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The story
Juice=Juice’s ‘Ebamifu’ duo appearing on NHK’s music program “Utacon” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Hello! Project board. The dominant view in the thread was that, unlike the individual-based popularity seen with Sakamichi groups (Nogizaka46 and similar), this appearance was only possible because the group itself has become widely known. At the same time, posters also brought up the age skew of the fanbase and differences in audience demographics compared to other groups.
What people said
Kamiko, Wanfour, and late-period ℃-ute (other Hello! Project acts/units) all lacked that too.
That's why nobody remembers them.
For the grandpa-grandma crowd it'd be The Peanuts
Next week's the '80s special
Showa era doesn't just mean the '80s, you know
It's a Wink cover
Except Sakamichi members lip-sync, so they can't appear solo on music shows
Depending on the song I feel like it'd suit her perfectly
Exactly
Morning Musume and ANGERME's venues are packed with young women only
The contrast with Juice, which is full of old guys, is obvious
More bandwagon fans showing up
The worst part is not being able to get birthday-event tickets anymore
Background and Key Points
Juice=Juice (“Ebamifu” pairs Kanon Fukuda and Miyu Takeuchi, whose duo name blends their surnames) is one of several idol groups under Hello! Project, the management umbrella behind Morning Musume and dozens of sister units going back to the late 1990s. Sakamichi groups like Nogizaka46 operate on an “individual popularity” model — members regularly land solo TV or drama work, and because their live performances are lip-synced, a member can appear on a music show alone without the rest of the group. Hello! Project acts, by contrast, sing live, so members generally can’t be booked separately from their group or sub-unit; a duo like Ebamifu getting NHK’s “Utacon” (a mainstream, general-audience music program, not a niche idol showcase) signals that Juice=Juice as a whole has broken into wider public awareness, not that the two members became individually famous. Posters also treated this as a possible lead-in to a Kohaku Uta Gassen appearance — NHK’s prestigious New Year’s Eve broadcast that is treated as a marker of having “made it” in Japanese entertainment.
The thread’s real disagreement wasn’t about the TV slot itself but about what it means: some read it as proof the group has genuinely broken out, while others (citing burnout of past H!P units like Kamiko, Wanfour, and ℃-ute, none of whom had a defining hit) argued Juice=Juice is coasting on old industry goodwill rather than current momentum, with the “haven’t really made it” camp pointing to a supposed cooling of buzz.
What outside readers likely miss is the fanbase-composition angle raised mid-thread: posters noted Juice=Juice’s audience skews older and male compared to Morning Musume or ANGERME, whose venues reportedly draw mostly young women — a demographic split that shapes how “success” gets judged inside H!P fandom but goes unexplained for anyone unfamiliar with the group’s reputation.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Ebamifu appearing on NHK’s Utacon isn’t like Kamiko being individually popular — it’s only possible because the group itself made it.”
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