Wednesday, March 27 was a great day in the history of Hinatazaka46. Their first single, released that day, had first-day sales of 359,528. That was the best-selling first day for a debuting female group ever.
In addition to that, they turned the Zip Spring Festival's second day into a Hinatazaka festival, with an audience that rocked and with a feeling of unity between fans and members and among the fans. Including fans of other performers.
It was the fulfillment of their dreams. I'm sure they are still feeling shell-shocked by the wonder of it all. It would be surprising if they weren't all grinning ear to ear today. Here's Thursday morning's Zip report:
Comments afterwards were immensely positive. Shizuku of the band Polkadot Stingray said she fell in love with them. She was done in by Memi's burikko line: "I want you to fall in love with me, meow." She described the members, particularly Memi, as "amazingly beautiful".
I watched this broadcast live and found it so entertaining that I have made a subbed version so others can enjoy it. This is the smart, funny, natural Memi I am a fan of. And Kyouko is great in conversation. Over the hour it was on, the show worked its way up to over 50,000 viewers, delighting both Kyouko and Memi.
Be sure to watch Memi's face: it is often in motion, communicating even when she is not speaking.
I've been a fan of Memi and Kyouko right from the time of their auditions three years ago,. Here are notes about various things they mention:
01:54 “Cute lately” – Kyouko emphasizes that Memi has been “cute lately.” Perhaps she’s thinking of how upset she was around a year ago when Memi invaded her Showroom, romped around and tickled her – after Kyouko had told everyone not to come, that she wanted all the time with her fans. Then, Memi was being “not-cute” (i.e., not behaving nicely).
05:10 Hinanonano – They talk about Kamimura Hinano’s hand gesture for her name, and Memi shows how complex it really is. It’s so cute when their voices bounce back and forth in shrill surprise: Kyouko at the complexity, Memi that Kyouko didn't know.
07:10 how to grow taller – Kyouko explains what she did to try to get to 150cm (she's now 153cm - 5'-1/4"). Memi finds it all hilarious. Perhaps partly because she would like to be taller than her 157cm (5'-2").
Huge
news for Memi and Kono-chan. They will be regulars on an NHK Education
TV show starting Thursday April 18 at 2pm. The show is part of the regular weekday
afternoon programming for high schools.
The
20-minutes-every-second-Thursday show will be hosted by top seiyuu
Midorikawa Hikaru 緑川光. The show is called Society and Information 社会と情報.
It will deal with how computers and smartphones work, and with useful
apps. It will also deal with IT and media security and ethics, and
there will be episodes introducing databases, etc. (source)
This show will be seen all over Japan. GanaOshi and KeyaKake are
seen mainly in the Tokyo area.
So it looks like a pair of Hinata-chans
will have a captive audience of high-school students every two weeks, a
wonderful way of spreading the group's fame to a younger audience. This
kind of show seems to me to be a way for Hinatazaka46 to advance toward
being a "national" idol group, accepted as part of the culture.
So this is what having an actual single means: so many pics and bits of info are rolling in right now -- and no Memi blog post -- so I'll post things I've found here and there: in Memi's 5channel support thread, on Twitter, etc.
Pics from the Memi-Kyouko gravure in EX Taishuu magazine (on sale 15 March):
