YMMV / Nogizaka46

• Fandom Rivalry: With Keyakizaka46 fans, depending on where you look, some fans of both groups find it hard to get along, due to the vast difference in music style.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Pretty much everything to do with Himeka Nakamoto, for reasons detailed below.
  • In episode 142 of Nogizakatte Doko?, after performing her signature "Himetan Beam" and saying that fans have begun doing it as well, Shitara jokingly asks if she was okay. Himeka says that she is before becoming silent.
  • Another episode of Nogizakatte Doko? had Himeka tearfully reveal the pain of having Manatsu Akimoto enter senbatsu upon returning from her hiatus, despite the Under members having to wait for their turn.
  • Episode 29 of Nogizaka Kojichu had Himeka talk about not getting invited to a trip to an onsen in Toyama with Marika Ito and Sayuri Inoue, even though they promised to go there as a trio. It was then revealed that Marika and Sayuri simply forgot to invite Himeka to Toyama. The next episode has the three take a trip to a different onsen with the latter two having the time of their lives while Himeka is left as the third wheel and clearly feels left out.
    • Even more heartbreaking when Manatsu Akimoto reveals that Marika and Sayuri had told her about the trip and even recommended the onsen to her but still the pair didn't tell Himeka, cue Himeka looking up in silence trying not to cry - twice.
  • In one of Himeka's final episodes of Nogieigo, Rina Hirata – trying to figure out what Himeka had written down as the thing that most worried her (it was "Nothing I do is interesting.") – guessed "Everyone is getting sick of your Himetan Beam." As Himeka had been the only member to not utterly fail at the earlier challenges, it didn't take long for her to internally translate Rina's words. Once she had, one could almost literally see her world shatter in front of her eyes as her expression shifted to one of total devastation.
  • At the end of 2017, Himeka unexpectedly announced her departure from Nogizaka but no reason was given – it wasn't her age, as several 1st generation members are older than her.
  • Fast forward to Summer 2018, and Himeka suddenly reappears in a completely different setting: a therapist's clinic. She publicly announced that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016 but tried to keep working until she literally couldn't take it anymore. Going back to the first bullet point, simply being forgotten for a promised trip and then being the third wheel on a separate trip would've taken a toll on her already fragile mental health.
    • Why was she there? She decided to start training to become a counselor and to also speak openly about her issues (which is obscenely rare in Japan) so that other girls wouldn't have to go through what she did without help. As of November that year, she has started her own online counseling service, supported by the Nogizaka management. What a sweetheart.
  • Since she's still listed in Nogizaka46, LLC's talent roster with several other graduates, she might become a mental healthcare talent or advocate in the future. In fact, she has already been invited in this capacity to a career consulting event at Koshien University in August 2019.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Nogizakatte Doko? episode 89, Himeka Nakamoto predicts that one of the members will become something like a doctor. Turned out it was she who became a mental health counselor in 2018, although, as described above, the circumstances were less than ideal.
• Les Yay: Anything Reika Sakurai does turns into this, especially towards Yumi Wakatsuki. Osamu Shitara tried to pinpoint why Reika gives off a lesbian vibe, before concluding that the way she speaks is sultry.
  • Any member interaction in general will tend to be like this. Particularly the interactions between close friends like Mai Shiraishi and Sayuri Matsumura.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Mai Shiraishi had a catchphrase that she'd rather forget. Unfortunately for her, it gets brought up repeatedly, especially if it involves catchphrases or her early years in the group.
  • Yumi Wakatsuki tried several things to establish a character, from beat-boxing to robot dancing. Neither of them worked, and the latter would become a running gag for a short time.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The 29th single was originally centered by fifth generation member Aruno Nakanishi, just a few weeks after the generation was announced. At first, a few fans were only wary that the song was a bit too similar to those of Keyakizaka46, with Aruno also having short hair and edgy look like Yurina Hirate. But then her old personal Twitter came to light, which had some less-than-wholesome content...
  • At worst, the tweets can be interpreted as ableist (she made jokes about whether "vegetable people" can photosynthesize; it's a derogatory term for comatose people in both English and Japanese, but she could also have been simply referring to any fictional Plant Person, and previous posts suggest that she'd recently watched The Freakmaker) and racist (she's afraid of being kidnapped by black people in Harajuku; it's a known issue that many shops in Harajuku particularly employ black people to aggressively "invite" customers, even physically pulling them in). There were also pictures of herself and of someone's underwear with captions looking for Compensated Dating, and she also posted that Nogizaka girls at the airport (most likely other candidates, but could also be her future seniors) looked ordinary.
  • She was also a freelance model, and her photographer clients jumped at the opportunity to sell photos from her past sessions. While some other Nogizaka members also had prior modeling work, some more risqué than others, this is made worse when combined with the previous allegations.
  • She eventually apologized on the group's official blog, stating that she was and still is struggling with various personal issues, and went into hiatus. Her center position was taken over by Asuka Saito and Mizuki Yamashita, who had previously stood on either side of her in the formation.
  • With the change in formation, the MV was also redone for general publication, but the original was still included with the physical release, and it's quite Harsher in Hindsight. It starts with a short film, in which Yama locked Aruno in a studio room for an entire day because she had a bad feeling that she would bring about unwanted changes to the group in some way. Asuka calls her out for this, but later admits that she feels the same after talking with Aruno herself, who believes that she's a loner who wouldn't fit in with the group. This MV was most likely produced before Aruno's past was exposed, but in either case, it depicted Yama as someone who would mistreat her junior, Asuka as a victim blamer (she tells Aruno that she might have deserved to be locked in), and the other members as indifferent to Aruno's absence.
    • The main song part takes place in a construction site, again drawing parallels to Keyakizaka46's debut single, "Silent Majority".
  • While the Aruno controversy was still going on, it came to light that another fifth generation member who had not been officially introduced, Hina Okamoto, had a publicly accessible Instagram account where she posted Stories with her boyfriend, leaked videos from the group's rehearsals and MV production, and made fun of another fifth generation member and group captain Manatsu Akimoto. She was then suspended and the management stated that they would "educate" her about proper member behavior.
  • Many wondered how two individuals selected from 87,000+ auditionees could ignite two scandals only weeks after they were announced. It's also pointed out that the auditionees did not appear on Showroom live broadcasts like in previous auditions, preventing the fans from getting to know them before they debuted.
  • Both Aruno and Hina issued a public apology and resumed their activities at the second 5th generation introduction event on April 27, which was not livestreamed like the first one.
  • Of course, fans have various opinions.
    • Detractors in general believed that their actions had tarnished the group's reputation and compared the scandal to that of NGT48 in 2019 which lead to that group's collapse, especially when rumors came out that somebody in management had said internally that the public would eventually forget about it. There was also the closer to home alleged bullying that brought down Keyakizaka46, and rumors that there were other candidates dismissed for less problematic social media footprints.
    • Supporters in general chose not to interpret Aruno's most problematic tweets without context, handwave the rest as youthful indiscretions, and point at her anti-bullying and other tweets and individual documentary to argue that she's thoughtful and well-read, and is likely a decent person overall. Even though Hina broke the group's rule after she became a member, many fans also believe she could still redeem herself.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Many BABYMETAL fans who came from the metal scene became interested in this group after they learned that Himeka Nakamoto, Su-metal's sister, was a member. It also became their Gateway Series to idol groups in general aside from Sakura Gakuin, which was a relatively small junior idol group.
  • Nogizaka Star Tanjou's focus on older songs is believed by many to be intended to appeal to the older (50 and above) demographics.
• Signature Song: "Nogizaka no Uta", "Seifuku no Mannequin", "Kimi no Na wa Kibo", and "Influencer".
• Second Verse Curse: Their songs can become this, due to the group singing short versions (which always skips the second verse) of their songs during concerts.
• Spoiled by the Format: In February 2022, the 5th generation members were revealed one person each day online to build hype. Some tech-savvy fans checked the source code of the group's web page and discovered that the file names of the new members' faceless thumbnails included the first three alphabet letters of various Japanese surnames, making it easier to speculate before the reveal, especially if the member has prior experience like Nao Tomisato, formerly known as Nana Aosaka of the group Ichikawa Otome.
• That One Rule: Nogizaka has one rule that some fans dislike. That rule being that members cannot have any social media accounts until after they graduate. Exceptions include the Showroom live streaming and 755 microblogging platforms (both are in Japanese but accessible to international fans).
  • This rule appears to have been relaxed somewhat, as many current members have Instagram accounts (though Twitter is still limited to photobook promotion use, of which it is most likely management using those accounts and not the members themselves).