spooktober challenge

I should really have written an entry for Kubo Hinano last week as it was her birthday on 2nd February, but as I write these entries a week in advance, I hope you will all forgive me for wishing her a belated happy birthday now. 🎉💖🍰🎊🎂



A member of our beloved eighteenth generation alongside Sako Yumemi, Akiyama Yuna, Yagi Azuki, and Arai Sae, the cleverly nicknamed Chanhina also joined Sae in the now lamentedly lost UNLAME alongside Sato Suzuka,
Shiato Miu, and Kuranoo Narumi, and friends, I am still annoyed about the situation with UNLAME. Whilst admittedly partly annoyed with myself for not going to see them when I had the chance in 2024, I think what frustrates me about the dismantling of this group was that it is now clear they were never really intended to last beyond a year or so. I feel this way in regards to what happened with the contracts for members of ME:I in December of last year also, and this soupy morass of the worst practices of the idol industry with the worst practices of K-pop has left me feeling very unhappy. In a world were more and more agencies are building out their idol groups from "talent" from tiktok, I felt like the members of both UNLAME and ME:I had worked terribly hard to make it to the top ranking of their respective reality TV competitions and get a chance to debut. Throwing that away after a year leaves me feeling very unhappy. And now you know exactly how I feel about that.

In the case of Chanhina and the other AKB48 members of UNLAME there was always their regular activities to fall back on, and with the group wrapping up in January 2025, she went right back into things, confident in her physical strength, so she tells us, returning to regular performances in the theatre. Like many of AKB's recent post-Team 8 generations, Chanhina is passionate about dancing, the fact that she won a top spot on OUT OF 48! being more than enough to assure you of that. Before passing the AKB auditions though, she had also auditioned for Nogizaka46 (fifth generation), Hinatazaka46 (fourth generation), and NMB48 (ninth generation), so it seems a shame that like many recent members, her debut in 2023 was via SHOWROOM rather than the theatre, the first chance we had to see her sing and dance being from a distance on the seventeenth and eighteenth generation anthem, Ano Natsu no Bohatei, a B side on the Type-C release of Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da. Chanhina went on to make it to the stage during the spring concert that year, and appeared with her genmates on TV also, and, after that, OUT OF 48! and UNLAME obviously happened.

Since joining the group, she has appeared on a great number of B sides as an Undergirl, as well as appearing in the senbatsu for AKB's masterful cover of LOVE Machine, originally by Morning Musume, and Kimi no Na wa Kibou, originally by Nogizaka46, on Nantettatte AKB48—so, in a way, after all this, Chanhina did get her chance to be in Nogizaka.

Spring is coming in fast, friends, and soon we're going to see the seventeenth and eighteenth generations really shape what AKB48 will be in the future.