[GENERAL] The Sakamichi Series group thread

Neru seems to be done with the entertainment world in general.

 

i wonder what would happen if neru chose to go with hiragana and hinata?

tho it wouldn't realized because the management wanted her in kanji from the start.

 

I just wonder why Nobuhiko Akimoto let his brother to continue to push Hirate as perma center after what happened at Kouhaku 2017. She was unable to perform in good condition. Fans/media started to blame Konno and Seed & Flower for the Kouhaku accident when they were unaware of the real ownership of Seed & Flower.

5 singles in a row with same center is okay but when it goes beyond that and a member in critical conditions after Kouhaku gets picked as center again something is really wrong about the ownership here. 2018 started to change what Keyaki once was as a group. One member will be the full focus in the MVs and live. Never show up on variety shows. Group's own center being absent from most activities. Who is actually managing Keyaki to make this happen if not someone's visionary would make this happen. It was toxic and not nice to fans. AkiP who has managed many idol groups in his career but never doing something like this with no other group than Keyaki is sickness.

When someone like AkiP as visionary producer claims a member is "a masterpiece beyond Acchan" he can't be stopped unless insiders of ownership start to give more power to Konno. But as long as that member is still in the group nothing will change like that user from 48g threads said in the Keyaki thread last year: "She will always be perma center", and got dislikes for that because some fans of that particular member got triggered.

AkiP's order to mngmt was always to make his masterpiece the center of the group. When mngmt wanted to shake things up we didn't got that last thing as consumers and fans wanted to see last year from the senbatsu system announcement. Everything else was mngmt's choices except for one member. Mngmt got seven 2ki members in the senbatsu but one was still the same as always. AkiP hadn't lost political capital yet until his perma center withdrew from the group this year. After those graduation announcements, hiatus and withdrawal I think insiders of ownership had enough of this circus and gave Konno more power.

Remember from senbatsu announcement, Konno read from the decision that they think senbatsu system is a step up for the group to grow, but with a senbatsu system, a center has to change too, right. But no, Konno and mngmt didn't had enough power last year to make that happen. AkiP was still powerful behind the scenes.

 

Yeah, true, but she could have also chosen a more "politically correct" choice for a graduation announcement, which would be to just say more good stuff about Keyaki and keep any of her love for non-Keyaki stuff on the low side. Of course this isn't hard evidence of anything. But Neru graduating at that moment in Keyaki's trajectory surely stunned people, and you go read her announcement post, and she makes a point to give a tribute to Marika in there. It really stuck out to me lol.

Damn, I forgot. This was the first thing that made me sour on Keyaki. That type of thing is bad! I don't care if the members say that they wanted to practice hard and perform to perfection because that's their mission or whatever. It's management's job to manage their health, safety, and energy load, and it's absolutely both management and ownership's job to fix things after what happened. I wanted management to publicly apologize for that (and certainly didn't want any members to apologize for that). Not only did they show members collapsing on the biggest event in the music industry, they did so next to one of the MCs (Uchimura Teruyoshi) who was collab dancing with them. (And he noticed during the dance that Hirate was struggling and even asked her if she was ok in the middle of the dance.) When it seemed like management didn't seem to be very apologetic about what happened, that was the first strike for me. In this case, I don't think it's possible to place the blame more specifically on management or ownership, but in any case, it was the first big thing that made me sour on Keyaki's management or ownership.

Yeah, that's true about the 9th single. It became a sembatsu system, but still perma center. Management wants to go all the way and change the center, too. I'm not sure what AkiP was thinking at this point, but perhaps he felt Hirate could be convinced that a perma center with sembatsu could work for a while. I guess Hirate felt it had to be all or nothing - all gen 1 in sembatsu (with her as perma center) or nothing. Even AkiP must have known that with joint auditions going on, sooner or later, Keyaki will have to have a sembatsu and under system (or else why even have joint auditions?), though I'm conjecturing there, since Hinata still has no under, and Sakamichi had kenkyuuseis for a while (which theoretically could have been formed into some other thing instead of joining Keyaki... so yeah, I don't know.) In any case, yeah, making Keyaki a sembatsu and under system meant it was a partial "victory" for management.

 

Neru most likely wanted to be in Kanji as well. She was never particularly close to the Hiragana members, and if you think about it all she wanted from the beginning was to be a Keyakizaka member, not to be part of a subgroup. I wonder how different things would have been if her parents let her join the group from the start or if Hiragana was never created and management came up with a different ruse to get her in the group. Then again, we wouldn't have Hinatazaka without Hiragana.

 

No matter what ppl say, it was thanks to her that we have Hinatazaka46 now. If things had gone as usual, there wouldn't be a Neru. I wouldn't have found an Oshimen and Hinata would not be here. She was lost in all of these too & said was conflicted a lot abt it. Her true self was with Kanji since she spent more time with them than hiragana so it was clear at some point she will prefer to be a Kanji than hiragana. I only remember the joy on everyone's face when it was announced. Made me think Kanji themselves were worried abt her situation too.

For her graduation, if you really watched Keyakake, you will understand why it happened. Judging from that episode, it has nothing to do with the group or mgmt. She was torn between something she wanted to do and her love for the group so she seeked for advice and she was told to go ahead if she really want that thing. Whatever it was, won over her love for the group. It's probably what is best for her future. Knowing how smart she is I thought it had to do with her education. It also explains why she is no more in the entertainment field. Not every thing has to do with the relationship of the group as Bunshun reports. In all the graduations only Imaizumi and Hirate's are questionable. The rest seems normal: Yone thought more abt her education than the group, Mona & Oda had scandals and Mon said it was bcos she couldn't do her best any more.

 

I think a bigger problem with Neru was that management ostensibly made her try to be in two groups at the same time. Two very different groups at that, because from the start Hiragana felt completely different from the music and complete lack of sulky angst to their obvious superiority when it came to variety and comedy. They should have been their own group from the start and Neru should have just been put into Kanji. After all, they had already lost a couple of the original selected members - girl who left before the debut, and out of focus teacher fondler.

Neru deserved better. But then, ALL of them deserved better than the mess management made of the group.

 

If Neru had chosen to stay in Hiragana/Hinata then I think it would have been bad for Hinata because it would gave ended up as "Neru's group" just like how Keyaki ended up as "Techi's group". Probably would have been bad for Neru too since, while I really love Neru and she was my Keyaki oshimen, I don't think she was really "absolute ace" material and I think the pressure would have been too much for her. And I think it would gave held the other members back and Hinata wouldn't have been able to develop into what they are today.

 

And that's probably why we started to get news again. Konno got more power led to things like Hirate being the first member to stay in the agency (which could actually now start to collect more members who quit/graduates from the groups from now on), documentary for Keyaki/new documentary for Hinata and probably we will hear about Keyaki's 2nd album in the summer which could be a month in prior to release like 1st album.

With more power to Konno means also changes. Lives could be different now compared to old Kanji lives, they may put more effort into their anniversary lives than before, members individuality prioritize more which can extend the length of lives.

What will happen to senbatsu and under can also mean they will try new choreographers but keep Takahiro as the main choreographer. Yukka mentioned she wants the group to experiment. She as a captain wants to encourage her members from now on. I don't think she had that opportunity before when AkiP's political capital was very powerful. She was a captain on paper but you didn't noticed it if you compare to Reika Sakurai who had a real leadership in Nogi. She was the leader surrounded by aces. But in Keyaki there was a perma center and captain roles were irrelevant despite Yukka and Akanen were captains of the group. I feel a leadership is much stronger in Hinata than in Keyaki. But if AkiP has lost political capital and the perma center quit the group that only means the door has opened up for Konno and mngmt.

 

One other thing I blame management for (for this, I might blame management rather than ownership) is being unable to emotionally recover Hirate from after that handshake event (with flares?) that traumatized her and suddenly made her super edgy in real life. It's management's job to provide physical security at events and to provide emotional security to members. It's not just about not appearing at handshake events where you have to be close to fans, but like you said, she hardly appeared in variety after that.

Actually, the new agency I believe is still Seed & Flower.

This is something I've wondered about. I wonder how much "power" Reika had. Everything regarding content is decided by management. I do think Reika was important for morale, and in the end, I do think morale support for members and communication between members and management is the most important (or only important) role for the captain (at least in the case of Sakamichi as far as I can tell). I kind of doubt that the captain has much power regarding content decisions. But what I agree is that Reika has had more impact in Nogi than Sugai and Moriya. And I think part of that is thanks to 1) management ending Ikoma's perma center era and 2) Maiyan being relatively chill. If Maiyan wanted to take over and be the big queen backstage, she could have, but she didn't (as far as we know), and I feel like that helps to keep the peace and let the captain have their place backstage. Same with Naachan, who obviously isn't a big queen backstage. Like you said, Reika was surrounded by aces, and it seems that the aces let Reika be captain. But when you have Hirate perma center and further internal conflict among members, what power do the captains have, even over group morale?

If Neru left for education, Nogi has kept people like Ikuchan (super busy with individual stuff) and Renachi (went to a top college). Chiharu also went to a good college. Manatsu was going to college, but I don't know if we ever heard if she graduated, so she might have dropped out. If management does a good enough job, ideally, education alone shouldn't be a barrier to continuing. In the case of Yone, I understand, since STEM and show business don't have a lot of overlap lol, whereas with Renachi, history as a subject has good overlap with show business. It's possible that Neru left purely because she wanted to go to college fulltime, but it's not convincing to me. I think if things were going well internally, she would have stayed, or in other words, management could have worked something out so that she would have wanted to stay and go to school at the same time. Neru is just too valuable for Keyaki (as of now, only Maiyan, Ikuchan, and Nogisatsu sold more than her photobook in all of Sakamichi), so I consider it a failure by management or ownership to not have been able to keep Neru and keep her happy there.

 

I kinda forgot, but what scandal did Mona (Shida Manaka) have before leaving Keyaki? And when did that happen?

 

Dating scandal.

 

the case of neru i believe wasn't that simple to box it with another girls. While we can speculate It might be also catalyse by the internal 'turnmoils', the possibility of it, i dont think that can filling the blank; of simply because the mgmt cant keep her happy.
Her sound more like sway of interest with showbiz in general. Months before her graduation In one of keyakake segment, with bunch of drag queens she implied an existential question like she was on crossroad of choice. one of the hostess just bluntly told her to follow what she want to do, and she cried.

 

Yes, like I already said before, I don't think Neru's case applies here. Soon it will be a year since she graduated and she hasn't made any inclination of wanting to stay in the entertainment world. Zuumin and Techi almost immediately made it clear they were going to continue as actresses. Neru hasn't even made a public instagram. Although, of course, she could be like Manaka, who waited for a year or so to come back.

Besides, with Neru, the only thing she never got was the center position. Her photobook was very well promoted, she was one of the most pushed members, she got a lot of opportunities in other shows, she promoted Nagasaki a lot etc. I never got the image that she was desperate to become center, unlike with Zuumin who made it clear she wanted that position.

 

This is what I meant. That episode really showed her turmoil. It's that episode that makes me believe it had nothing with what is being said here.

 

This is what I have been saying for a while now. Keyakizaka46 as unidol-like group was due to Hirate as the perma center who brought the edginess to 5th single. When you see some producer claim Hirate has a "burning aura" that is unidol-like this is not Keyaki as a group.
https://twitter.com/toomuchidea/status/1239412635210137600?s=19

If you look at b-sides only Katarunara mirai wo and Eccentric reached over 20M views. W-Keya no Uta hit 10M.

But other b-sides are very niche like Otona wa Shinjikurete, Hiraishin, Mou mori e kaerouka?, Student Dance. Even when AkiP pushed for edginess on A-side only 18M views for Kuroi Hitsuji after a year. Sure, Garasu wo Ware has 45M views but that is an exception, and most likely due to perma center's "burning aura".

Their most successful songs are their non-edginess style. That's why one edgy song sometimes on a single is good enough, not all over the place like 7th single for example. Sony is a corporate who aims for mainstream. I think they want more non-edginess songs because they sell more and bring in bigger audience. They are easier to produce too.

 

Sorry to interupt, but she's auditioned for being an idol and when she get what she want, being an idol, she just want to quit without something happens behind the stage? Maybe it has nothing to do with something has been said here, but imo, there's must be something happen that make her want to quit. Same case with Suzumoto.

 

There were times when members in other groups graduated in such large numbers than keyaki and even with just 2 years as idols. Are you implying they had problem with the group too or rather something was happening behind the screens & that is why they graduated or are you only saying so because it's keyaki?

 

It's just wow. You take my post like i'm attacking Keyaki, that's surprised me. Kakizaki Memi graduated because she doesn't want getting stalked by strangers. Some because they want focus on their study. Some because of their health. Like i said, it's maybe nothing to do with something has been said in here
When a large number graduated just after 2 years, then my bet is 1. because they didn't make enough money, 2. They was disappointed with management with whatever their reason.

Look, if Endou Sakura graduated in 2 years then i will ask the same question, what happens? Does she want to focus on her study? Does she have a health issue? Or what?

 

Oh I might have misunderstood your post then because it seemed you strongly propose Neru couldn't leave just like that, same as Suzumoto. Any way I am biased with her since she is my Oshi so. My post was not made as you think though. I was asking a question to be sure why you thought so?