Ginko Momose

Ginko Momose attends Hasu no Sora Girls' Academy and joined the School Idol Club in mid-April of the 104th class year as a new member of Cerise Bouquet.

She is a junior to Kaho Hinoshita and Kozue Otomune, and later becomes a third-year student and club president in the 106th class year.

She was born into a family that runs a Kaga embroidery workshop and deeply loves traditional crafts.

Because her grandmother was an alumna of the academy's former Performing Arts Club, Ginko entered the school hoping to join its modern successor, the School Idol Club.

At first, she dreamed of singing a song her grandmother had taught her, which she knew as the "Reverse Song."

She trained with Cerise Bouquet while leaving her unit undecided, but withdrew after learning that the song did not exist in the current club repertoire.

She later discovered that the song's spirit had survived in a new form as Reflection in the mirror.

That realization brought her back, and she formally joined Cerise Bouquet.

Name: Ginko Momose

Reading: Momose Ginko

English name: GINKO MOMOSE

School: Hasu no Sora Girls' Academy

Class generation: 104th class

School years: First year in the 104th class year, second year in the 105th class year, third year in the 106th class year

Birthday: October 20

Height: 162 cm

Gender: Female

First-person pronoun: "I"

Hobbies: Wearing traditional Japanese clothing, visiting shrines and temples, and exploring coffee shops

Special skills: Kaga embroidery and Japanese classical dance

Favorite foods: Coffee, traditional sweets, and inari sushi

Favorite words: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" and "the beauty of nature"

Favorite subjects: Classical literature, Japanese history, and home economics

Favorite animals: Foxes, raccoon dogs, cranes, and turtles

Member color: the color of the heavens

Voice actor: Hina Sakurai

Ginko has black hair with a greenish tint cut into a bob.

She wears a decorative fabric flower ornament on the left side of her hair, which she made herself after learning the craft from her grandmother.

Her eyes are yellow-green, and she has slightly thick eyebrows.

When confused, her brows visibly droop into a worried expression.

She has a notably well-developed figure.

At 162 cm, she was the third tallest member in the 104th-year lineup and the second tallest in the 105th-year lineup.

She is also portrayed as glamorous after the release of her swimsuit design.

Her exact measurements have not been published.

Ginko is serious, diligent, and the kind of person who prepares carefully before taking on anything.

She is dependable, competitive, and usually reserved, but she speaks up clearly when something bothers her.

She is not used to interacting with people her own age.

Because she grew up with few peers around her, she was much more comfortable talking with older people than with classmates.

She tends to mutter dry little comments during conversations with the other Hasu no Sora members.

Around Hime Anyoji, she is often seen as a classic tsundere type.

She struggles with cute poses and gets embarrassed easily, much like Kozue.

The one exception is the muscle pose from Mix shake!!, where Kozue stays calm and Ginko is left blushing alone.

She speaks casually to classmates while still using respectful forms of address, and she uses full honorific politeness with seniors.

When her emotions run high, her Kanazawa dialect slips out, and at home she speaks in that dialect all the time.

Her trademark exclamation is essentially, "What is that supposed to mean?"

She also has a habit of putting herself down, often thinking, "Someone like me...," which makes it hard for her to take the first step into something new.

At the same time, she sometimes tries to act more mature than she feels.

For example, she bragged that she could go through a haunted house alone, only to cling to Kozue's sleeve in fear moments later.

She used to hide parts of her private life because she wanted to look good in front of friends.

After an incident in October of her first year, she gradually became more open.

Ginko loves traditional clothing, sewing, and all things rooted in Japanese culture.

Her usual casual wear is a kimono, especially a plain-woven style, and she knows how to dress herself properly and store garments correctly.

Her hobbies include embroidery, reading, and visiting traditional craft exhibitions.

She knows her interests are a little niche, so she becomes genuinely happy when others show curiosity about them.

She also loves coffee because her grandmother is a devoted coffee drinker.

Ginko is knowledgeable about beans and brewing methods.

Her favorite color is sky blue.

Her symbolic animal is the fox, and she once played the fox role at an animal-themed cafe event.

She serves as the club's costume maker.

She can sew all nine costumes for a group lineup by herself and is even capable of making full cosplay outfits for game characters from scratch.

She had already been doing strength training before joining the club, so she is physically confident.

Soon after entering the club, she even surpassed Kaho in stamina.

She carefully writes down her seniors' advice in a notebook and reviews it later.

That habit reflects her disciplined way of learning.

She enjoys mystery novels in particular.

She picked up that taste from an elderly man in her neighborhood, and she and Kaho now recommend different kinds of books to each other.

She is not very good at games, so when she plays with Hime and the others, she sticks to simpler titles.

At karaoke, she mainly sings songs from the Showa era.

Because she loves tradition so much, she is especially vulnerable when someone tells her, "This is tradition too."

The others often use that line during With×MEETS to lure her into things, and it works embarrassingly well.

Ginko's family runs a Kaga embroidery workshop in Kanazawa.

Her home is an old-style traditional house, and it is spacious enough that all eight other club members can stay over if they use her room.

Her room reflects her personality completely.

After the events of the 104th class year's fourth activity record, Hime Anyoji and Kosuzu Kachimachi stayed over there several times.

Next to the house is a shop that sells souvenirs made with Kaga embroidery.

Her family also has ties to a long-established dyeing workshop from which Ginko buys fabric and sewing tools.

That workshop is based in Kanazawa and later even sold a collaboration item called the "Ginko hand towel."

It was a notable first for the franchise, as a real local shop released a character-specific collaboration product using her.

Near her home is the Kanazawa Folklife Museum.

When she was around five years old, her grandmother took her there, and Ginko became especially fond of its exhibition on the academy's old Performing Arts Club.

Based on the available details, her home is generally thought to be in the broader Kanazawa Castle and Kenrokuen area.

Possible neighborhoods include historic central districts around those landmarks.

Grandmother

Ginko's grandmother, voiced by Mamiko Noto, is one of the most important people in her life.

She attended Hasu no Sora Girls' Academy roughly fifty years before the 104th class year and belonged to the Performing Arts Club.

Ginko adores her and always calls her "Grandmother."

Fans sometimes mistake that for the more casual "Grandma" nickname used for local elderly neighbors, but Ginko herself is very specific.

Her grandmother still works busily at the family's workshop events.

Because she has watched Ginko grow up from infancy, she can recount around fifteen years' worth of memories about her.

She speaks an even stronger Kanazawa dialect than Ginko does.

Through Ginko's activities, she comes to learn what modern school idols are like.

Dorm room

Ginko brought tatami mats from home and laid them on the floor of her dorm room.

She decorates the space with many handmade craft pieces, temari balls, hanging scrolls, moss bonsai, and other traditional objects.

She also keeps a coffee pot stored in a cabinet.

One especially treasured possession is a large, round crane plush named Otsuru-san.

At first, Ginko insisted that she was already too old to name a stuffed toy, talk to it, or sleep while hugging it.

Whenever it appeared on camera or where other members might see it, she would panic and hide it.

Later, during her solo With×MEETS stream on October 24, 2024, she openly introduced it as "the first friend my grandmother gave me."

That moment became a small but touching sign of her emotional growth.

In her first year, Ginko was the only one among her three same-year clubmates not placed in the same class as the others.

In her second year, she ended up in the same class as all of her peers, including transfer student Izumi Katsuragi.

Before entering the academy, she had already designed costume ideas and kept them tucked into her notebook.

She understood modern school idol culture even while feeling more attached to the old Performing Arts Club tradition.

She dreams of winning Love Live.

For her, victory is not just personal ambition but a way to show the beauty of Kanazawa's traditional culture to a wider world.

Ginko first appears in the 104th class year's first activity record.

On the very first day of the opening ceremony, she entered the School Idol Club room without permission and was discovered by Kaho.

After hearing that Ginko wanted to win Love Live at this school, Kaho was deeply moved and tried to recruit her into Cerise Bouquet.

Ginko decided to keep her unit choice on hold for the moment and trained with Cerise Bouquet in preparation for the first live performance.

During that period, she finally saw the full list of the club's current songs and realized that the song she had treasured from her grandmother was absent.

The shock left her unable to put her heart into practice, and she told Kaho that staying in that state would be disrespectful to the club, so she withdrew.

Kaho refused to give up on her.

She thoroughly researched the history of both the old Performing Arts Club and the present School Idol Club and tried to reach Ginko with that passion.

That effort moved Ginko deeply.

She found a new goal as a school idol and finally accepted the invitation to join Cerise Bouquet properly.

After formally entering the club, she began incorporating Kaga embroidery motifs into the unit's costumes.

Her dream evolved from simply reenacting the past to protecting and carrying forward the feelings of people she cherishes.

The nine restored costumes

The fourth activity record of the 104th class year is Ginko's central spotlight story.

The club discovered nine old costumes in a large school storage room, one set each for the original Cerise Bouquet, DOLLCHESTRA, and Mira-Cra Park!.

When the box was opened, the costumes were in terrible condition.

Because the club hoped to use them for Love Live, Ginko invited the other eight members to her family home so her grandmother could examine and possibly repair them.

As part of the visit, Ginko guided the group on a traditional craft tour around Kanazawa.

She wanted Kaho and Kosuzu, both from outside the prefecture, to understand the traditions of the city they now represented.

The group also visited the Kanazawa Folklife Museum and looked at exhibits related to the old Performing Arts Club.

But in the end, even Ginko's grandmother could not restore the costumes fully.

The club faced a painful choice: preserve them as museum pieces or dismantle and remake them.

Ginko panicked, feeling that the town's memories, her friends' feelings, and the tradition that meant everything to her would all be betrayed if she made the wrong decision.

Her grandmother then shared a forgotten story.

More than ten years earlier, students from Hasu no Sora had visited the family home to ask whether starting the School Idol Club would be acceptable, and baby Ginko had actually been present then.

Her grandmother had taught those students how to make costumes.

The very costumes now lying in ruins had originally been born from that guidance.

That revelation changed everything for Ginko.

She realized that tradition survives by changing to fit the present.

With a deep breath, she chose to cut apart the old costumes.

Those fragments were reborn as parts of nine new unit costumes, which were unveiled at the July Fes×LIVE.

After Love Live victory finally became reality, Ginko did not relax.

Instead, she tightened her resolve, believing that winning was only the beginning of what she had to do for Kanazawa and for tradition.

Kaho Hinoshita

Ginko respects Kaho Hinoshita as a capable senior school idol who is always moving forward.

At the same time, she is often exasperated by Kaho's intensity, weird logic, and endless attempts to pull her into Cerise Bouquet.

From her very first day, Kaho stayed by her side, kept talking to her, tried every possible angle to recruit her, and even declared that she wanted to become Ginko's first real friend.

Ginko found all of that absurdly overwhelming and thought of Kaho as a very strange person.

Even so, Kaho became genuinely special to her.

As proof of friendship, Ginko talks to Kaho in a more relaxed style than she uses with any other senior, mixing casual speech with traces of politeness.

Kaho also once claimed ownership over Kozue simply because Kozue was "her senior."

That led to an ongoing, funny tug-of-war between Kaho and Ginko over Kozue.

Kozue Otomune

Ginko treats Kozue Otomune with sincere reverence.

Unlike her bantering connection with Kaho, her attitude toward Kozue is refined, polite, and openly admiring.

She once described Kozue's behavior as "elegant and graceful," and that phrase spread throughout the club.

Even when others tease Kozue for being bad with machines, Ginko tends to respond with quiet concern, noticing when Kozue has been fooled again.

Because she respected Kozue so much, becoming friends on a more equal footing took time.

Their relationship is built on admiration first and familiarity second.

The 104th trio

Ginko's closest same-year companions are Kosuzu Kachimachi and Hime Anyoji.

Although they joined at slightly different times, both helped Kaho and the older members support Ginko's recruitment because they already saw her as a future companion.

As the three spent more time together in club activities and first-year streams, they gradually grew close enough that Ginko shifted from formal surname-based address to calling them by their given names.

During a stay at Ginko's home, she thanked them sincerely, and Hime encouraged her to try using simpler, more intimate forms of address.

At first, Ginko was worried that dropping the formal style might seem rude.

She eventually called them simply Kosuzu and Hime, admitting that using cute suffixes would have been even more embarrassing.

In the seventh activity record of the 104th class year, the district qualifying entry live in October was set as a full-group song involving unit switches.

Ginko, Kosuzu, and Hime repeatedly made mistakes in the formations.

The trio trained hard and even challenged the 102nd-year trio and 103rd-year trio in order to improve their teamwork.

During that process, Izumi Katsuragi, then a student from another school, gave them advice: they needed to understand one another's strengths and weaknesses.

That helped them identify Ginko's strength as thorough preparation.

But their problems were not over.

At the cultural festival, they helped run a sweet shop serving bean paste desserts.

Their work failed because they kept making errors, including over-focusing on presentation even when the shop became busy.

That same lack of coordination carried into the live performance, where the three alone failed to sync properly.

Ginko was devastated and blamed herself, while Kosuzu also reflected painfully and Hime behaved strangely, saying little except apologies.

When Izumi said that only Kosuzu and Hime were to blame, Ginko became furious.

But Izumi then pointed out the deeper truth: Ginko herself had not fully trusted the other two and had been hiding her own weaknesses from them.

Those weaknesses were crucial.

Ginko had been disguising footwork she was bad at, checking others too much during formations instead of focusing on herself, and obsessing over appearances.

More than anything, she was haunted by fear of failure.

Her careful preparation, admirable as it was, also came from anxiety that things would go badly.

She had hidden that because she was afraid the others would dislike her.

Hime, meanwhile, had trauma around speaking opinions that might hurt someone, and Kosuzu had silently worked alone because she believed the others would never hate her for trying.

Together they finally confronted both strengths and flaws honestly.

Ginko said she wanted their relationship to resemble the way the 102nd-year trio covered for one another's weaknesses.

The result was a dramatic improvement in practice.

They decided they wanted to become a small triangle like the school's famous "great triangle," and the three began calling themselves the Little Triangle of Hasu no Sora, bound by trust as true best friends.

Juniors and other members

The two members of Edel Note become Ginko's juniors in the club.

Because she is so highly respected for costume making, they look up to her as a master, and she happily helped with the costumes for Dawn of Heaven and Earth.

Ceras Yanagida Lilienfeld, Kaho's childhood friend, initially called her simply "Ginko" even though Ceras was a year younger.

Her logic was that Ginko was Kaho's junior, so formality was unnecessary.

That stood in funny contrast to the more respectful way she addressed Kosuzu as "senior."

After Ceras entered Hasu no Sora, she also started using the formal "Ginko-senior" from time to time, but because she enjoys Ginko's reactions, the casual version never fully disappeared.

After Ginko kindly supported Ceras through a problem in the fifth activity record of the 105th class year, Ceras even started half-revering her now and then.

The relationship remains affectionate, teasing, and a little unbalanced in a charming way.

Izumi Katsuragi

Ginko first met Izumi Katsuragi during the story that led to the formation of the Little Triangle.

Because of their confrontation there, Ginko held a grudge for a while even after Izumi transferred into Hasu no Sora.

In the second activity record of the 105th class year, Izumi gave her lessons in seductive posing for a cosplay performance.

So during the summer training camp in the fifth activity record of the 105th class year, Ginko was a little too pleased when Ceras's request gave her a chance to get playful revenge.

Still, Ginko gradually reevaluated Izumi.

Their conversation during the school live in the tenth activity record of the 104th class year and Izumi's serious attitude while making cosplay outfits in the second activity record of the 105th class year helped repair her impression.

At the beginning of the 104th class year's story, Ginko could not play any instruments.

Supplementary material later depicts her learning music and eventually becoming able to play the piano.

Her lyric writing developed over time.

For one song, she contributed by answering questions from her seniors, and those responses were incorporated into the final words.

Later, she was entrusted to write lyrics on her own for another song.

With support from Kosuzu and Hime, plus advice from Kozue and Kaho, she revised the wording little by little until it was complete.

When Kozue expressed the wish that Watercolor World would continue to be sung as a traditional song, Ginko replied that she would be happy if the song she had written could be passed down the same way.

She also later volunteered to take charge of lyrics for Fleeting Night Fireworks, feeling that she had left too much of that work to Kaho during the spring of the 105th class year.

As for composition, Ginko became one of the central creators among the Little Triangle trio.

They worked together on songs including Now or Never.

Ginko's local neighborhood in Kanazawa is full of elderly artisans and longtime residents whom she affectionately thinks of as grandpas and grandmas.

Because she grew up surrounded by them, she became very comfortable speaking with older people and much less comfortable with people her own age.

It is implied that, before entering high school, she had trouble making friends her age at all.

A story about her first outing after enrolling also suggests that her kimono clothing may have been mocked by others.

Her neighborhood grandpas and grandmas even hold group viewing sessions for With×MEETS.

That tiny detail says a lot about both her community and her charm.

One of her Christmas memories is receiving a plum-shaped obi ornament as a present.

Another is being given a huge amount of fried chicken by the adults around her.

She likes to act composed, but her reactions often give her away.

That gap between her dignified image and her flustered honesty is one of her most lovable traits.

Before Ginko fully debuted, a girl with her same hairstyle and hair ornament appeared in the pre-training illustration for Kozue Otomune's card Wings of Liberty.

That scene showed students attending an open campus event, and it later became clear that the girl was almost certainly Ginko.

In the opening of the fourth activity record of the 104th class year, Ginko mentions having attended that same event and watching Umbrella Sky there.

That means the groundwork for her joining the club had already been laid as early as November of the 103rd class year.

She also already knew the face of former student council president Misachi Ogami from that occasion.

Her entrance into the story was planned well in advance.

Because the project follows real time closely, the 103rd and 104th class years can be read as corresponding roughly to the 2023 and 2024 school years.

Following that logic, Ginko's birth date would be October 20, 2008.

That timeline also helps fans estimate the era in which the School Idol Club was originally founded.

Her story is deeply tied to the passage of time and to the idea of inherited culture.

Her member icon is an origami crane.

Since there is no perfect matching emoji, both fans and cast members often use the kimono emoji to represent her instead.

Her surname is a rare but real Japanese family name.

It exists in small numbers, with especially notable concentrations in areas neighboring Kanazawa, which adds a fun layer of regional authenticity to her character.

There is also a district name in Hakusan that contains the same family name.

Some fans have speculated that this may have influenced the naming of the character.

Ginko is voiced by Hina Sakurai, who is actually from Kanazawa, Ishikawa, the very city that serves as the setting for Hasu no Sora.

That makes Ginko's Kanazawa dialect authentically local.

Because Ginko's grandmother is voiced by Mamiko Noto, who is also from the same region, their home scenes in dialect sound especially natural.

The family atmosphere benefits enormously from that shared local background.

Sakurai is notable within the wider franchise for being one of the relatively rare cast members born in 2000.

At one point in the 105th-era lineup, she was effectively the oldest among the active cast members.

She was also the first performer in the long history of the series to come from the exact local municipality used as the setting of a Love Live work.

That gave her casting special significance.

Sakurai and Ginko share many traits.

Both strongly love Kanazawa, speak Kanazawa dialect at home, prefer bitter flavors and black coffee, enjoy singing, cafe visits, and reading fiction, and are not very good at video games.

Even their troubled facial expressions are said to look remarkably similar.

Like Ginko, Sakurai also has a background in sewing through school club activities, though cooking appears to be less of a strength for her.