Arigatou ~Mugen no C-ute~: H!P Kids

H!P Kids

When Berryz Koubou went on Haitus, I did a big post about H!P Kids. 

I talked about their history and groups they were in.

Now that C-ute is disbanding, I could ofcourse make a post like that again, but wouldn't that be really boring and repetative? 

I have been breaking my head over what to put in this post, as Hello!Pro Kids is such in important part of C-ute's past. So let's just talk a bit of History anyway. 

As we all know on the 30th of June, 2002, 15 children entered Hello!Project. Umeda Erika, Shimizu Saki, Yajima Maimi, Tsugunaga Momoko, Tokunaga Chinami, Murakami Megumi, Sudo Maasa, Natsuyaki Miyabi, Ishimura Maiha, Kumai Yurina, Nakajima Saki, Sugaya Risako, Suzuki Airi, Okai Chisato and Hagiwara Mai became Hello!Pro Kids.

These kids would be supporting acts to the already existing acts of Hello!Project. 

The kids were put into different groups, but non of them had a long life: Aa!, ZYX and 4KIDS. Until in 2004 Berryz Koubou was formed. The group was originally going to rotate members, so all of H!P Kids would be part of the group, but this idea was later on dropped. The remaining 7 members were now still called H!P Kids, until Tsunku announced they would be called C-ute. 

It is a bit vage if they were actually announced as group/unit by that time. A lot of fans say they thought C-ute was just the new name of the remaining members of H!P kids and an indication for a new group. However on June 11, 2005 they were officially announced as a new group. 

After they formation the 7 girls preformed as a group, until Arihara Kanna was added at the beginning of 2006. Arihara was a first gen member of Hello!Pro Eggs and would join the group to make them a group of 8. She, however, would not join Hello!Pro kids. 

There were a lot of fans unhappy about the addition of Kanna. She wasn't an original H!P Kid and so she shouldn't be in C-ute, was their statement. 

Evenso, C-ute was still pretty inactive until their first indies single: Massara Blue Jeans. After which they became a permanent group, with lots of amazing songs!