Trivia / Hinatazaka46

• The Cast Showoff: In Koeharu!, the teachers are portrayed by real voice actors, and Aya Hirano's character shows off her skills the most.
• Dawson Casting: Many of their dramas and games feature them as high school students, including members in their twenties. Obvious aversions include Ayaka Takamoto as the dorm mother in Koeharu!.
• Defictionalization: The titular fashion brand of Dasada has been brought to life, and the cast walked the runway in the 2020 Tokyo Girls Collection fashion show (which is also mentioned in the series) wearing their collection. Less surprisingly, members who portrayed the in-universe idol group Factory have performed in-character in real life.
• Fan Community Nickname: They're the first Sakamichi group to have one, which is Ohisama (おひさま) a children slang for the Sun, since hinata means "sunny place".
  • Some individual members' fanbases also have their own names.
    • Mei Higashimura: Yancharus (やんちゃるず, "Rascals")
    • Yuka Kageyama: Kagesapo (Kage Supporters, or literally Shadow Supporters, who support her from the shadows)
    • Shiho Kato: 5-gun (5軍 "5th Army", as she claimed to be on the fifth tier of popularity back in high school), specifically for her radio listeners
    • Kyoko Saito: Kyonkois (きょんこいず), combination of Kyonko and koi (romantic love)
    • Kumi Sasaki: Kumitens (くみてんず🦒, with a giraffe emoji)
    • Mirei Sasaki: Miipan Club
    • Manamo Miyata: Team Hemoglobin (Hb), after her red Pickles doll named Kenketsu ("blood donation")
    • Suzuka "Suzy" Tomita: Suzyko, with emphasis on "Suzy" instead of "ko", since the latter means "salmon roe" (homophones in Japanese are often differentiated by emphasis)
    • Hinano Kamimura: Nanoraa
    • Hina Kawata: Hinaas
    • Rio Shimizu: Riorockers (りおろっかー), as she likes rock music and often posts song recommendations on her blog
• He Also Did:
  • Mirei Sasaki was a member of the Osaka local idol group choco☆milQ until November 2015.
  • Honoka Kishi was a TikToker under the name Ponoko before she joined the group, and while her account is no longer available, some of her old videos still get reposted occasionally.
  • Rina Watanabe had been a child actress and appeared in several commercials and variety shows, as well as on the YouTube channel of her previous agency, Charm Box.
• The Merch: Aside from the usual fare, the group has several kinds of merch unique to them:
  • Fan towels with the members' nicknames (instead of the usual full names), which several members came up with during a live stream
  • Pickles the Frog plushies corresponding to each second generation member
  • Poka goods like plushies, slippers, and even collectible photo packs (a joke item given as a bonus for purchases above a certain amount)
• No Budget: A Running Gag is their low production values compared to their sister groups, even though their sales are about the same while having fewer members, not to mention being owned by Sony.
  • When they were Hiragana, the training room was mostly allocated to Kanji, and the clip from their documentary of them standing awkwardly in the back watching Kanji practicing is often replayed. They begged to rent another room for practice, but were told to practice individually at home instead.
  • Hinatazaka de Aimashō is noted to often use makeshift props, such as unpainted desk extension for the hosts. They also rarely get to do costly segments like cosplay, with the excuse that physical activities suit them better.
  • Their last MV as Hiragana, "Kimi ni Hanashite Okitai Koto", was filmed entirely in an empty parking garage. At least the doors and and wall accents have some orange in them, to match the costumes' Orange/Blue Contrast.
  • Fortunately, their music videos and live shows have improved their production values over time, for example the CG-heavy "Tteka" and "Boku Nanka" and the Christmas Town sets of Hinakuri. For "Tomo yo, Ichibanboshi da", they rented an entire soccer stadium in Ibaraki.
• Paying Their Dues: Hiragana Keyakizaka was seen by many as an unnecessary addition to Keyakizaka46 at first, especially since the main group itself was still very new. Most people didn't even know they were a separate subgroup since they had the same name.
  • They were called Keyakizaka46's "under" group in the beginning, but unlike in Nogizaka46, there was virtually no chance for them to join the lineups of Kanji's main songs. The tabloid Shukan Bunshun reported that the management originally wanted to include some of them, the members of Lima Cantik specifically, in one of Kanji Keyakizaka's main songs, but Kanji center Yurina Hirate strongly objected, since that meant some Kanji members would have to be left out (of course, tabloid reports are dubious at best, but after they became Hinatazaka, Mirei Sasaki has made references to this incident, calling it the "lost senbatsu").
  • Although they have their own songs, they only got to perform in small parts of the main group's events and even their practice time was limited. They also received a lot of hate from Kanji fans. It's a small miracle that none of the Hiragana-only members left before their rebranding (Neru Nagahama cancelled her dual membership and became a full-time Kanji Keyakizaka member in 2017).
  • They eventually got more recognition, their own events and TV show, an award at the Mnet Awards in Korea, and finally a new name, and their 2019 debut single after becoming Hinatazaka46, "Kyun", broke the first day sales record for female artists and beat the first week sales of Nogizaka46 and Keyakizaka46's debut singles combined.
• Playing Against Type: In Dasada, the usually reserved Nao Kosaka played the cutesy and headstrong Yuria Sada; the cheerful Miho Watanabe portrayed the curt yet Hot-Blooded fashion designer Saori Shinohara; the ditzy and happy-go-lucky Mirei Sasaki was the sullen and studious Ichigo Okada; and the unathletic Kyoko Saito and Manamo Miyata portrayed members of the school volleyball club.
• Real-Life Relative: Yoko Shogenji is cousins with Nogizaka46's Mao Ioki, and they debuted only seven months apart in 2022. Both of them are also from Hyogo Prefecture and have rare surnames ("Shogenji" and "Ioki" can be written in several ways in kanji, but there are approximately only 50 people with the exact same surnames as each of them in Japan).
• The Red Stapler:
  • Since Kyoko Saito often mentioned her love for Hidakaya's discontinued Jjigae Miso Ramen, the chain revived the menu several times and even released a cup ramen version of it.
  • After Akari Nibu mistakenly said that chicken nanban is called "tartar chicken", several food brands have renamed their chicken nanban products into exactly that.
  • The Hinatazaka Channel often features the members shopping.
    • Ayaka Takamoto, who's good at filleting fish, published a video of herself shopping for kitchen knives, and the $200 knife she purchased was sold out in a day.
    • The Senhachi sushi joint near Saitama's Yono Station was fully booked from June until August 2023 after Miku Kanemura had lunch there. In response to this, the owner has set up a shrine filled with her merch in the shop and prepared a set menu of all the sushi types she had.
    • The cafés visited by Mitsuki Hiraoka in Nagoya also kept having their red bean-based menus sold out shortly after the video was published.
• Similarly Named Works: 2019 wasn't the first time Mirei Sasaki performed a song with "Kyun" in the title, since her previous group choco☆milQ released "Kyun Kyun Kyun" in 2015.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If Neru Nagahama was simply admitted into Keyakizaka, maybe this group wouldn't ever exist.
  • If the management went through with the plan to make Hiragana the understudies of Kanji, they probably wouldn't have become independent.
  • Yuka Kageyama was a finalist in the first AKB48 Draft, but wasn't selected. To prevent her from being recognized and potentially having an unfair advantage during this group's auditions, she wasn't allowed to show her face during the audition live streams. Her reunion with fellow draftees Satone Kubo and Rei Nishikawa of AKB48 is shown in Hiragana Keyakizaka46 SHOW! episode 173, which features the AKB members attending one of the group's concerts.
  • Nogizaka46's Haruka Kaki joined the Hiragana second generation auditions, but wasn't accepted.
  • Marie Morimoto was a finalist in the 15th Japan Bishojo Contest in 2017 and could have started her entertainment career under Oscar Promotion, the contest's organizer, if she had won.

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