Ayaka Wada: Tribute to an Era

When Ayaka Wada graduated from Angerme on June 18, 2019, she left a legacy of 15 years in Hello! Project (a tenure matched only by Momoko Tsugunaga), ten years of it as leader of the same group, S/mileage and its next incarnation, Angerme. She started as a Hello! Pro Egg in 2004, which makes her the last H!P member to have been in the organization when I started as a fan in 2005. Now, every performer in H!P joined after I became a fan. While still an Egg, Wada was put in a special unit, Shugo Chara Egg!, and used as a back-up performer for soloist Erina Mano before she and the three other back-up performers, Yuuka Maeda, Kanon Fukuda, and Saki Ogawa, were put into a new group called S/mileage. S/mileage saw a 5-nin 2nd Gen join in 2011, changed its name to Angerme in 2014, and saw nine more new members join from 2014 to 2019, all under Wada’s tutelage, with seven members leaving over time for a membership that now numbers eleven after Wada’s departure.

Haruna’s Graduation

On one end of the spectrum of Morning Musume graduations, there are those rare ceremonies where everybody is glad to see the departing member go (this one shall remain nameless) and on the other end are those, far more numerous, where the departing member is so adored that everyone is sad to see her go. The latter includes the very first graduation I saw, that of Natsumi Abe in the Hello! Project Winter 2004 concert, and the most recent graduation, that of Haruna Iikubo in the “Morning Musume ’18 Concert Tour Aki ~GET SET, GO!~ Final Iikubo Haruna Sotsugyou Special,” held at Nippon Budokan this past Sunday, December 16, 2018. I don’t know of any member in the years I’ve been a fan (2005 on) who seems to have been as beloved as Haruna.

I had the good fortune to encounter Haruna on the floor of the Anime NYC convention on November 18, a month before her graduation and the day after the Anisong concert which featured MM. I was alone and she was accompanied only by a handler who was talking on the phone at the time, so I approached her and told her how great the concert was and how great she is and then I said, “We will miss you.” She went, “Awwww.” I then showed her a picture on my phone that I took with Morning Musume in Los Angeles in 2009, two years before she joined the group, and she seemed impressed. I told her my name and she reached out and shook my hand. (Does that make me one of the only MM fans in the world to shake her hand outside of a handshake event?) So beautiful, so nice, so sweet. This picture is from the Q&A at the convention two days earlier.

Back to the graduation concert. Early on, Hello! Project leader Ayaka Wada came out to read a farewell message to Haruna, who reacted with a burst of joy and love.