H!P Profiles: Hello! Pro Kenshuusei Hokkaido

Top Row L to R: Hikari Sato, Haruka Oota, Mei Yamazaki
Bottom Row L to R: Kanami Ishiguri, Minori Kawano, Yume Kudo, Ryou Kitagawa

Back in 2015, H!P announced an audition for a group in Hokkaido (well, technically that was never totally confirmed to be a group, especially with the outcome).  Either way, the auditions came and went but there was silence for quite a while before emerging in July at the Summer concerts where these 7 were announced as Kenshuusei but not quite a part of the collective it seems.  See, as they are from Hokkaido, performances would be difficult because of the traveling they’d have to go through, so from that they decided to seperate them and make them a branch of the KSS.

(2020) L to R: Kanami Ishiguri, Minori Kawano, Ririka Hashimoto, Karin Nishimura, Hina Shibuya

So this was what we had left in 2020, though things would quickly dissapate as the year went on since everyone here except Kanami Ishiguri (the last of the original Hokkaido girls) had graduated or dropped out or even been pretty much taken out due to long-winded hiatuses.  Even at that, Ishiguri was announced to be debuting soon in a new group in 2021 so it’s really unknown if this side of the program will continue further.

Style of Music: From the 2 singles the branch released, they’re pretty much your run-of-the-mill idol songs

Discography

SINGLES

• Real☆Little☆Girl / Kanojo ni Naritai!!! (Hello! Pro Kenshuusei Hokkaido Ver.) (indies)
• Hankouki! / Ice day party (indies; Ryo, Haruka, Mei, Hikari, and Yume’s final single)

Overall: This is an interesting twist as the whole Kenshuusei thing was pretty standard it seemed.  While this does remind me of H!P Kansai and how much of a flop it turned out to be (SINA *cough*).  Though it’s funny they have an official picture whereas the KSS vanilla has none and the fact these 7 released 2 singles together…is this a group waiting to happen?!?  I mean cut to a couple years later and 5 of the members either graduated or left and were replaced with 3 members…who knows what the plans are here.  Though it looks like from 2022 is giving so far, the program might be shutting its doors.