculate about what is happening between mngmt and Keyaki when we don't get any message from mngmt themselves. Hirate decided to withdraw and that's what we all get and she will tell another time why she did it.

The group will go through a rebuilding year like gish0046 mentioned. But as many have said before it was a bad idea to push this group with one member who represents the whole group for the public. You only got Hirate as center and everything mngmt did was scheduled around Hirate. If Hirate had injuries, no Keyaki. That has been going on since Kouhaku 2017 accident. It must have been frustrated for members like Zuumin who gave up in 2018 and went solo.

It's better to have members on equal level so mngmt get forced to start do center rotation which has been a hard thing for s&f to adopt.

 

thing is rough for keya because unlike immovable acchan, there is yuko that is equally popular, and the infamous 7@8fukujin(i forgot the term in akb, please remind me back), to back up the group for a while and then akb is lucky to have goddess of variety shows sashihara rino sudden popularity.. neru should stay but her sudden grad also seems suspicious. who else is popular beside both of them anyway? risa or rika is not their level yet. i dont think the sales will plummet because akip group survive on hs sells anyway. they just need to hang on it for a while.

 

Kami 7?

 

But unfortunately Keyaki never used a Fukujin system like Nogi, even tough it looked good at the begining because it seemed fairer for the members, I think it was a bad idea since 2017, for the 1st-5th single of Nogi where Ikoma was the center in all of them it never felt she was getting all the spotlight, and that's why there were other 6-7 members who got a prominent position with her called Fukujin. So even if there were members who didn't get spotlight at all, at least it was not heavily focused in only one girl. Just look at their last MV which was focused 9n the Fukujin.
But in Keyaki there's no other prominent position than the center, so everyone is focused in that position and nobody else. Just think about the big difference it could make if they implemented Fukujin.
Hinata doesn't have Fukujin members either and it worries me a little because they haven't changed the center too, but at least Nao is not the only one who have been in 1st row for every single, Kyoko and Katoshi are still there. So I think at least they should consider giving the 1st row the tittle of Fukujin for future releases, I think it'd help a lot.

 

I gotta agree.. Actually, I'm even more in support of all 3 groups having a fukujin system now after the shit show Keyaki has given us this week.

In terms of new members, Nogi doesn't need any. Most casual fans are still getting to know the 3rd gen girls and most are probably unaware of the 4th gen beside the 3 who were front row for the latest single. Nogi can use this year to continue the Maiyan graduation send off, solidifying Asuka as the newest ace, and pushing 3rd and 4th gen to the general public. They can announce new members at the end of this year and have them debut with the group in 2021. Honestly they're doing everything right so I'm not worried about them.

Keyaki has already tried to shake up the table with the 9th formation, and now that 3 members left, including their ace, it's a free for all to the top again. Since they never established a fukujin before, they can do this in the upcoming single with a rework of the senbatsu. A mix of 1st and 2nd gen would be perfect. Just putting it out there but, Sugai, Yuipon, Risa, Koike, Habu, Hono, Hikaru, and Matsurina would make a perfect fukujin lineup. Announce 3rd gen in the summer and have them promote by the end of the year, let 9th be the time for 2nd gen to shine.

While I do think Hinata are in a great place right now, I also have this nagging feeling that they're literally following the road Keyaki took before them.. Everyone in senbatsu together may be great now, but when 4th gen come around, that won't be possible and their feelings of unity may end up alienating the newbies the same way Keyaki unknowingly did. Also, from a management standpoint, their 4th single is almost sold out, which means unless they increase the slots, that is the level Hinata will stay at if they don't add more members. The best thing for them to do would be to add their new members now to introduce them to the public.

 

Seed and Flower has definitely failed in managing the egos and ambitions of Keyaki members.
They could have a new centre by the 5th single but they chose to rode on the momentum of the 4th therefore setting the precedent for the Eternal center Thing.
It was great move no doubt for the short term but the long term is equally devastating it crushes the dreams of Imaizumi and even lowered the Morale of Suzumoto.

But S&F ain't the sole culprit here; the members themselves set this atmosphere for themselves. They became complacent in being in the background.

They could have fix all this mess by having a rival ace ; Like AkB with Maeda and Yuko ; AkB with Sasshi and Mayuyu and Nogi with Maiyan and Nanase .
For example they could have release a light image song centred by Neru or Imaizumi and still released a Darker Image song centred by Hirate.

In Regards to Hinata ; adding more members will not automatically double their sales unless their market grew as well .

 

It won't double their sales but look at this new single. Every member except Hamagishi Hiyori and Takase Mana has sold out by the 2nd round. And that's with everyone having 30 slots. And Hiyori is on the verge of selling out and will definitely sell out in the 3rd round. Its not a matter of growing their market, its about meeting the demands of the market they already have. HS sales aren't the be-all end-all for an idol group but they are a good indicator of how popular a group is and potentially unsold HS tickets is lost money for Sony.

If you look at Yoakemade, by the 2nd round Nogi had sold out 338 slots whereas for this single Hinata has already sold out 514 slots. And they only have 540 slots to sell compared to Nogi's 864.

Every sold handshake ticket counts as a sold single. I don't know how many people is 1 slot but lets assume its 150. So 514 slots represents 77,100 in single sales, which is equivalent to an entire single for Momoclo. Mathematically, Hinata is definitely getting more members I have no doubt.

 

Hinata is definitely on an upwards slope and S&F is banking on it.
Their sales will definitely increase by 100k
They sold 470k in 3rd single on1st week.
What I'm saying is those 30 slots won't hold out once a new batch of interesting girls join them ; a good example would be Nogi's Riria - once 4ki enters their sales eat up her slot .

In Regards to Keyaki ; their top 3 single sales are all supported by Hinata/Hiragana . They haven't have a single of their own . It would pretty interesting to see them compete and maintain 500k in the 9th.

 

The issue is that they're probably going to be completely sold out by the 5th round and the only one selling tickets in the 4th and 5th will by Takase Mana.

Whereas Nogi only sold 2/3 of their tickets by the 8th round. The Yoakemade thread only shows data for up to the 8th round but I know they've gone up to 15 rounds of sales before. Spreading out those slots to new girls means more rounds which means potential sales for the new girls and more people can bid on the popular girls since they won't sell out so fast (2nd or 3rd round instead of 1st) which means more people buying tickets in general.

Plus just because a slot hasn't completely sold out doesn't mean tickets haven't been sold for that slot. So 30 girls with 15/25 sold out slots is better than 15 girls with 30/30 sold out slots because they can still have sold tickets in those slots which haven't sold out. Assuming 150 sales is sold out then a girl with 0/30 sold out slots but who still sold 50-100 in sales per slot, that's way better than sales being completely done after the 5th round because every member sold out.

 

Really interesting data. I didn't know Hinata handshake sales were going that well, wow.

Question: Why do Nogi handshake sellouts almost always start at the 2nd round? In all of these charts that I've seen including singles from years ago, you hardly see Nogi handshake sellouts at the 1st round, but then a significant amount of slots selling out in the 2nd round. Is it some method by which Nogi management sells the handshakes?

A couple other things about the Nogi handshakes is that:

1) The gen 1 sembatsu members likely passed their 400 career handshake slot quota and aren't doing individual handshakes anymore.

2) There's something also weird going on with the 5th slot each date, with a lot of members who sold out in all the other slots with an empty 5th slot. Some sort of scheduling thing that prevents it from being sold out at this point? (I count a handicap of about 30 slots here.)

3) The October date is in Miyagi and the other four dates in large cities (Hinata's 5 handshakes dates are all in large cities). (I count a handicap of about 20 slots here from that Miyagi date compared to the other dates.)

But still, it's crazy how fast Hinata handshakes sell out. For Nogi, you usually only see the perma sembatsu members sell out all slots in 2-3 rounds, but virtually all of Hinata sells out in 2 rounds.

 

The way individual handshake sales are sold is you apply for tickets on a given date, at a given time. And in the first round you are limited to 3 girls and up to 15 tickets each (3 for each time slot). You may not get the tickets you apply for. So let's say you apply for 15 Mizuki tickets, 15 Ayame tickets, and 15 Kaki tickets. You may only win a couple tickets each. Or you may get none. Like you may bid for 5 Kaki tickets and win zero even though she didn't actually sell out. After the first couple of rounds it opens and you can apply for more (5 girls at 5 tickets per time slot IIRC). This system allows them to control how many tickets get sold so all of the popular girls don't just sell out in the first round. But that's harder to do when there are only 18 girls and so many people are applying.