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The story
In an interview with Morning Musume。’26 members Oda Sakura, Yamazaki Airi, Inoue Haruka, Yasuda Miyu, and Ishikawa Karin, an episode tied to the “Selfish Request” segment at a Hello! Project concert came up. According to Oda, when it came to picking members, one girl asked her, “Was I even a candidate?” On the 5ch live-discussion thread, this sparked a guessing game over who "the girl who asked" was, with names like Yugeta, Matsunaga, and Yokaze coming up one after another as candidates, and it also grew into a debate over whether the selection criteria was singing ability or looks.
What people said
Inoue Haruka, Yasuda Miyu, Ishikawa Karin Interview (Excerpt)
(From Oda's Selfish Request at the Hello! Project concert,
https://ameblo.jp/morningmusume-10ki/entry-12975373522.html
2026-08-10 22:02:18
Probably Yokaze?
Matsunaga: "Was I even a candidate?"
Tsutsui: "Was I even a candidate?"
My mental image of who'd actually ask that
Matsunaga could be added to that list too
In ANGERME, Hirayama's head and shoulders above the rest for this
Only downside is she's got that "Misugi-kun" constitution (fan slang for being injury/illness-prone, after the frail character in Captain Tsubasa)
it might surprisingly be Momo instead
Not so sure about Nishizaki or Tsutsui though
so it's got to be one of them
Oda: "Right?!"
Since there was an exchange like that too, maybe some people are asking in the sense of "I want Oda to pick me!"
Oda: "Uh… yeah…"
This one's just here for Hirayama, huh
Everyone already knows the answer, and yet someone still made a thread about it
＞…-ing too, that she'd wanted to stand on that stage
＞—wondering how many times she'd thought that, watching through the monitor
She never actually said that to Oda though
because the moment you say it out loud, it's like admitting defeat
Well, but flip side is, since it's "not a cute-girls selection," there are probably some members relieved they weren't picked lol
If the singing and dancing are good, it doesn't matter whether she's cute or not
is something a lot of Hello! Project members actually care about
Yeah, honestly if it weren't for something like this they probably wouldn't have gotten close
Background and Talking Points
The “Selfish Request” is a recurring segment at Hello! Project concerts where performing members get to request whatever they want for the show, and in this interview, Oda Sakura revealed that her turn centered on selecting members for a shuffle unit. What split the thread was the question of who actually asked her, “Was I even a candidate?” — names like Yugeta, Matsunaga, and Yokaze were floated one after another as guesses, but the interview itself never names the member in question, so every post in the thread remains pure speculation. Opinions were also divided over whether the selection criteria came down to singing ability or looks, with some pushing back that “if the singing and dancing are good, looks don’t matter.” One thing readers should be careful not to misread: the name-guessing in the thread isn’t an official announcement or the member’s own testimony — it’s purely fan speculation.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “Oda Sakura: “During the Selfish Request, one girl said to me, ‘Was I even a candidate?’ — it was really intense”.”
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