AKB48 32nd Single Senbatsu General Election results, Mariko Shinoda graduates

The results of the AKB48 Senbatsu “general election” event are in — and the participants for the band’s 32nd single, as announced at an event on June 8th in Yokohama.

This year — the fifth “general election” — the AKB honchos changed the system slightly with “candidacies”. 246 idols stood, the most of any of the elections since 2009, including girls from all the major AKB groups and the various teams within each group: AKB48, SKE48, NMB48, HKT48, JKT48 and SNH48. Six graduated members also stood, though not Tomomi Kasai.

The big surprise was the victory of “disgraced” former AKB48 member Rino Sashihara, now officially relegated to Fukuoka’s spin-off but clearly still very popular with fans. Although only placing fourth in 2012’s election, very early on she was leading the contest and was never really challenged for the top spot.

Twenty-year-old Sashihara (“Sashiko”) got over 150,000 votes, followed by major AKB48 members Yuko Oshima (last year’s winner) (136,503), Mariko Shinoda (92,599), Mayu Watanabe (101,210) and Yuki Kashiwagi (96,905).

Of course, votes don’t mean “voters”, since many fans purchase CDs in bulk to vote multiple times.

Personal fave Haruna Kojima placed ninth, while former “top” stars like Tomomi Itano could only manage eleventh place.

The top sixteen-ranked girls will appear in the next single from AKB48, the band’s thirty-second. Sadly then this won’t include the lovely Rie Kitahara, or the “disgraced” Minami Minegishi, who ended up at eighteenth.

It is customarily on these occasions for major stars who are graduating to announce this at the election event.

Last year it was Atsuko Maeda. This year it’s Mariko Shinoda, who will leave next month.

Shinoda’s departure continues to fuel speculation on when other veterans like Minami Takahashi (eighth) and Itano. Yuko Oshima (second place) is likewise a veteran but her popularity (second place!) and relative youth (twenty-four) likely means she will stay around. Some original members like Shinoda are now getting very old by idol standards. Shinoda is a positive dinosaur at twenty-seven, so her graduation was an inevitability.