GirlyCon

I acknowledge that once a year, I make a post like this.

( Introduction )

( Members of JMDF )

( Other Notable Individuals )

( Reading order )

Alongside Yagi Azuki, Akiyama Yuna was one of the members who passed auditions in 2023 to become AKB48’s eighteenth generation. Yunachan tells us that her dream since youth has been to be a member of AKB, that she was a fan of the group since she was five-years-old. If it hadn’t been AKB, she declared, then she would not have auditioned, a statement that underlines her passion and commitment, a girl who grew up watching the Kami 7 on television and striving not to be a part of the idol industry but to be a member of AKB48 itself.

In late April, several weeks after her generation was announced, Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da was released and, along with it, came the B side, Ano Natsu no Bohatei, performed by members of both the eighteenth and the seventeenth generation. Just like that, the girl who had dreamed of being a member of the group was canonised, the moment preserved for even us overseas fans.

From the details shared by Yunachan about her high school experiences, it’s hard not to think of her as anything but the ideal student—experience as class president and a member of the student council, a basketball team captain in junior high! By all rights, Yunachan should not exist outside of fiction, but with the highest IQ rating in her entire generation, she is decidedly the real deal. In a different world, Yunachan would have employed her intellect in pursuit of a career as a pharmacist, but she claims that joining AKB was a higher priority for her, which both makes me feel as if we have potentially robbed the world of a future Nobel Prize winner, but gosh am I proud to have her as a member of AKB.

Friends, I’m kind of intimidated by this generation, they are all so talented! Yunachan has already taken the centre position in a B side, Machibito, from Yukirin graduation single, Colorcon Wink, released last year. It is crazy to me that members of this generation, hard working as they have proved to be, can have been with us for such a short amount of time and yet have had this kind of impact on the group.

Like many seventeenth and eighteenth generation members, Yunachan is perhaps recognisable to some from her role in the live action of Hoshikuzu Telepath, a series that many care for deeply and one that helped draw attention to the current line-up of AKB. It feels like it shouldn’t be a surprise to find her amongst her peers in the senbatsu for the new single celebrating the group’s anniversary, and as someone who grew up with fierce admiration for what the group was then, I’m really excited to see how Yunachan will interact with the returning members.

I think that a lot of the time it is tempting to consider the Sashihara Rino produced groups as the spirit of what AKB once was, but I kind of relate to Yunachan’s fixation on the idea of AKB remaining the ideal even if the group is so different from what it once was. Maybe that’s a good thing, friends! If anyone can establish a future for AKB it’s members like Yunachan who understand the past yet are not continually looking back to it.

Nominated for Best Newcomer award alongside colleagues from STU48 and NMB48, Akiyama Yuna is undeniably the future of AKB.

Sometimes I avoid watching magical girl shows because I know I'll have to write one of these entries if I do.

( Kimi to Idol Precure )

( Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum )

I read a lot of books these past few months. I'm working my way through the Fushigi Comedy series as a whole, but I'm mostly watching the "robot comedy" shows, so apologies for the lack of variety in this month's post.

Ito Momoka is so new to us that as of February 2024, she had not joined AKB48.



The nineteenth generation were announced on 17th March of last year following auditions that must have taken place whilst Itomomo was either still in Stardust’s theatre group, Always thankyou, under her stage name, Kitano Nana, or just after she had left. Here we are in June 2025 and, at the time of writing, we are one day away from the announcement of AKB48’s sixty-sixth single featuring Itomomo as a member of the senbatsu. In fact, not only is Itomomo, a member of a generation who debuted just last year, in the senbatsu for this single, she’s joined by one of her peers, Hanada Mei, as well as a whole host of overseas members. If you could sense my excitement about Yagi Azuki being a member of Masaka no Confession’s senbatsu, imagine what I am like at the moment, waking up so early on a Saturday and watching this stream and just reeling from the wild decisions management are finally making.

What do we know of Ito Momoko then, a girl who has barely been in the group a year. Born in December 2003, the first time most overseas fans possibly became aware of her was as one of the four kenkyuusei members featured in Masaka no Confession. Before that, however, Itomomo had made several appearances on B sides since Koi Tsun Jatta last year. One of the B sides was in fact a Wcentre with Sato Airi, Pin to Kita, something that should have communicated to us all that management expected big things of this girl.

Dedicated Japanese fans will have had a chance to have met Itomomo a long time before us, however. Her theatre debut came a month after the revelation of this new generation, beginning with performances of the tenth kenkyuusei stage, Soko ni Mirai wa Aru, a post-OUT OF 48 gathering of members of the seventeenth and eighteenth generations now bolstered by the new trainees.

Clearly, she made an impact, or, at the very least, management were banking on her making an impact, as at the end of September, she got a solo photo shoot in gravure magazine, B.L.T. Maybe part of this was by merit of her being the oldest member of her generation at 21—and by the way, I am really trying my best not to think about the fact that kids born in 2003 are 21-years-old—but whatever the case, it seems that Itomomo is more popular than us overseas fans could have guessed, even appearing on some of Nantettatte AKB48’s big songs like LOVE Machine and MomoClo’s Ikuze! Kaito Shoujo, even appearing on the album with a solo cover of the Honeyworks Hayami Sora song, Kawaikute Gomen—you know, the one covered by Takane no Nadeshiko.

Perhaps domestic fans might think it absurd that we’re so late to the party when it comes to appreciating Itomomo’s talent, but with the sixty-sixth single around the corner, I really think that’s going to change. I keep telling you that we’ve been on the cusp of a new age of AKB48, well, friends, now we’re at the tipping point and new members like Ito Momoko and her peers in the nineteenth generation are definitely going to push us over!