FEATURE · 아티스트 스토리
KANO MIYU’s Competition Record: Team Cream Soda, the Semifinal and Beyond
KANO MIYU’s path through TROT GIRLS JAPAN, the trot audition program connecting Japan and Korea, cannot be explained by rankings alone. She placed 12th on the judges’ scores. On the numbers, it was far from an advantageous starting point; within the program’s structure, elimination could have come at any time. Yet she reached the final Top 7 and the next stage, Hanil Gawangjeon, the Korea–Japan singing competition.
The journey is compelling because it was not a story of overwhelming ability sweeping everything aside. Miyu was always near the boundary: vulnerable to the slightest faltering, caught in situations where one decision could change everything. Even so, she remained onstage to the end. That fact itself makes the story distinctive.
A story that began with elimination
KANO MIYU entered TROT GIRLS JAPAN as contestant No. 15 in the Specialist Girls division. In the early first-round team death match, she performed with Team Passion, which lost by a decisive score of 1–8. Most participants in such a position effectively have to accept elimination. A heavy team defeat sharply reduces the chances of survival, regardless of individual ability.
The following second-round Savior Battle did not reverse the situation. KIM SOHEE placed second as the team’s representative, and the prospect of the entire team returning appeared to have disappeared. On the evidence up to that point, an early end to Miyu’s challenge would have seemed a natural outcome.
The program then changed direction. The judges selected Miyu and her teammates for an additional pass, giving them another chance to perform. That decision meant more than simple kindness or television staging. The structure could not rescue every eliminated contestant. Being called again suggested there was something the judges were reluctant to let go.
From that point, Miyu’s story began to change. It was no longer simply about a strong contestant, but about someone who keeps remaining to the end.
Team Cream Soda, with Miyu at its center
In the third round, Miyu formed Team Cream Soda with AIKO SUMIDA, MAKOTO., natsuco and Hina Shimokita. Even on paper, the lineup had sharply defined personalities. Different backgrounds and colors came together, leaving questions about how well the team would work. The outcome, however, defied those expectations.
In the first-round Dinner Show Mission, Team Cream Soda took a commanding first place among four teams, changing the situation at once. Onstage, its members did not overreach, and their roles were relatively clearly divided. Miyu occupied the center of that balance. Rather than leading from the front, she seemed to organize the flow and hold the performance together.
In the following solo mission, Miyu placed third individually. The result meant more than a ranking: it demonstrated that her steadiness within a team could carry over to a solo stage. Team Cream Soda consequently secured a semifinal place in second overall, while Miyu was named the third round’s MVP.
By then, she was no longer merely a contestant who had survived through luck. Team achievements and individual results were accumulating together, building trust in her onstage presence.
The semifinal, and another moment on the brink
The semifinal’s Shitennou Dai Keishousen—the succession battle built around four musical icons—presented another barrier. Competition intensified, and Miyu again finished 12th on the judges’ scores. Without an additional pass, that position meant elimination. Many viewers and contestants did indeed take it as the end of her journey.
What matters is that this elimination carried a different weight. She had already received one additional pass and achieved results both with the team and on her own. This could therefore feel like more than a failure: it was a moment in which everything accumulated so far might seem to have been denied.
The program then encountered another unexpected development. Just before the final, Team Cream Soda representative KIM SOHEE, who had placed sixth, lost eligibility to represent Japan because of her nationality, leaving a vacancy. That place went to KANO MIYU, previously eliminated in the semifinal.
This scene is often described as a miracle. Seen as a record of events, though, it is difficult to call it entirely accidental. Someone had to fill the place. Miyu’s selection demonstrated that the preceding process had not been meaningless.
Hanil Gawangjeon: a change becomes clear
After joining the final Top 7, KANO MIYU showed a clear change on Hanil Gawangjeon. If her earlier performances had been about enduring while balancing at the edge of elimination, she was now reaching a stage where she could organize and demonstrate what she could do. Her vocal production was more settled and her breathing onstage considerably more relaxed. Rather than forcing emotion, she had become noticeably more assured at regulating herself within a song’s flow and structure.
That change had already been signaled in the internal exploratory round before the main matches. Miyu chose “Over Drive.” It was more than a song intended to lift the mood. For her first official appearance on a Korean stage, it offered a relatively clear introduction to the kind of performer she was.
In “Over Drive,” she used the stage expansively. Her movement was broad without being excessive, and she did not remain fixed in one spot. Her gaze naturally swept across the audience, with no haste in individual gestures. Particularly striking was how little it felt like a debut appearance. Instead of nerves or stiffness, what appeared first was an attitude of enjoying the stage, as if she had occupied the space many times before. Given that it was her first official Korean stage, this was an unusual sight.
The ease seemed to come less from personality alone than from trust in her preparation. She used the space widely without becoming scattered, raised the energy without abruptly exhausting it. The internal exploratory performance functioned like a preview of how she would approach the main contests. It was warmly received by both judges and viewers, helping establish her as a team asset rather than simply another participant.
The change became clearer in her first main match against Korea’s Maria. Miyu chose “Bimilbeonho 486,” a performance symbolic in several ways. Presenting the song for the first time on a Korean stage as a Japanese contestant, she used Japanese as the base while naturally incorporating Korean lyrics. Rather than converting it entirely into the local language, she brought the coexistence of two languages onto the stage.
What stood out in this performance was the depth of her confidence. If the exploratory round’s “Over Drive” had opened the stage through ease and spatial awareness, “Bimilbeonho 486” showed her holding a firm center within that space. Her voice and breathing remained steady, and the pressure of delivering the lyrics did not dominate her expressions or gestures. Each crossing of Korean and Japanese made the emotional thread clearer, offering listeners a familiar song in an unfamiliar form.
Above all, the performance was remarkably assured for a singer making her Korean debut. Conviction replaced tension; the result of deliberate choices was more apparent than experimentation. Often summarized as a refreshing shock, it looked, when considered as part of the record, more like the opening scene of someone well prepared. Miyu ultimately earned her first win against Maria in this match.
The momentum continued in the second match. Facing Maria again, Miyu sang “Cutie Honey” as a duet with her, presenting a completely different texture. Where “Bimilbeonho 486” had relied on the interplay of language and emotional intensity, this stage turned toward rhythm, character and a sense of space. Even after winning once, she did not repeat the same approach. The result was another win for Miyu.
She did, of course, lose to Byulsarang at the final hurdle, finishing her Hanil Gawangjeon journey with two wins and one loss. Yet the defeat did not leave the impression of elimination. The two previous victories had already demonstrated how far she had come, and the last stage felt more like a point of closure that demanded no further result. She neither collapsed nor faltered. It was closer to stepping down after testing her limits from a position one level higher.
Miyu on Hanil Gawangjeon could no longer be explained solely through a story of additional passes. She was now a singer considering how to gather herself after surviving the competition and move to the next stage. The change appeared more clearly in her choices and attitude onstage than in the results.
The person who stayed to the end
If Miyu’s TROT GIRLS JAPAN challenge were reduced to a sentence, it would be a record of someone who remained to the end. She was not the contestant who dominated from the outset, nor did a single performance reverse everything. Rather than drawing attention through conspicuously high scores, she was called again and again at the edge of elimination, moving onward to another stage.
The process was always unstable: defeat in the team death match, uncertainty after the Savior Battle and an elimination verdict in the semifinal. Any performance could have been her last, and each time she had to prepare again. Elimination was no longer an abstract threat but a reality directly before her.
Even so, Miyu did not fall apart there. At moments that might understandably have shaken her emotionally, she was still imagining the next stage. That matters. Looking only at an additional pass, it may be easy to say that luck favored her. But the record makes clear why luck could make a difference: luck has meaning for someone who is prepared.
Whenever she was called back, Miyu did not perform merely as someone who had been given an opportunity. She sang in a more settled state than before, with calmer breathing. This was less instinctive optimism than a habit developed through repeated crises: preparing for the possibility of continuing, even while knowing it might end. That accumulation kept her there to the last.
Her story therefore cannot be neatly contained within an audition success narrative. More than a record of scores and rankings, it is a process showing how attitude can lead to results. Here was someone who, rather than stopping at the threshold of elimination, repeatedly gathered herself for the next performance. In that repetition, she gradually became less an unpredictable variable than a continuing presence.
The description of KANO MIYU as an icon of reversal ultimately came from more than a spectacular turnaround. It was the sum of time in which she never completely broke, choices repeated to avoid collapsing and growth naturally accumulated through that process.
The changes visible onstage were its result: steadier vocal production, regulation of emotion and a sense of distance from the audience. None appeared overnight. They were refined through the time she spent holding on so that the journey would not end.
The word that runs through KANO MIYU’s story is therefore not dazzling success. It is the persistence repeatedly chosen to avoid breaking, and the growth accumulated within it. She stands today where those two words meet. That is precisely why this story stays with us.
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