The Golden Auditions: Silence is Golden

Ah, the Golden Auditions. It has been more than 2 years since the Golden Auditions were announced and these auditions might have been the most fruitful auditions in Morning Musume History! Maybe even in Hello!Project History. 

If you are new to H!P or became a fan in the last 2 years, you might not have all your H!P history straight yet, but the Golden Auditions was the second time Morning Musume started searching for 12th gen members. 

In 2013 the Mirai Shoujou auditions were held. The auditions failed and no girls joined Morning Musume. It did, however, gave us Yamaki Risa and Funaki Musubu who both became members of Country Girls in the years after, Haga Akane who joined Morning Musume after the Golden Auditions amd Niinuma Kisora who is now a member of Tsubaki Factory. In the end this audition also was a great audition and we still have gems Danbara Ruru and Yokogawa Yumei in the Kenshuusei. 

But a year later we had the Golden Audtions. A lot of fans were still bitter from the Mirai Shoujou auditions and thought this was way to soon. Still in September we got four new members, of which two were discovered through the Golden Auditions!

Ogata Haruna and Nonaka Miki were both selected during the finals of the Golden Auditions and joined Morning Musume with Makino Maria (Suppin Utahime Auditions) and Haga Akane (Mirai Shoujou Auditions). But these were not the only girls that H!P picked up.

Just a few months later 3 other Golden Auditions girls showed up to join a revived Country Musume, Country Girls.

Morito Chisaki, Shimamura Uta and Ozeki Mai were selected to join this group alongside Kenshuusei Yamaki Risa (Mirai Shoujou auditions) and Inaba Manaka. 

Not long after the 22nd generation of H!P Kenshuusei was announced in which we were introduced to Asakura Kiki, Tanimoto Ami, Onoda Saori and Yanagawa Nanami, who had all participated in the Golden Audition. 

Asakura and Tanimoto joined Tsubaki Factory in 2015 with Kisora (Shoujou Mirai), Yamagishi Riko, Ogata Risa (Suppin Utahime) and Kishimoto Yumeno (Suppin Utahime). 

In November of 2015 Yanagawa Nanami was announced as the 2nd gen member of Country Girls alongside Funaki Musubu (Mirai Shoujou). 

And if this wasn't enough that same month a new member for ANGERME was announced!

Kamikokuryou Moe became the solo member of ANGERME's 4th generation. She was also a finalist during the Golden Auditions!

This means the Golden Auditions gave us not just the two member of Morning Musume, but also several other girls that joined other groups! So when I watched the audition footage of Ogata and Nonaka again I could now give the blurred out girls a name:

So, currently Morning Musume is holding their 13th generation auditions: Shinseki Auditions and I am expecting to not only get new faces in Morning Musume, but also in the kenshuusei and maybe even other groups!