All Things Small Web

Ogoe Haruka debuted as part of NGT48 in 2018, which was something of a troubled year for the group to say the least. You know that story by now. She debuted on stage on 24th December with the kenkyuusei's production of PARTY ga Hajumaru yo, and then, in 2020, two years and a day later, as a Christmas present to us all, the group's second generation was announced and Harurun became one of its shining stars.



The writing was probably on the wall as NGT have always been a smaller group in relation to the other sister groups, but with Harurun and her peers all joining in for the release of Sherbert Pink and this single being the first new material in a year since everything that happened and the group were promptly dropped by Sony and picked up by Universal, it was clear that they were going to have to look to their second generation to drive them forward after the loss of several prominent members and Yukirin's time as a concurrent member now at an end if they were going to win hearts again. NGT48 needed the public to believe in the new members, and, in a way, they did, or at least some of them did, and that spending power was enough to get Sherbert Pink pretty high in the charts—to number two, in fact, only kept from the top spot by the massive popularity of boy band, SixTONES. For the whole year that followed, NGT continued to build on the attention of that moment, and when the next single was announced in 2021, it was revealed that Harurun would be the centre.

Awesome, if you will forgive me for saying so, is awesome. I really like this song a lot, I really like the narrative of the video. It feels not so much like a comeback story but a focusing anew on what is at the heart of Akimoto's storytelling, the drama of youth. With the added real life friction of Kato Minami's previous demotion following comments about graduating members and her final return to the regular members, Awesome is a celebration of the group and an attempt to use the good will towards their new members, particularly Harurun, to bolster faith in the group as a whole. Ponkotsu na Kimi ga Suki da followed in the same year with Harurun again serving as the group's centre, and whilst sales of the single continued to be strong, the top spot eluded them once more. More and more first generation members were also graduating during this moment, meaning that the focus on Harurun and her peers was all the more intense. It was around this time that I returned to NGT, that I began to take them seriously again, and I cannot complain that Harurun was not the centre again for the following year's single, Wataridoritachi ni Sora wa Mienai, because Homma Hinata deserves her time to shine. Seldom few have worked harder for this group than Homma Hinata. I digress.

As NGT settled into averaging a single a year, Harurun appeared in the senbatsu but again wasn't selected as the centre for Nakai Rika's farewell single, Ano sa, Iya Betsuni..., for obvious reasons. She still appeared as centre on a number of backing tracks though, and last year brought us Isshun no Hanabi, in which she shared the limelight alongside fellow Tochionger Seven cast member, Otsuka Nanami, and third draft member, Fujisaki Miyu.

At the end of last year though, on 31st December, Harurun finally said good-bye to NGT48, moving onto new things and new career choices. Whilst the history of NGT is mostly glossed over, I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to members of the second generation, members like Ogoe Haruka who really kept pushing ahead when a lot of popular opinion was against them. It's because of Harurun and her peers that we still have NGT, and I am tremendously grateful for that.