Mariko Shinoda

Being asked about Shinoda Mariko who graduated from the same group with her on July 22, Watanabe commented sadly “She’s a senpai who has been taken care of me for a long time. She was a very kind senpai who always think about every single member.  Then, being asked about her feelings after hearing about the graduation, “I was sad. But it is a positive graduation in which Mariko-sama is heading towards her dream, so I’ll support her, said Watanabe honestly. Watanabe revealed, after Shinoda’s graduation performance had ended, Shinoda called upon the kouhai “Everyone in team A! I’ll leave AKB48 to you , and after hearing that, the Team A members said “Let’s do our best together . She said strongly “We’ve united. Besides, about Yokoyama Yui who was selected to be the new captain, “I always thought that Yui-chan would be the captain, said Watanabe, then she highly praised “Yui-chan has a strong character and thinks about other members. She’s also loved by the kouhai . After that, she determined “I’ll will make this team become a new team A while supporting and assisting Yui-chan . The press conference is held in order to hold the time-limited event from July 27 to September 23 at Tokyo Dome City Attractions. The setting for the event at this attraction is to solve the mysteries to save the legendary magical girl “Mayuyu  from the prison amusement park. On February 19th, Fukuoka city announced the city retired Shinoda Mariko from the ward mayor role for the city’s virtual administrative district “Kawaii-ku” (Kawaii-ward). The city has received 4 complaints from it’s citizens over the last 2 months of 2012. The complaints claim: “Encouraging Kawaii women hinders women’s social independence and empowerment.” “This enhances gender discrimination.” Earlier this year Mayor Takashima ordered city’s Council for Gender Equality to discuss the measures for the issue. The city’s public relation office, on 15th, said that they asked Shinoda’s side to step aside from the ward mayor’s job explaining they figured that they shouldn’t let Shinoda get involved in trouble stemmed from the discussion (on gender equality) that has nothing to do with her. Currently 40,000 people registered as residents of Kawaii-ward, and the city has planned to preserve the ward. Shinoda, who was born in Fukuoka, was named the ward mayor in August last year, and had served the office without any compensation.

In October 2005, she auditioned for AKB48 but did not make the first generation. She started working at a café in AKB48's theater, then known as Akihabara 48, as a staff member. Yasushi Akimoto, general producer of AKB48, gave her a chance to join AKB48 on the condition that she learn the group's 12 songs and dances in four days. She became AKB48's first non-generation, or "1.5 generation", member with her debut on Team A on January 22, 2006. Her first single as part of the main group was on "Aitakatta". It was not long after joining that Shinoda began to exhibit her potential and improved rapidly while it had seemed that Akimoto had chosen his consistent leads in "Skirt, Hirari" as Sukahira Seven and intended to stick with them, over time he appears to have changed his mind and pushed Shinoda to the group's forefront in place of Narita Risa. Shinoda is perhaps most widely known for her love of Hamtaro, and the song "Koike" from Team A's third stage, in which she took all of the speaking parts along with a lead singing role. On July 21, 2013, she graduated from AKB48, with her graduation ceremony taking place in her hometown of Fukuoka. Yokoyama Yui who Shinoda appointed as the next team A captain, made a comment while looking back the memories with Shinoda, "I would like to make a team that Shinoda-san would think it was a right decision to appoint me. I will make the new Yokoyama team A while succeeding Shinoda team A, but please allow me to depend on you just today." Along with the team A members including Takahashi Minami, other 1st generation members like Kojima Haruna, Itano Tomomi, and Minegishi Minami, as well as team K's Oshima Yuko showed up on the stage for the encore. When they were about to perform Shinoda's graduation song "Namida no Seijanai", Takahashi could not sing the beginning part since she started shedding tears, and it also made Shinoda weep in sympathy. After the performance, Takahashi apologized to the audience, saying, "Sorry, it was all because I started crying.", and Kojima told Takahashi, "Yeah, it was kind of too early." Though the audience were sobbing at the time, the atmosphere changed because of those two, and it burst into laughter.

In 2013, Shinoda launched her clothing brand "ricori" which featured clothing that she had designed and produced. She stated that starting her own line of clothing had been a dream of hers before joining AKB48. Shinoda placed fifth overall in the 2013 AKB48 General Election. On June 8, during the broadcast of the election results, Shinoda announced that she would graduate from the group. She later announced that she planned to continue fashion design and modeling. Her graduation ceremony was held on July 21 at the Fukuoka Yahoo Dome, and her final performance at the AKB48 theater was on July 22. Shinoda Mariko is the captain of AKB48's Team A. She announced her graduation from the group on July 8, at the 5th Senbatsu Sousenkyo. She will graduate on July 21, 2013 at AKB48's Fukuoka Dome Concert. After finishing high school Shinoda Mariko auditioned for the first generation of AKB48 and failed. Not wanting to give up her dreams she started working part time in the cafe on the same floor as the AKB48 theater. At the time of AKB48's humble beginnings, a vote box for fans was placed in the lobby to write the name of the member they liked. They encountered a number of votes of an unknown girl whom they found out was Shinoda Mariko who worked part time at the cafe. Intrigued by this, Akimoto Yasushi challenged her to remember 12 songs in four days in turn she'll be able to perform on stage. Two months after the group debuted, through customer's feedback she was able to join the group before the second generation and is the only member referred to as generation 1.5. It is for this reason that she is not present in the dvd of Team A's first stage but can be seen in the PV to the single "Skirt, Hirari"; the first she participated in, unlike the rest of Team A who had all previously participated in the single "Sakura no Hanabiratachi."