comic reading circle

When I found out how young Hayashi Niina is, I felt like the world was playing a trick on me. Going into More! Mi Amore unprepared, I assumed Niina was the older sister type. How very wrong I was! Born in 2011, Hayashi Niina is all the proof you need that I cannot judge how old someone is based on looks alone.



Immediately after the release of the group's most recent single, I was lucky to have Juice=Juice superfan luckyzukky to inform me of the story so far. Born in Aichi in a world where Maeda Atsuko was one year away from announcing her graduation from AKB48 and the release of Morning Musume's comeback single, I would like to say that Niina—whose official nickname is Yasshii—had a normal childhood, but right from the get go, she was enrolled in the Hello! Project kenshuusei whilst in the fifth year of elementary school in 2023. By 2024, her performances during the annual kenshuusei concert were winning the praise of judges, attention that no doubt aided her in being selected to record a solo song for mobile game, MementoMori. Regardless of that attention, however, and perhaps a crucial difference between the management of Hello! Project and their peers, Niina's story is not one of luck or chance, but talent. Her early start and her hard work helped her cultivate a strong vocal style that resulted in her again being picked by judges this year in the annual kenshuusei concert as a highlight of the show. A month later, and group leader, Dambara Ruru was knocking at her door with the news that she had been selected to join Juice=Juice, the first member of Hello! Project's thirty-fifth generation to become a member of one of the established groups.

This has to be the shortest entry I have ever written for our Wednesday idol profiles but I wanted to make sure I spoke about Niina this year, during these moments when so little is documented outside of twitter and niche message boards. At the time of writing, the wiki tells me Niina has only been in Juice=Juice for just over five months, and I still can't get over the fact that this girl with such presence and such a voice is only in her second year of middle school.

Let's talk about Niina again in the future, friends, because I am sure we're going to be hearing from her a lot more in 2026!

We've spoken about Miyamoto Karin before but because her birthday is 1st December, this week definitely feels like the right time to talk about her again as we usher in our festive Hello! Project Wednesday pivot.



When Juice=Juice arrived in 2013, it was at the height of the Morning Musume revival that began with One・Two・Three, something you can absolutely hear in songs like Watashi ga Iu Mae ni Dakishimenakya ne. This was absolutely the first song I heard, and whilst I can't remember the circumstances, I definitely remember being asked if I had heard it yet by friends unable to contain their excitement. Everyone went crazy about Karin; everyone went crazy over the fact that we suddenly had a new Hello! Project group who were good. 2012-2013 felt like the Hello! Project comeback, and a huge part of that was the debut of Juice=Juice, that first single doubling down on every stupid tsunku musical troupe and yet still defying expectations. It was a moment of validation. We had all grown up a bit in those years, and I certainly had started listening to "serious" bands again, but suddenly here was Miyamoto Karin in the same shirt that Hayley Williams wore in Paramore's comeback song, Still Into You. Friends, I went out to H&M immediately after and I bought a jumper with that same design. We adopted Kairn. Like Kudo Haruka, like Oda Sakura, we adopted these kids as the standard for what idols should be like. When that first Juice=Juice single arrived, I really wanted to be more like Karin; I really wanted to be a kid again.

All of these entries are somewhat ridiculous, so I won't hold back from saying stupid: Karin was the last idol to really exemplify what idol was in that moment before the times changed. In 2013, she was present as a backup dancer for Mano Erina's graduation, she was there as Morning Musume began appending the year after their name in 2014, thus destroying everyone's stats on lastfm, and she was there as AKB48 began to flounder also in search of direction, a brief burning bright in that single moment as Morning Musume contested AKB's popularity again before times changed and groups such as BiS (founded in 2010) and the anti-idol aesthetic that carried over from Togawa Jun's prior example really became the way people thought about the genre. Despite the changing times though, it feels like Karin never lost her love of what idol means.

Having previously been established as a trainee, Karin was a member of Juice=Juice from 2013 right through to 2020 throughout the changing of seasons. Following that though, she has established a solo career for herself, her most recent double A side having arrived as recently as June of this year. Now that those seasons have changed, we're seeing a lot more blurring of the lines when it comes to celebrating idols active in that former age. During the 8th Momoiro Uta Gassen last year, Karin was there on stage with Goto Maki, Watanabe Miyuki, and Kashiwagi Yuki for a performance of Mr. Moonlight. Friends, we're a step away from nostalgia forcing everything we ever felt about these groups into one big super group, and when that happens, I definitely think Miyamoto Karin is going to be at the heart of it.