YMMV / Sakura Gakuin

• Broken Base: Whether the post-2014/2015 groups are worth watching. Many fans embrace the new girls, but some insist it just isn't the same without any of the original members. This is likely to become even more pronounced now that Aiko and Megumi – the last remaining girls to have worked with any of the founding crew – graduated in March 2018. ^note  Rinon was not one of the founding members but worked with all of them and, along with Hana, is considered part of the "Original Generation" (contrast with "Ayami's Eight" - the original girls but without Yui and Moa, who were revealed later). As of 2019, two members of Sakura Gakuin remain who worked directly with Rinon: Soyoka and Kano, who graduate in 2020.
• Fan Nickname: While most fans simply co-opt the nicknames the girls use for each other, they sometimes come up with their own.
  • In Sakura Gakuin parlance – fans and members/staff – calling one of the girls a Genius (tensai) means placing one's tongue firmly in cheek, as the term is generally restricted to the girls who are the biggest airheads and/or do hilariously poorly on tests. It started in 2012 when Ayami used the term for Rinon (already known for being very odd), who adopted the moniker as her own.
  • Saki Ooga was often called the Diary Queen by fans due to her prodigious updates on Ameblo – in four years, she wrote 140 diaries (an average of 35 per year).
    • That title has since passed to Aiko Yamaide, who wrote a whopping 180 diaries in five years (avg. 36/year), a record that will never be surpassed.
  • Saki Shirai is often called "Number-One Fukei" or "Fukei Queen" by fans due to her being a literal promoted fangirl plus her willingness to travel hundreds of kilometers from her home in Niigata for shows.
    • Aiko, who joined the group with Shirai, seems to be vying for the title as well, though her tendency to position herself in the middle of everyone during group shots and the fact that she's shorter than most active members has led to the Running Gag that she's trying to sneak back in to the group, since five years clearly wasn't enough.
    (fan's caption on a photo of Aiko) "Hi! I'm, uh, Yaiko Amaide. I want to join Sakura Gakuin. As you can see by my height and haircut, I'm a totally new girl who has never been a member!"
  • In addition to the many nicknames for her mentioned on the Babymetal page, Yui has also been given the title of "Tomato Queen" for obvious reasons.
  • Speaking of Babymetal, with Kano and Momoko becoming two of the three "Avengers" in 2019 to fill Yui's empty slot, Babymetal fans naturally give them the "-Metal" suffix even though officially they don't have it, thus "Kanometal" and "Momometal" or "Momokometal". Marina used the latter after attending a Babymetal show at Saitama Super Arena in November 2019. If Marina broke protocol by doing so, she seems not to care.
  • Some fans call Yuzumi "ASMR-chan" thanks to her radio show Hitorigoto, where she spends 18-25 minutes every two weeks talking about random subjects in a soft & soothing voice, interspersed with chuckling.
    • On her late-November show (Ep. 9), the first fan-letter she read aloud thanked her for being able to lull the writer to sleep.
    • Tsugumi decided for her FRESH! solo show in December 2019 to read the first postcard of the night in an imitation of Yuzu's voice – the staff busted a gut the moment they realized what she was doing. While Tsugu herself felt she screwed up the impression, Yuzu said on her subsequent radio show that she loved it.
  • Yume Nozaki is referred to by some Western fans as "The Boss" or "Boss Hamster" due to her forceful personality and tendency to "play senior" even to members older than her. She's one of two girls in modern SG that Mori-sensei has admitted to being a bit afraid of (Momoe is the other – no points for guessing who served as Yume's primary mentor).
  • As mentioned on the YMMV page, "White T-Shirt Guy" (plenty of fans know him directly or indirectly but withhold his name out of respect for his privacy) is known as "Fan Zero". Insulting him is not tolerated.
    (in response to someone calling WTSG "creepy") "That is White T-shirt Guy. He is a legend. Don't you dare talk shit about him!"
• Harsher in Hindsight: The 2016 nendo class test included the teachers telling the girls that their weekly livestream is ending, complete with a fake "last show" where Mori-sensei revealed that the whole thing was just a prank in preparation for the class test. This would have been fine had it not turned out in February 2017 (the prank was filmed in December 2016) that TV Asahi announced LoGiRL really would shut down at the end of March. The management team even added a postscript to the end of the video addressing the situation.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Some fans were disappointed with the 2015 album, Kirameki no Kakera, since (even without counting 'Mezase Super Lady') more or less 50% of the songs were just older ones re-recorded with the members of the 2015 nendo, though a couple like "School Days" had only been released via long out-of-print singles. 'Mathematica' was also available to buy as a single before.
  • Lack of new songs has become the norm for every album from 2015 on, though at least starting with the 2016 album most of the rerecorded songs had new heavier instrumentals recorded with professional musicians in a more session-like environment. "Song For Smiling" in particular is improved by the addition of a Hammond organ to the arrangement.
  • The likely reason for lack of new songs is Sakura Gakuin losing Universal's sponsorship in April 2015 (this can be dated because the 2014 Nendo album [March] was released by Universal but 2014's Road To Graduation Final [July] was not).
    • This has probably also hampered the creation and continuation of Clubs, even though newer members have openly expressed a desire to bring them back. Only 4 new subgroup songs have debuted to date since then.
    • There's also Mikiko-sensei being too busy with her many other jobs to create choreography. On the flip-side, the girls themselves have said many times they like the old songs, and Fukei often enjoy seeing new girls performing the old standards.
• Memetic Bystander
  • "White T-Shirt Guy", an audience member seen in the front row during the group's first solo concert in November 2010, has achieved this status for his overly enthusiastic dancing. He was apparently a fan of Suzuka's going back to her time in Karen Girl's, and reportedly invited twenty of his friends to the show because he didn't want the girls to be disappointed to see empty floor seats. Babymetal fans refer to him, respectfully, as "Fan Zero".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Suzuka’s answer to the question “What does the D in CD/DVD/BD stand for?” was DeLorean. Cue the fandom referring to these as DeLoreans.
  • Hinata's saying "So maybe deep down, I want to be a doughnut", after trying to understand a personality test question. Since then fans like to sometimes refer to her as a doughnut.
  • Whenever it involves Marina, everything is "-kun". Whether meaning to or not, she reinforced this in one of her first post-introductory tweets, which included a drawing:
    "I had a dream about a little white dog-kun…"
• Portmanteau Couple Name/Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Not as romantic relationships, obviously. Some of these are thought up by the girls themselves.
  • MiyoMatsu referring to Ayaka Miyoshi & Airi Matsui. This one is used officially, such as when they did a joint Coming-Of-Age Day livestream in 2017, and on Instagram during the rare occasions they're able to meet up.
  • MoiMoi, for Yui Mizuno and Moa Kikuchi. This comes from a LoGiRL livestream (episode 6) where they had to guess what said Finnish phrase meant. It means "bye-bye", but Yui wrote that it refers to her and Moa together – complete with visual aid◊.^*  Yui wrote their names in hiragana, a syllabary; it's Moa + Yui doubled. Moa then used it multiple times. Fans of both Sakura Gakuin and (especially) Babymetal now use it regularly …to refer to the two collectively in the time before Yui's departure.
    • Prior to that, YuiMoa was common
  • AikoMegu, for Aiko Yamaide and Megumi Okada
  • Aritomori for Tsugumi Aritomo and Momoe Mori
  • MiMi for Miki Yagi and Miku Tanaka, used in diary entries by Miki
  • Sanassu for Sana Shiratori and Kokona Nonaka, coined by Sana herself.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: There are some Sakura Gakuin "fans" who refuse to accept anything after the 2014 nendo^*  (when the last founding members, Yui and Moa, graduated), insisting the new talent just isn't up to the calibre of the original crop of girls. The 2015 nendo did signal a major shift – a new fancier classroom set, fewer new songs, half the members were new and two-thirds of those were 5th or 6th-graders (of the returning members, half - Rinon and both Sakis - would leave at year's end).

---