L to R: Ai Suma, Nana Nakayama, Manami Iwashima, Asami Abe
In an interesting twist at the time, Tsunku held auditions for a new group in Kansai and we ended up with four winners. At first the group didn’t have a name and just went by Hello! Pro Kansai but they would also be joined later in that grouping alongside Eggs, Arisa Noto and Irori Maeda to later become this little cluster group called HAPPY! STYLE which included some names that would become familiar to people today, Yui Ogura, Maho Matsunaga, and Kaori Ishihara also so of the Kenshuusei from H!P Kansai would be familar especially Akari Uemura (of Juice=Juice). Anyways these four would form their group as SI☆NA which the letters of their surname made the name and started their work in 2008. After a year, Nana Nakayama would leave the group and later on make a name for herself in NMB48 as Nana Yamada
L to R: Asami Abe, Manami Iwashima, Ai Suma
The group decided to move on together and they got their big break by finally being able to perform a song of their own in “FrankencenseΨ”. Then into 2011, the trio decided to disband the group and go their seperate ways with Iwashima being the first to release a solo single, but shortly retired from the music business.
Style of Music: As a group they covered a lot of H!P and anime songs, but their only original song is kind of sassy pop but fun music
This is probably the only live recording of their original song, FrankencenseΨ…Most of you will be like…wait this sounds familiar…it should because it was covered on Buono!’s 2011 mini-album, “partenza” as a Miyabi-led song.
Overall: I think SI☆NA is another group that had so much potential especially as a group with an entirely new group of ladies. I don’t know how much Tsunku was really involved with H!P Kansai in the first place, but he definitely let this group drown with little activity. I mean to the point where their original song never was released to the public (though later covered by Buono!). It seemed like there was pretty good talent with these four (though it seems only Nakayama is doing anything these days). What was this group existing for again 0.o
Iroppoi Twilight Game 