Fic or Treat

Alongside Yagi Azuki, Akiyama Yuna was one of the members who passed auditions in 2023 to become AKB48’s eighteenth generation. Yunachan tells us that her dream since youth has been to be a member of AKB, that she was a fan of the group since she was five-years-old. If it hadn’t been AKB, she declared, then she would not have auditioned, a statement that underlines her passion and commitment, a girl who grew up watching the Kami 7 on television and striving not to be a part of the idol industry but to be a member of AKB48 itself.

In late April, several weeks after her generation was announced, Doushitemo Kimi ga Suki da was released and, along with it, came the B side, Ano Natsu no Bohatei, performed by members of both the eighteenth and the seventeenth generation. Just like that, the girl who had dreamed of being a member of the group was canonised, the moment preserved for even us overseas fans.

From the details shared by Yunachan about her high school experiences, it’s hard not to think of her as anything but the ideal student—experience as class president and a member of the student council, a basketball team captain in junior high! By all rights, Yunachan should not exist outside of fiction, but with the highest IQ rating in her entire generation, she is decidedly the real deal. In a different world, Yunachan would have employed her intellect in pursuit of a career as a pharmacist, but she claims that joining AKB was a higher priority for her, which both makes me feel as if we have potentially robbed the world of a future Nobel Prize winner, but gosh am I proud to have her as a member of AKB.

Friends, I’m kind of intimidated by this generation, they are all so talented! Yunachan has already taken the centre position in a B side, Machibito, from Yukirin graduation single, Colorcon Wink, released last year. It is crazy to me that members of this generation, hard working as they have proved to be, can have been with us for such a short amount of time and yet have had this kind of impact on the group.

Like many seventeenth and eighteenth generation members, Yunachan is perhaps recognisable to some from her role in the live action of Hoshikuzu Telepath, a series that many care for deeply and one that helped draw attention to the current line-up of AKB. It feels like it shouldn’t be a surprise to find her amongst her peers in the senbatsu for the new single celebrating the group’s anniversary, and as someone who grew up with fierce admiration for what the group was then, I’m really excited to see how Yunachan will interact with the returning members.

I think that a lot of the time it is tempting to consider the Sashihara Rino produced groups as the spirit of what AKB once was, but I kind of relate to Yunachan’s fixation on the idea of AKB remaining the ideal even if the group is so different from what it once was. Maybe that’s a good thing, friends! If anyone can establish a future for AKB it’s members like Yunachan who understand the past yet are not continually looking back to it.

Nominated for Best Newcomer award alongside colleagues from STU48 and NMB48, Akiyama Yuna is undeniably the future of AKB.