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The story
On a 5ch chat thread about the Hello! Project group Juice=Juice, fans debated each member’s popularity at “genba” (live venues). The thread kicked off with a post claiming, “The era belongs to Ebamifu, but at the venues it’s already mostly the aces, Akagawashima” — sparking discussion over who’s really at the center right now, based on the breakdown of penlight colors and how fast individual cheki (photo cards) and EPs sell out. Others pushed back, arguing that “with even Kudo selling out both parts of the first run at Setagaya Egret Hall these days — this wildly inflated era of popularity — arguing over popularity gaps is pointless to begin with,” pointing out that penlight color counts alone don’t tell the whole story.
What people said
The era belongs to Ebamifu,
but at the venues it's already mostly the aces, Akagawashima.
at the actual shows it's more like
Orange > Blue > White > Pink > Red > Yellow
Danbara
Inoue, Matsunaga
Kudo, Kawashima
Ebata
Ishiyama, Arisawa, Endo
Irie, Hayashi
Kanazawa, Takagi, Miyamoto, Uemura, Inaba, Danbara, Inoue, Matsunaga, Kudo
that was the lineup people called the "Avengers" era.
From there,
Kanazawa, Takagi, Miyamoto, Uemura, and Inaba got replaced
by Arisawa, Irie, Ebata, Ishiyama, and Endo, and it fizzled out.
Then a hit song brought it back to life.
That's the official canon,
and yeah, it's playing out exactly like canon.
Pretty much everyone's insanely popular at this point.
At this point about the only things left to compare are Instagram follower counts and penlight colors.
Danbara's the ace (the so-called "Ace-der"),
and Kawashima's the center.
But yeah, there's definitely a lot of it.
Background and Key Points
Penlight color at “genba” (live venues) is the classic yardstick Hello! Project fans use to eyeball each member’s popularity, not just for Juice=Juice — each member is assigned her own cheering color. That said, similar shades like orange and red are hard to tell apart from a distance, and as posts #13 and #20 point out, mix-ups happen easily. There’s also the point raised in posts #12 and #14 that with EPs and individual cheki now selling out for nearly every member in recent years, judging who’s the “ace” from color distribution alone has gotten difficult — worth remembering this reflects changes in supply and venue size rather than a straightforward popularity vote. Unsubstantiated rumors about the circumstances of specific members joining the group have been excluded from this article.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “Experts say: “The era belongs to Ebamifu, but at venues it’s already mostly the aces, Akagawashima” — Is that really true?“
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