Characters / Selection Project

A list of characters appearing in Selection Project.

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9-tie

The contestants participating in the seventh season of the SELECTION PROJECT, each of them earned their positions in the competition by beating out thousands of other hopefuls to clear one of the nine regional qualifiers held throughout Japan. Having reached the final phase of competition, they must now vie against each other to earn as many of the audience's Yells as possible, in order to attain the position of the country's top idol.

In Real Life, songs collectively performed by the seiyuu for the group are credited under the name "9-tie". However, while they perform their first song in Episode 7, the group is not officially canonized as a formal unit In-Universe until Episode 10.

The unit contains three subunits, Suzu☆Rena, Splasoda°, and GAPsCAPs, which are formed after the contestants are mandated to divide themselves into groups for the first round of the SELECTION PROJECT.

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In General

• Commonality Connection: While each subunit initially gets off to a rocky start during the first round of the SELECTION PROJECT, the members of two of them do manage to find enough common ground to get themselves through to the next round.
  • Both members of Suzu☆Rena are ardent fans of Akari, and whose ambitions to be idols were inspired by her own passion for music. Beyond that, they also both have a significant connection to Akari, as Suzune is the recipient of Akari's donated heart and Rena is Akari's younger sister.
  • All of the members of Splasoda° have a common love of carbonated drinks, and it is used to characterize their interactions with each other.
  • GAPsCAPs averts this, as all of the members are of different ages, school years, heights, and home environments. They even chose their subunit name as a nod towards those differences.
• Fire-Forged Friends: While initially starting out as complete strangers to each other, the contestants all become this over the course of the competition's first two rounds, both of which require teamwork to proceed. The first round mandates that they divide themselves into small units based on their performance specialties, while the second required them to perform as a group of nine. This eventually led to them viewing each other as True Companions, to the point where they would all rather drop out of the competition when faced with the prospect of voting out two of their number.
• Goroawase Number: 9-tie is pronounced the same way as the English word "cutie", owing to the number 9 being pronounced as "kyu" in Japanese, or phonetically the same as the English letter Q.
• A House Divided: In the first round, infighting affects all of the subunits, as the individual members struggle to work together due to their disparate personalities and ideas for how to conduct their respective groups. Justified, as all of the contestants were complete strangers and were unexpectedly grouped together by the competition's producers based on only a shared chosen specialty.
  • Suzu☆Rena's struggle comes about due to Rena's I'm Not Here to Make Friends stance and her resentment at being grouped with Suzune, whom she especially viewed as a liability due to the latter's Power-Strain Blackout during the regional qualifiers. While Rena resented the subunit gaining an inordinate number of Yells due to the her being Akari's sister, it led to a heart-to-heart with Suzune in which they used their shared idolization of Akari as a source of Commonality Connection. This enabled both members to put out a perfect synchronized performance despite their decision to practice separately as rivals competing to realize a common goal.
• Meaningful Name: The unit's name, 9-tie, is an allusion to the fact that the SELECTION PROJECT ended in a nine-way tie, first by all of its members voting themselves out to avoid eliminating any singular contestant, and second by them collectively winning the competition as a unit. In Episode 11, Rena states that the name also represents the ties that bind the nine members together.
• Multinational Team: Downplayed. The group's members all hail from different regions of Japan. Justified in that the SELECTION PROJECT divided the country into nine regions for the regional qualifiers and drew a winning contestant from each one.
• No One Gets Left Behind: At the end of the second round, they are faced with the option of voting two contestants out of the competition. By this point, considering themselves True Companions, each contestant opts to vote for herself, leading to the whole group being eliminated. Later on, they only agree to return to the show on the condition that they all either win or lose as a unit, essentially telling the producers that they can have all nine members back, or none of them at all.
• Punny Name: The unit's name, 9-tie, is a pun on the word "cutie", and is naturally, a play on the fact that it has nine members.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: After they become True Companions, they value their bonds of friendship with each other to the point that none of them are willing to become Japan's top idol and go professional if it means that everyone else cannot do so in the process. The SELECTION PROJECT's producers are eventually forced to capitulate to this stance as a condition for their agreement to return to the show.
• Screw Your Ultimatum!: After every member of the group votes for herself to be eliminated at the end of the second round, resulting in a nine-way tie, Sumipanda insists that they redo the vote on another day, with any abstentions being grounds for disqualification. However, after every contestant states their intent to vote the same way no matter how many times the vote is repeated, all of them are eliminated.
• Spanner in the Works: They prove to be this to the SELECTION PROJECT's producers, as despite the competition being a straightforward Reality Show that is intended to produce one clear winner, they constantly defy this expectation.
  • At the end of the first round, all of the groups score enough Yells to progress, an occurrence which, according to Sumipanda, has never happened before.
  • The second round ends with all of the contestants once again earning enough Yells to clear.
  • At the end of the second round, the producers then attempt to thin the number of contestants, by trying to force the group to vote out two of their number. This backfires spectacularly when every contestant votes for herself and refuses to change the way she votes. This results in everyone getting eliminated, and prematurely ending the competition.
  • Finally, after the group manages to find some success by going independent, the producers ultimately capitulate and allow them to return to the competition, by holding a finale live that they can only win or lose together as a unit. They ultimately succeed and become the collective winners of the SELECTION PROJECT.
• Start My Own: After their elimination from the SELECTION PROJECT over their refusal to vote out members of their group, they instead decide to strike out on their own as an independent idol unit.
• True Companions: As the season progresses, all nine contestants have grown close to one another, until they eventually consider each other this. It comes to a point where when they are given the choice to eliminate two contestants from the competition, they all decide to vote themselves out instead, causing everyone to be disqualified and prematurely ending the current season. In Episode 9, they form their own independent idol group as proof of the bonds they now have with each other.
• Video Phone: After their elimination from the SELECTION PROJECT, the group's members use video conferencing on SEPIS to keep in contact and share their ideas for their new song. Justified, as they all live in different parts of Japan, and thus have limited opportunities to meet up in person.

Suzu☆Rena

The first subunit to debut, Suzu☆Rena is a duet comprised of Suzune Miyama and Rena Hananoi, which was formed after both members picked vocal performances as their specialty. Most notably, the former is one of Akari's biggest fans and the recipient of her heart, while the latter is Akari's younger sister. After 9-tie decides to strike out as an independent idol unit, the subunit is tasked with writing lyrics for the unit's new songs.

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• One Degree of Separation: Both of the subunit's members have a significant connection to Akari. In particular, Suzune is one of her biggest fans and was also the recipient of her donated heart, while Rena is Akari's younger sister. While both members are initially unaware of this connection, discovering it is the cause of a big Drama Bomb in the series. However, it is their shared idolization of Akari that leads them to decide to cover one of her songs during SELECTION PROJECT's group round.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The subunit's members have this dynamic, with Suzune being a positive, cheerful and excitable Nice Girl, while Rena is a cold and distant Aloof Dark-Haired Girl. Their image colors, red and dark blue, respectively, also make this explicit, as do their costumes for their performance of B.B.
• Portmanteau: The subunit's name is a combination of its members' names. According to Rena, it is evocative of the subunit's stance of "separate but together", in that both its members were rivals competing to win the SELECTION PROJECT, but having the common goal in doing so.
• Spontaneous Choreography: Downplayed. They are able to perform B.B. in perfect sync with each other despite never rehearsing together beforehand, much to the astonishment of the other contestants. It is possible that their shared idolization of Akari, who originally performed the song In-Universe, played a role in this.

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Suzune Miyama

Image Color: Red

Age: 14

Hometown: Saitama

Height: 159cm

Weight: 43kg

Three Sizes: B80/W58/H82

Birthday: March 19

Blood Type: O

Voiced by: Hinaki Yano

Rena Hananoi

Image Color: Dark Blue

Age: 14

Hometown: Metropolitan Tokyo

Height: 157cm

Weight: 41kg

Three Sizes: B78/W56/H80

Birthday: December 25

Blood Type: A

Voiced by: Saku Mizuno

Splasoda°

The second subunit to submit its performance, Splasoda° is a quartet comprised of Hiromi Hamaguri, Nagisa Imau, Nodoka Yagi, and Ao Yodogawa, who all picked dance and choreography as a shared specialty. During 9-tie's stint as an independent idol group, the subunit was given the task of developing choreography for the unit's performances.

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• Be Yourself: This is the key to resolving their dispute, as the members struggled to come up with a unified identity and approach, owing to their disparate upbringings and interests. They manage to resolve this by tapping into the one thing they have in common, a love of carbonated drinks, and use it to add unique flourishes to their Cover Song performance to make it distinct from the original version.
• Dance Battler: The subunit's members are all proficient dancers, and having chosen it as their specialty, their choreography is the most emphasized part of their performance.
• Drink-Based Characterization: The subunits' members all have a common love of carbonated drinks, and used it as the inspiration for their name. Naturally, it is used as a metaphor to describe their behavior in Episode 4. While watching them argue over the approach to their dance routine, Sumipanda derisively compares them to a Soda Can Shakeup. Later, after Hiromi and Nagisa have made up, Nodoka described the argument and its resolution as being like soda bubbles which fizz, but the resulting drink tasting great when consumed. Their performance also contains a few allusions to carbonated drinks. To wit, it begins with a sound effect resembling a soda can being opened, while many soda bubbles can be seen floating in the background. The stage they used also contains several orb shapes, which ostensibly also represent soda bubbles.
• Portmanteau: The subunit's name is a combination of the words splash and soda. Nodoka came up with it by combining the names that Hiromi and Nagisa proposed for the subunit, as part of the compromises made in getting its otherwise disparate members to come together.
• Trademark Favorite Food: All of the subunit's members love carbonated drinks, which serves as the only other thing they had in common, apart from their shared specialty in dance. Naturally, it serves as the source of their name, and all of the names proposed for the subunit by its members also make reference to it.

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Hiromi Hamaguri

Image Color: Yellow

Age: 16

Hometown: Osaka

Height: 161cm

Weight: 44kg

Three Sizes: B85/W59/H85

Birthday: July 28

Blood Type: A

Voiced by: Nozomi Nagumo

Nagisa Imau

Image Color: Dark Green

Age: 15

Hometown: Kochi

Height: 155cm

Weight: 41kg

Three Sizes: B82/W55/H82

Birthday: June 1

Blood Type: B

Voiced by: Ruri Arai

Nodoka Yagi

Image Color: Purple

Age: 14

Hometown: Hokkaido

Height: 158cm

Weight: 45kg

Three Sizes: B88/W60/H87

Birthday: September 24

Blood Type: O

Voiced by: Hina Yomiya

Ao Yodogawa

Image Color: Light Blue

Age: 13

Hometown: Hiroshima

Height: 158cm

Weight: 40kg

Three Sizes: B75/W54/H78

Birthday: November 25

Blood Type: O

Voiced by: Yuka Iwahashi

GAPsCAPs

Uta Koizumi

Image Color: Pink

Age: 11

Hometown: Miyagi

Height: 147cm

Weight: 38kg

Three Sizes: B72/W52/H73

Birthday: November 7

Blood Type: B

Voiced by: Mizuna Shirakawa

Shiori Yamaga

Image Color: Light Green

Age: 14

Hometown: Aichi

Height: 160cm

Weight: 44kg

Three Sizes: B83/W57/H81

Birthday: September 1

Blood Type: AB

Voiced by: Miharu Hanai

Mako Toma

Image Color: Orange

Age: 17

Hometown: Fukuoka

Height: 166cm

Weight: 45kg

Three Sizes: B84/W58/H82

Birthday: July 7

Blood Type: O

Voiced by: Shino Shimoji

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