Hinatazaka46: Their fourth enthralling 2021 group post....

 

 **** Quick note on the 'Featured Post of the Day'. Once again Blogger has been screwing around to try and reinvent the wheel. For now can only back a month for posts which is useless so won't be updating too often until they fix their mistake.

 Least it's a fabulous post that will be there for a few days. It's one for my current fave Nogi member and if they don't watch it Hina just may surpass them for being my top J-Pop group. As a matter of fact they may have already done that, while I've been a fan of them since their Hiragana days like them more than ever. Know it's just the fourth group post for this year but three have been in May along with a trio of recaps for their current drama. May be a slowish stretch for the group coming up soon. Nogi's next single comes out n ten days, when a '46' group releases one the other two tend to stay out of the limelight for a little while. That's okay as Hina never truly slows down and still have plenty of things for a post even if they do let their older sister group get a bit more exposure.

 Though Nogi is certainly the older group it's actually harder to call them Hina's 'older sisters'. To me it seems Hina's main members are on average a bit older than Nogi's and most of those key members are first generation gals, Hina has surprisingly kept their group intact for about three years and that's a rare occurrence. On May 26th the group released their fifth single "Kimi Shika Katan" which to me is their best to date, it's a bit more upbeat and the coupling songs are all good too.

 After four days the total copies sold is about 465,000 and it'll easily top this week's charts. The single will probably hit around 500 K which will be a drop from their previous single "Sonna Koto Nai uo" which sold 558,000 in it's first week. But these days that's not too bad of a drop, say 50,000+ copies. Nogi's last single sold 400,000 less copies than their previous one. Keya's first single with their new name Sakura sold 342,000 less copies in it's first week compared to their final Keya single. So you can see 50,000 or so copies isn't a huge drop then and the crisis has affected sales for every group as they can't hold fan meeting sessions or do regular concerts. Two posts ago had some member promo pics for the single, have many more that weren't in that other post.

 There wasn't one last year but the W-Keya fest may be revived this year but if it's going to be held bet it'll have to be streamed live. As you can see the name hasn't changed and it's supposed to be three concerts held from July 9th until the 11th. Keya will do a show on the 9th, then the following day Hina and on the last day both groups would perform together. It's up in the air if it'll happen but I would like to see more Hina concerts and they've never had one on DVD to date which is surprising. Three days ago the group did a mini special to promote the new single, the show was called 'Hit Campaign'. It was streamed live but all videos of it have been deleted but will still look for a copy of it. Fans really enjoyed the unique show and will talk about it more if I can locate the mini show.

 Speaking of shows last weekend had the first three recaps of their current drama "Koeharu!". I'm enjoying this drama which is about six members attending a voice actress school. The fourth episode has been subbed, when the next two are done will do another trio of recaps. But there's another Hina show which you'll be seeing some posts for and it's the second season of 'Chotto Desu Ka?' but this season has been been shortened to 'Hnachoi'. It's called the second season but this one has nothing in common with the first.

 It began on April 19th, it airs on Monday nights but unsure if it's weekly as only two shows have been subbed. That first season was kind of interesting but only watched a few episodes, this season seems so much better. Once a few more shows get subbed will do some posts for them and they're only fifteen minutes long. The theme is for a member to do a presentation on an activity or subject they're quite passionate about, if the other five members approve of that passion it gets carried over to the next show. Don't know if the cast will be just these six members or if it'll rotate but I kind of wish it would feature this half dozen for all of the shows. Yuka was the host and what a superb job she did, better than any other Idol I've seen, These screenshots are from the first show and Yuka also did a presentation on her fave activity which is solving puzzles.

 Let's get to some individual members and try to include a few different gals in each of these posts. Hina isn't too large of a group compared to Nogi but there's still been a few members who have flown under my radar. One is the second generation member Manamo Miyata who on April 28th hit the age of 23, few recent pics from the Hina blog which has no other name.

 First time I've ever seen Manamo have a solo spread which is from the June BLT Graph.

 Miho is a member you don't see that often in group posts and can't tell you why. She is one of the more popular second generation members and shockingly she had the group's first solo photobook. In the current drama she plays such a snobby gal and hope she'll be eating her words before the series ends. She has the back cover for the July issue of UTB.

 Try to include Konoka pics in each post as to me she is such a knockout but not in the usual way. Lucked out the past two posts as there was a mag spread featuring her but not this time around so have some new pics from the Hina blog and no Idol posts more pics than she does.

 Hina did have their second group photobook come out on April 27th titled 'Hina Natsu 1'. It was a collection of their pics from the Friday magazine and what a seller it's been as it topped the charts it's first two weeks out. In every issue of Friday Hina has two pages with that title, here's from the last seven issues starting with the newest one from June 8th.

 There's already a hundred pics so will hold back two mini spreads so there can be another post within the week. Hina members are usually the cover girls for the mags they appear in, they have that honor once again in the June 10th issue of Young Jump. The featured trio is Ayaka, Mirei and Shiho and the last two do appear in many spreads. But not Ayaka who really deserves to be in many more and she's certainly become such an attractive woman who will be turning 23 in November, bottom six pics are bonus ones. Instead of ending with a video will instead have the link to Hina's YT channel and there are too many videos there to count: Hina's YT channel