Miyawaki Sakura (Sakura) / 1st Generation

She just said on the Saku no Ki before last (or maybe the one before that) that she wants to continue being an idol for at least 5 more years.

 

IZ*ONE Eat-ting Trip 3 - Special message from Sakura (English subs):


if the video does not show watch the video here

EDIT: 'bis' magazine has just tweeted that Sakura will be appearing on the cover of the July edition to be released on 6/1:
https://twitter.com/bis_web/status/1392135734165790720

This is the only image in the tweet:

 

Oops.

 

And HMV deleted the tweet. This is a bad look for all sorts of people.

 

So she announced her (future) graduation while in quarantine ?
Well, whatever she does, hopefully she'll remain as an idol at least

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https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/soichiromatsutani/20210513-00237684/

 

The Japanese K-culture website K-PLAZA has the leaked image of the VIVI article which @innosu placed in his post above:
https://k-plaza.com/2021/05/miyawakisakura-2.html

It says it includes the sentence about Sakura having just announced her graduation.

 

Apologies I didn't see that, I've amended my post.

 

Sad for her that it got leaked, happy for her that she's gunna announce and can go onto new things.

Honestly, the last 3 years has shown that Sakura has grown massively and her cute clutsy self could appear fake after how perfected she was made to look in the Kpop machine. She just will look out of place.

I'm looking forward to more Kkura honestly.

 

Even though I agree with the fact that Sakura should do what she wants, including graduation, I do think that, if this graduation thing is real, she has effectively killed any chance of there being a project like produce48 ever again.
No agency is ever going to agree to something like this again when their top idol/talent deicides to graduate and pursue other paths right after.

 

I agree somewhat, but I also disagree a little.

First, I want to say that Sakura is free to do what she wants and I don't think she should be blamed if that happens.

That being said, I think there will still be collaborations with K-Pop because even if Sakura is now leaving 48G, she will have made money for them in the past three years through her activities in IZ*ONE. IZ*ONE sold sooo many CDs, they've become one of the top sellers of the 4th Generation of K-Pop. The agencies only get a cut, but they surely must have made quite a nice cut – considering 3 of their girls were part of it. They earned three times as much as 8D Creative (Hyewon's agency) or WM Entertainment (Chaeyeon's).

However, they will probably reconsider sending someone of Sakura's popularity. If Hitomi also decides to graduate, it won't really hurt AKB48. She's not had a massive fanbase and despite being in AKB48/Team 8 since 2014, the only A-side she was part of was NO WAY MAN. Sakura is a different story, she was not just one of HKT48's most famous members but also very prominent in AKB48 with a few AKB48 centre positions under her belt. That's gonna hurt them.

I don't think 48G will collaborate on that scale again any time soon, but other J-Pop groups probably will. But just pretending they would, they probably wouldn't let Oguri Yui, Okada Nana, Yamauchi Mizuki, etc., go. Neither would HKT48 currently let Miku or Nappi join a programme like that. However if it's someone like Suzuki Kurumi, Saito Haruna, or any of those girls whom only AKB48/48G fans know, they probably wouldn't mind.

TLDR; they'll probably still do stuff like this but not send the big guns.

 

We Will have to wait and see the Lineup of Mnet new shows 'girls planet 999' which rumored to have 48 & 46 girls in it.

 

English-language article from ARAMA Japan:
https://aramajapan.com/news/sakura-miyawakis-hkt48-graduation-apparently-leaked-by-hmv/113399/

 

Sakura mentioned she would be announcing something next week on Saku no Ki. She said it wouldn't be big.

Speculation is that she plans to announce her participation in the upcoming HKT concert on Saku no Ki. Then she will announce her graduation at the concert. Soon after the magazines would drop and the media blitz would begin.

Kind of puts a damper on the concert if these predictions prove true.

 

For as much as it is a plain truth that Sakura can do what she like it feels a bit lacking in decorum that less than a month after returning from her foreign exchange style program with Izone she's giving HKT the Bye Felicia treatment (harshly enough that the media already knew she intends it and could leak it to boot). Could she really not have waited until I don't know the end of summer for the announcement and sometime this fall or next spring for the last hurrah grad con or something like that? Also is there any confirmation that the reason she's leaving is to keep doing K-pop related activities or are people just jumping the gun on that?

 

She has no obligation to stick around at the expense of her own ambitions
Why should she wait months to announce it, when she already wants to go?
Why should she push her whole life forward a few months, when she doesn't want to be in the group any more.

Also the kpop rumors are bcs for one a lot of her fans want her to continue on in kpop and bcs there was rumors a few months ago about her joining HYBE

 

Off topic:

Considering the auditions were held in Korea, some names would be highly speculated by now, because the interested girls would had to observe a 2 weeks quarantine after coming back (this can't go unnoticed).
I'm 90% sure, no NMB members are joining nor HKT48 ones. They were very busy at the audition time.

+ if so, this time Vernalossom would be more carefull about negociating the contract conditions.
So no more things anounced before hand to only have them washed away the day of the final show.

 

From a buisness perspective I agree, from a moral standpoint I don't.

Yes it's true that for her career it might be (no guarantee) better to stay in Korea, however this means that the promise that she made to return to HKT is going to be broken. A lot of people counted on her return, not just fans, but members to. Although we don't know for sure if the members were also already informed but giving the press weeks of advanced notice of her graduation also feels like a betrayal towards the fans who were waiting to see what she could bring back from Korea to HKT.