Franchise / Sakurazaka46

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Sakurazaka46 (櫻坂46) is Nogizaka46's first sister group, established in 2015 as Keyakizaka46 (欅坂46). The members were grouped into two teams, Kanji Keyaki and Hiragana Keyaki, until the latter was renamed Hinatazaka46 in February 2019, leaving Kanji as the sole team.

Like their sister groups, they also have a number of television shows, such as:

• Soko Magattara, Sakurazaka? (SokoSaku), or Keyakitte, Kakenai? (KeyaKake) until late 2020, hosted by Teruyuki Tsuchida and Yu Sawabe
• Keyabingo!, hosted by Sandwichman (Mikio Date and Takeshi Tomizawa)
• Tokuyama Daigorō o Dare ga Koroshitaka?, 2016 drama
• Zankoku na Kyakutachi, 2017 drama

Tropes related to the group's music (releases and live performances) are in the Music page.

Tropes that appear in Sakurazaka46's non-music works:

• Americans Are Cowboys: Mizuho Habu produced her own Eagleland-themed sketch series called Habu's Nice Day, where she plays the half-American cowgirl Nyarie Habu (who barely speaks English) who helps other members with their problems. Because the English word "have" is written as habu (ハブ) in katakana, the show is pretty much an excuse to use puns like "What problem do you Habu?" and "Yes, I Habu a solution!" These puns are first introduced in Keyakake episode 20, when Habu's real-life father proposed them for her to use as catchphrase.
• Bifauxnen:
  • Mizuho Habu is 171 cm tall and overflowing with this, as shown in her many crossdressing episodes.
  • Nana Oda is also one, and a magazine interview called her the group's handsome guy.
• Book Dumb: Nijika Ishimori, Ten Yamasaki, and Rika Watanabe have been crowned Fool Queens after they placed among the bottom ranks in their academic tests and lost the following buzzer quiz. As Ten is the youngest, Tsuchida jokingly attempts to encourage her by saying that one can still succeed in life without academic abilities.
  • In episode 88's buzzer quiz, Rena Moriya is asked to read a few questions in Japanese and English to provide extra challenge to the contestants from her poor reading proficiency.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Rina Matsuda reveals in Sokosaku episode 126 that she's been told that she looks like Momoiro Clover Z's Kanako Momota (who also happens to be the leader of her group). Tsuchida and Sawabe agree.
• Country Mouse: Neru Nagahama, raised in the Nagasaki countryside, is amused while watching Yuuka Sugai and Mizuho Habu's attempts to survive a camping trip and is enthusiastic when the hosts jokingly offer to put her in a survival reality show. Meanwhile, Yonetani is Terrified of Germs and admits that she would have freaked out even more.
  Neru: Seeing them going hysterical when they saw those sea roaches, it was painfully obvious they're city slickers.
  Tsuchida: Imagine if we set up a city girl vs country girl episode. The country girls would stockpile a lot of good stuff!
  • Neru also has quite high upper body strength for her build, which many people attribute to her Kyushu origin. As a child, her pastime included exploring mountains and catching mackerels by hand.
  • Keyakake episode 110 features her and Fuyuka Saito visiting Nakadori Island, a Close-Knit Community where she grew up and where everyone treats her like family. Highlights include fishing with a local expert and preparing the fishes at a local's house, and receiving a letter from a child wishing the "center person" (Yurina Hirate), Neru herself, and "all the others" the best.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Rika Watanabe is often a Shrinking Violet in variety shows, but she's a relatively popular model and can do various gags when asked to.
• Drag Queen: In Keyakake episode 164, members who recently came of age visit a drag bar in Kabukicho, as requested by Neru Nagahama, and receive various life advices from them.
  • In episode 83, Sawabe compares Neru's upper body strength to a drag queen.
• Embarrassing Animal Suit: In Sokosaku episode 54's Halloween cosplay, while other members who participate get to dress up as Rei Ayanami (Karin Fujiyoshi) or Marie-Antoinette (Yumiko Seki), Minami Koike made Yui Takemoto dress up as her dog, Pomu.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: In Keyakake episode 134, Yoshimura of the comedy duo Heisei Nobushi Kobushi is invited to teach the girls his craft, but he later claimed on another show that the girls were so awkward that he'd never work with them again. In response to that, Yoshimura and his partner Tokui are invited again in episode 202 so the girls can show their growth, but in a totally not scripted fashion, Yoshimura refuses to leave the waiting room despite the girls' repeated persuasion (and his already agreeing to come to the recording in the first place)... until Hikaru Morita Blackmails him with a picture of him and a former girlfriend and provokes him to chase her into the studio.
  Yoshimura: Are you threatening me? An 18-year-old threatening a 39-year-old man?
• Fanservice: Like Nogizaka46, their costumes are long dresses and they mostly save the swimsuit and lingerie shots for the photobooks. Neru Nagahama's photobook, Koko Kara, sold 97,660 copies in its first week.
• The Fashionista: Akane Moriya is knowledgeable about beauty products and was a regular writer for the Sakamichi Series's beauty column in anan magazine.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Tsuchida and Sawabe call Rika and Risa Watanabe by their first names to avoid confusion.
    • When Neru Nagahama is first introduced, they're impressed by her unusual first name and also call her by it since then.
    • After Rena Moriya joined the group, Tsuchida and Sawabe discuss how to distinguish her from Akane. Akane suggests that they call her by her given name, which they find hard to do after having called her "Moriya" for five years. They ended up calling Rena by first name instead, even after Akane left the group.
  • In Keyakake episode 245, Yumiko Seki reveals that she strongly insists on this with the other members, since she feels that using her wealthy family's name puts a distance between her and others. The hosts comment that she's a real-life anime Ojou.
    Yumiko: Since I was little, I've always been called things like "the Seki family's young princess" or "Yumiko-chan of the Seki family".
• Fun with Homophones:
  • Neru Nagahama has revealed that her given name was not based on the word for "sleep" (寝る), but "refine" (錬る).
  • Rina Matsuda's nickname Matsuri also means "festival" (祭り) and Rina Inoue's Inori also means "prayer" (祈り).
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: For example, Rika Watanabe and her shark plushie Aoko, which has even appeared in her modeling works.
• Hates Being Called Cute: In Sokosaku, Hikaru Morita explains that she doesn't mind being called cute, except when she's dancing the group's cooler, more intense routines.
• Hates Their Parent: As might be expected from a bunch of eccentrics, several members have revealed in Keyakake that they aren't in the best of terms with their parents. For example, Risa Watanabe claims in episode 33 that she doesn't address her father with anything but "hey", and Hiragana's Memi Kakizaki dislikes the way her father is overly emotional about her. Family man Sawabe is quite concerned about this.
• The Hero: Nanami Yonetani. Very rational, logical and idealist. Not afraid of speaking what's in her mind, including putting a stop to a small argument between Yui Imaizumi and Sandwichman during the recording of Keyabingo when the other members awkwardly just stands and smile at the camera.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: In Sokosaku episode 85, everyone tries Rena Moriya's recommended chocolate bar, French-made Bernachon Granochoc, and not one of them can properly describe the taste.
• Infomercial: In SokoSaku episode 24, several members present the possessions they would like to give away in a mock infomercial style.
• In-Series Nickname: Tsuchida and Sawabe like to call Mizuho Habu "Habu-sensei" or "Habu-meijin" due to her mature image and having the same last name with shogi and chess master Yoshiharu Habu.
• Interclass Friendship: The group includes known rich kids Yuuka Sugai and Yumiko Seki, and a Running Gag is them or others casually revealing stories about their lives which astonish everybody else.
  • In Keyakake episode 142, everybody's shocked when Sugai-sama mentions she has a Winback electrotherapy machine (with Indiba features), which was imported from France and costs a few million yen, at home. It's part of her mother's beauty spa, which Rika Ozeki reveals in episode 245 to be unrivaled in both price and services.
  • When Sugai wins a TV and DVD player from Tsuchida in a Keyakake contest, Tsuchida laments that the prizes end up going to a wealthy girl who probably already has plenty of them.
  • In Keyakake episode 222, Ten Yamasaki reveals that Yumiko has access to all the streaming services at home, while Hono Tamura describes her TV as "ridiculously huge" for someone living by herself.
  • In Keyakake episode 240, Yui Takemoto suggests that the new 2nd gens mention to Yumiko if there's something they want, because they might get lucky. Akiho Onuma proceeds to mention that she needs a new bed, shocking even Yumiko herself with her audacity.
  • In Keyakake episode 245, they are asked to reveal their favorite childhood presents. While the other members answer with things like Tamagotchi or cakes, Sugai's is a horse saddle (the Japanese word for it, 鞍 kura, isn't even part of the common kanji, so some members are unfamiliar with it) she received when she started seriously training in horse riding, while Yumiko's are a MacBook Pro and a saxophone, which she received for no particular occasion.
  • In Sokosaku episode 49, Sugai-sama introduces her family's favorite dessert, foie gras ice cream with bruléed muscovado wrapped in hojicha crêpe from the LegaRE restaurant in Daikanyama, Tokyo.
    Sugai-sama: However, I'm guessing that some of you don't really like foie gras. What about you, Inori?
    Rina Inoue: Well, I've never eaten it in my life, so I wouldn't know.
    ——
    Rika Ozeki: Which part of the body is foie gras? ... The liver? A human... liver? Or is it of a fish?
    • In the same episode, Yumiko-kaicho recommends Saga beef fillet, which main ingredient costs about $1000 per kilogram.
• Mistaken for Servant: A Running Gag in Sokosaku has certain members, such as Yui Takemoto and Rina Inoue, helping out with the props like an assistant director as they've supposedly been recruited by the show's production company, Kmax.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Marino Kousaka reveals in a Sokosaku episode that she was named after an Osaka metal band which her mother likes.
• Noble Bird of Prey: While the centers of Nogizaka46 (Nanase Nishino) and Hinatazaka46 (Nao Kosaka) are reptile lovers and got to play with pythons in their variety shows, Hikaru Morita gets acquainted with Fabimaru the falcon in SokoSaku episode 4. Fabimaru appears again in a later episode.
  • She is also associated with the penguin-like Pokémon Piplup, especially after their Tiktok dance video.
• Ojou: Some members came from money and this fact is occasionally brought up for comedic effect.
  • When Yuuka Sugai revealed that she does horse riding, she was given the Ojou-chara. But when it is revealed that she went to vacation to her holiday villa in Gunma and that she have another one in Karuizawa, it becomes clear that it's not just her chara, but that she's a honest to god Ojou-sama! She also has other telltale signs of Japanese Old Money, such as calling her parents and grandparents with the -sama honorific and having graduated from Gakushuin Women's College (Gakushuin institutions are traditionally attended by imperial family members). However, unlike most examples, she seems uncomfortable whenever her family's wealth is mentioned and considers "Sugai-sama" an Embarrassing Nickname.
    • In Keyabingo! 2 episode 4, Sugai-sama and several members have a "ladyness" competition with the subjects of table manners, English conversation, and food tasting. As expected, Sugai-sama is the most ladylike of all.
    • However, she's definitely a Non-Idle Rich, as she has revealed that she'd had several normal part-time jobs, such as selling beer at ball games and video game tester, before becoming an idol (a demanding occupation in itself).
  • 2nd generation member Yumiko Seki is also one and has the nickname Yumiko-kaicho ("Chairman Yumiko").^*Her family owns Seki Furniture, one of the largest furniture makers in Japan and a sponsor of the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks esports club and the Sagan Tosu soccer club of Saga Prefecture. However, the nickname was originally because she's the chairman of the members' internal Yui Takemoto Fan Club.
    • Keyakake episodes 245-246 are a competition between Sugai-sama and Yumiko-kaicho to decide which one's the true ojou-sama, supported by their respective "commoner" entourage who compete physically to give their "patrons" a chance to answer quiz questions. The winner is still Sugai-sama.
  • In several episodes of Keyakitte, Kakenai?, it's revealed that several of the members live in large houses and their grandparents have high-class pastimes, leading the hosts to conclude that actually they may also qualify.
  • In her Aeon Card promotional series, Risa Watanabe portrays one who lives in a high-rise condo and employs a butler and house pianist. Meanwhile, Sugai-sama portrays the proprietress of a modest oden diner... which serves foie gras and matsutake mushroom oden, decorated with gold leaves.
• Passionate Sports Girl:
  • Akane Moriya was a top-ranked junior tennis player in Miyagi Prefecture. Her former coach and doubles partner appear in Keyakake's Sendai tour episodes.
  • Hono Tamura played volleyball since preschool and got into college on volleyball scholarship.
• Perpetual Frowner: In a Keyakake episode, Karin Fujiyoshi reveals that she finds it difficult to smile. The hosts then asks her seniors to show her how to smile on cue, which they do well... until the camera points to Miyu Suzumoto, who refuses to do so.
  • One of Karin's personal videos in the singles is also about her character practicing her smile before joining an idol group.
• Product Placement: Aeon's credit card campaign with them included a web series drama and the Morita Club shorts, where Hikaru Morita invites other members to fancy lunches in real-life restaurants and pays using the Aeon card. Other centers like Hono Tamura and Risa Watanabe, as well as former captain Yuuka Sugai, also got their own miniseries.
• Questioning Title?: Keyakitte, Kakenai? ("Can't you write 'Keyaki'?"), renamed in 2020 to Soko Magattara, Sakurazaka? ("If you turn there, is it Sakurazaka?", a reference to the real-life street).
• She's All Grown Up: Aoi Harada, formerly nicknamed Gobo-tan (burdock) for her small stature and dark skin, took a hiatus from 2018 to 2019 for academic reasons and looked much more mature when she returned, prompting many to give this remark, including Tsuchida and Sawabe.
• Shipper on Deck: Played for laughs in Sokosaku episode 123, when Mio Matono presents her illustration of Tsuchida and Sawabe as a Yaoi couple. They understandably explain that, unlike previous illustrations by the other members, they can't bring this one home since they have families.
• The Smart Girl: Neru Nagahama wins the first academic test in Keyakitte, Kakenai, followed by Nanami Yonetani and Aoi Harada. In the second test, Neru and Yone have graduated and Aoi takes the first place, followed by Yui Takemoto and Shiori Sato. She successfully defends her title in the third test (which takes place after their name change), being the top in both the written test and buzzer quiz.
  • Yone has a strong interest in microbiology and gives a lecture on single-celled organisms in Keyakake. Her favorite one is the algae Volvox.
  • Neru's personal videos for singles included songs about English irregular verbs and the periodic table.
  • The third academic test was set up after "Silent Majority" was included in the democracy section of Japan's high school history textbook, to prove that they're worthy of being included in academic discussions.
  • Continuing the trend of runners-up taking the top spot after the previous Queen graduated, Yui Takemoto becomes the third Acedemic Queen after winning the fourth test.
• Sore Loser: "Sergeant" Akane Moriya really hates losing and often cries when that happens.
  • When Tsuchida proposes that Sugai's and Hiragana's suspected Secretly Wealthy Kumi Sasaki's grandfathers should have a tennis match to decide who'll play against Akanen, she vows not to hold back even when playing against a senior citizen.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny: Compared to their sister groups and 48 groups, many Keyakizaka members are rather awkward at variety shows, that a large part of the comedy comes from the hosts lampshading this, at least in their first three years. An Aborted Arc is that comedian Yoshimura has blacklisted Keyakizaka46 for their comedy ineptitude and they have to work to get back in his good graces (note that he blacklisted Keyakizaka46, which is no longer an active group).
  • Years later, Yoshimura guested in Hinatazaka de Aimashō and in the end begged for Hinatazaka46 to blacklist him instead, after he was repeatedly baffled by their antics.
• Starving Artist: In an early Keyakake episode, Rika Ozeki points out that their pay per episode is only around $100 after tax, divided between all the members present (of course, they also receive a base salary and income from other appearances, but it's no secret that most idols don't become rich).
• Team Mom: Members often turn to Nana Oda for emotional support. Subverted since she is actually a rather carefree person; for example, another member had to draw up a college study plan for her since she couldn't bother to do it herself.
• Terrified of Germs: Nanami Yonetani absolutely refuses to eat or drink from the same container as others, and can't even imagine kissing her future spouse. Her interest in microbiology might have influenced this.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  • When Rina Matsuda and several other members appeared in the Nep League quiz show, the letter she provided (な na) in a group spelling game turned out to form the sentence "gets anal with a stick" (ぼうにあなる).^*The actual proverb is "If a dog walks, it will eventually hit a pole" (いぬもあるけばぼうにあたる). It became a Twitter worldwide trending topic that evening.
  • When asked to guess the title of Sakurazaka's show after they rebranded, Rei Ozono gives one based on the radicals of the "sakura" (櫻) kanji, "Trees (木), Seashells (貝), and Women (女)", which sounds more like a late-night sexy show.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Rika Watanabe loves bread. In Keyakake episode 228, she and Nanako Nagasawa receive bread making training from the baker Mitsuo Hirose (and also learn to overcome their perpetually low energy levels along the way).
  • Miyu Suzumoto likes chestnuts, and at one point Tsuchida gives chestnuts as incentive for her and others to speak up in Keyakake.
  • Rena Moriya would go to great lengths to sample the best chocolate.
• Uncle Pennybags:
  • Some segments in their variety shows feature the Sawabe Awards, where he would give the winners cash or their desired items, allegedly out of his own pocket.
    • For the 2021 New Year episodes, the hosts end up spending around $4300 on prizes for the seven winners.
  • Yumiko Seki is also revealed to be quite generous to her fellow members, often giving away items like LINE stamps and new, brand-name clothes she had bought but changed her mind about wearing. She also occasionally holds ice cream parties at her place with them.
    • Keyakake episode 244 features her listening to other members' unlucky stories and pledging to give them Animal Crossing: New Horizons Bells according to how sympathetic she feels for them.
  • Kira Masumoto likes to randomly give gifts to fellow members. Nogizaka46's Rika Sato also revealed that Kira "gave her cash" to go on thrill rides with her.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Inverted by Rika Watanabe, who gave herself the nickname Pe-chan, after her cat.