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!
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autobotscoutriella
