S/mileage (スマイレージ, Sumairēji?) is a Japanese girl group consisting of four former Hello! Pro Egg members. They graduated from Egg status in 2010 and became full time members of Hello! Project. In 2010, they won the Japan Record Award for Best New Artist.
On April 4, 2009, Tsunku announced on his blog that a new girl group consisting of Hello! Pro Egg members would be formed. He later revealed that the members would be Ayaka Wada, Yuuka Maeda and Kanon Fukuda, all formerly of Shugo Chara Egg!, as well as fellow Egg Saki Ogawa, and announced that Ayaka would be the leader. A month later, on May 7, 2009, he revealed the group's name to be "S/mileage"; the name is a portmanteau of the English words "smile", "mileage", and "age", and together the name means "the age of smiles".
S/mileage's first indies single, "Ama no Jaku", was released at the Hello! Pro Egg: Nakano Step! concert on June 7, 2009.
After releasing 3 indies singles, Tsunku announced at the Hello! Pro Egg concert Shinjin Kōen Yokohama Fire that they would become a full time group in spring 2010. It was later announced that their debut had been set for May 2010— however, only on Tsunku's condition that the girls must "collect" smiles from 10,000 people in a drive called the "Smile Campaign" (笑顔キャンペーン?, "Egao Campaign"). Fans were asked to send in photographs of themselves smiling, and when all 10,000 required pictures had been received they would be compiled into a big mosaic. If the girls did not collect all of the photos they would not be allowed to make a major debut by Tsunku. They regularly posted videos to the official Up-Front Works YouTube channel, titled "The Road to S/mileage's Major Debut" (スマイレージ メジャーデビューへの道?). They made their official "mini-live" event debut in Nagoya on March 19, to encourage people to take part in the Smile Campaign, with their fourth indies single "Otona ni Narutte Muzukashii!!!", released March 14, their first release on the Up-Front Works label. This final indies release peaked at the #1 spot on the Oricon weekly indies chart. The group made appearances around the country to have their photos taken with fans, and taking part in handshake meetings, in order to meet the quota of photos. After the deadline on March 25, it was announced that the result of the campaign would be announced during the joint S/mileage and Erina Mano concert on April 3. It was then announced that the group would be graduating from Hello! Pro Eggs.
S/mileage appeared as the opening support act at fellow Hello! Project unit C-ute's concert C-ute Concert Tour 2010 Spring: Shocking Live on March 20. On April 3, they performed a joint concert with Erina Mano, at which Tsunku announced that the girls would indeed make their major debut, and revealed the completed mosaic. Their first major single, "Yume Miru Fifteen", was released on May 26 and debuted on Oricon at #5. Their first tour, titled "Devil Smile Angel Smile", begun on October 9th, 2010. In late August, a post on their official site revealed that their first album had been set for a winter release. The album's name was later revealed to be Warugaki 1 (Evil Brats 1) and was released on December 8th, 2010.
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