2nd years || 1st years || 3rd years || Kitashirayama Academy

with proper edits comes a bit of a redesign for Mariko! I've introduced two of these girls before (so I'll keep their introductions a bit more brief), but Aya is new, so here they are again. SOUNDSCAPE's 1st years, in order: the bright-eyed otaku, Sakura Hikari (Smile); the perfectionist, Aikawa Mariko (Cool); the innocent one, Hibari Aya (Pure).

Hikari absolutely adores magical girls and all other forms of anime. when she entered high school, she decided she'd go and make it just as magical a time as she sees in her favourite shows, over-the-top quirks and all. she tends to end her sentences with "kira", much like Rin's "nya", but can drop it if needed. kind of an oddball, but secretly very mature, she just has a very positive outlook on life and could even convince Mariko to join the club. she sews her own clothes and has loads of cosplay experience, making her the outfit maker of the group! her hair is also dyed; her natural hair colour is a dirtier, darker blonde, much like her eyebrows. although she owns a bunch of coloured contact lenses, she only puts them in for cosplays and live shows.

Mariko approaches everything she does with the mindset of improving until she's doing it as well as she possibly can. others consider her arrogant, but in reality she's her own harshest critic - she simply holds others to the same standards, provided the thing they're doing is something they claim to be serious about. at first she declined joining the idol club, thinking they would just be playing around, but when Hikari, who came to check the club out together with her (they're classmates), had a heart-to-heart with her, she realised that her new friend and the other members really were putting their all into it. she's very open with her criticism and generally rather cold, so not a lot of people get along with her, but she's an invaluable part of SOUNDSCAPE and makes sure nobody rests for too long. as stated in Rondo's introduction, the two of them often clash - Mariko considered her to be lazy and actively slowing down their progress, and even now that Rondo has gotten off her butt, their personalities still kind of clash, as Rondo's sarcastic style of humour and Mariko's seriousness really don't mesh well and they kind of end of provoking each other more often than not. they do consider each other friends ... their friendship just gets tested a lot ... (seriously please help Kanae being in a subunit with these two is a struggle)

Aya used to be a weak-willed girl who got bullied by her classmates in her first year of junior high school simply because she made for an easy target - until Rondo, who went to the same school, found her crying at the schoolyard and, once she heard what had happened, decided to take Aya under her wing and keep the bullies away from her. together they joined the choir, and Aya has grown a lot more confident ever since. at high school they continued with choir - Aya got quite a lot of solos even, but when she heard about the vocal club and found out that they're actually idols, she started to really want to see another side of the stage that puts her in the spotlight even more, challenging herself to grow more assertive by the day. her personality is still rather subdued and quiet, but she's far from weak-willed anymore and very capable of telling others off if needed, although she's more of a pacifist and would rather everyone just get along. she considers Rondo somewhat of an older sister, but beyond her, she doesn't really know anyone at Kitashirayama all too well and struggled making real friends for a while.