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The story
A thread went up on 5ch’s Hello! Project board about a composite group photo of Morning Musume members past and present, apparently produced by the group’s management. Because of how the photo was laid out, Mariai Makino and Rio Kitagawa ended up pressed right next to each other, setting off a wave of joking “reconciliation” comments from posters. Alongside that, people pointed out that photo editing had made the 6th-generation members look like completely different people, and that it was hard to tell who some of the pictured members even were — with the rough quality of the composite itself becoming the main topic of conversation.
What people said
Where's my Sayu in this?
Oh wait, never mind — what happened to these three 6th-gen members' faces lol
Eririn, Reina, Sayu — none of these even look like them
lol
They should've just made a thread out of this instead
Reina's turned into Kurumi Takase or something lol
The 12th gen are getting way too much special treatment
If everyone before them had quit, it'd only be one photo, so they lucked out
Probably because Nonaka's still in the group
Bottom right is Kitagawa
I get it, but they look like totally different people
That's Mariai Makino, right?
Yeah, yeah!!!
This is the shot I actually recognize lol
Mikitty's bone structure is on another level, total celebrity face (Mikitty = Miki Fujimoto's nickname)
Yeah, this one right here lol
Abe
Goto
Tsuji & Kago
Ishikawa
Fujimoto
Takahashi
Tanaka
Michishige
Sayashi
Sato
And it's been how many years since Sato already?
No new aces have come up since
I'd love to see a Dream Morning Musume reunion lineup with these members
Why does every single 12th-gen member get their own individual slot lol
And a huge one at that
Probably because they're the ones who did the most for the group
Lmaooo
The agency really half-assed this
Nice catch
I guess depending on how you look at it, the 0 in her left hand could pass for a 9?
Rio Kitagawa's ended up looking like Momo Kitahara
Honestly this version's cute too
Who even is this lol
Michishige, Tanaka, Fujimoto, Kamei
Probably from when they shot the MV for their 20th-anniversary song 'Morning Coffee'
Nah, both of them are slightly off
Looking dignified lol
There's a bit of a 'Chii' vibe to this one (nickname of another member she resembles here)
Background and Key Points
Morning Musume was formed roughly 27 years ago, and counting graduates, more than 40 members have passed through the group over its history. What sparked discussion this time was a composite group photo — apparently official material from the group’s management — bringing together members from every generation. Because it stitched together source photos shot at different times with varying image quality across generations, the composite was prone to mismatched facial outlines and coloring. Opinions in the thread split between people enjoying the joke that Mariai Makino and Rio Kitagawa’s close placement amounted to a “reconciliation,” and those pointing out that the edited faces of the 6th-generation members looked like entirely different people. The flood of replies devoted to identifying which past members appeared in the photo also reflects just how long Morning Musume’s history is and how many members the group has had.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “[Reconciliation] Management’s historical Morning Musume photo accidentally squishes Makino and Kitagawa together lol.”
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