From our other sites
The story
In a gravure photo of a Sakamichi Series member published in Shonen Magazine, fans spotted a spot where a likely retouching error left the subject with six fingers, sparking discussion on 5ch’s Hello! Project board. The prevailing theory is that the line between the fingers got erased while smoothing out the hand’s outline, and posters brought up how Juice=Juice’s official MV had similarly drawn criticism in the past for unnatural AI-style editing. Beyond questioning the retouching technology itself, the thread also noted that different groups seem to get called out with different intensity for the same kind of mistake, veering into a discussion of the temperature differences across fan cultures.
What people said
The AI backlash was already so bad that the dislikes just kept piling up
Probably wrinkle-smoothing retouching
The boundary between the right and left hand got mistaken for a wrinkle
Always so quick to cry 'fake'
Just look up how to check the dislike count yourself and see the numbers
No point doing that
It's the index finger
who knows though
so it got fused with the right hand
Toyotomi Hideyoshi reportedly had it too
A congenital condition where a person is born with one extra finger or toe.
Polydactyly of the hand most often affects the thumb, occurring in about 1 in 400 births.
Polydactyly of the foot most often affects the little toe, occurring in about 1 in 1,000–2,000 births.
and as they evolved into amphibians and reptiles, only the five-fingered lineages survived, which is how we ended up here
and they're still using it carelessly even at this level
If this were Hello! Project, people would be dragging them mercilessly for it
It's not Hello! Project so everyone's just letting it slide
typical
Right now people are in the Juice=Juice thread bashing them over the fact that their good manners got praised
Next to this, the flaws in Juice=Juice's MV look downright cute
You can faintly make out an outline to the right of the pinky, right?
That's actually the right hand's index finger (the thumb is folded inward)
Background and Key Points
The appearance of an extra finger tends to happen when, during retouching meant to smooth out body contours, or in AI-assisted editing, the line between two fingers gets erased along with everything else. Because the distortion resembles the kind of glitch typical of generative AI, some in the thread guessed it was “probably AI editing,” but from the photo alone there’s no way to tell whether this was an ordinary retouching slip-up or the result of an AI tool. It’s also worth noting that while the Sakamichi Series and Hello! Project belong to the same broader idol culture, they’re managed by different agencies and have different styles of media exposure, and there’s a contingent of fans on each side who react sharply to news about the other group. The thread’s observation that “the intensity of the reaction depends on the group” reflects that kind of temperature difference between fandoms — it isn’t evidence that this incident points to some systemic issue at either agency.
*This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “[Sad News] Sakamichi idol’s Shonen Magazine gravure photo ends up with six fingers after way too much retouching lmaoooooooooooooooo.”
Leave a Reply