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The story
Hello! Project’s Juice=Juice has been racking up so much exposure — thanks to a surge in TV and festival appearances — that it’s being called “the most fun year of my Hello! Project fan life.” On 5ch’s Hello! Project board, comments celebrating the excitement sit alongside a flood of complaints from fans who can’t get into shows because ticket odds have gotten brutal. In the thread, opinions welcoming the rising exposure as a sign of the group’s growth clash with critics who say the buzz has outpaced their actual skill, and commenters are divided over whether their singing ability truly matches their level of exposure.
What people said
I'm so frustrated I could scream.
See you again in three years.
Guess getting sick really does age you all at once.
https://kizuna.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/morningcoffee/1788521715/
Meanwhile us fans who actually show up are totally deflated from the ticket-rejection festival lol
Seriously, this.
Only the NEETs are happy about it.
On that front I'm mad at the agency for booking such tiny venues.
Which means next year is…
Wanfor had maybe half the exposure Juice has now.
Enough with the rose-tinted nostalgia already.
Man, a lot of people really want to compare this to Wanfor.
That was just the agency force-feeding them — they didn't even have a signature song.
Juice=Juice actually gets invited to music shows more.
What a hollow way to live lol
I've wondered the same thing — is TV really that great?
For a 1-2 hour show, their screen time is pretty short.
And waiting around the whole time just for that segment is a bad use of time.
If that's the case, I'd rather just watch YouTube, where they're on screen the whole time.
Though I guess that's part of why young people are drifting away from TV these days.
Wow, Gavan, that takes me back.
I still remember the lyrics lol
I had high hopes for the autumn tour too.
Opened it up and was shocked at how lame the tour was — pretty disappointing.
Mine's only Kyoto too.
Wouldn't YouTube be better in that case?
Even on New Year's Eve, wouldn't it be better to do a countdown concert instead of Kohaku and watch them live, so you could have a year-end party with fellow fans too?
These days, just getting on TV for anything isn't automatically a good thing.
Exactly that.
Morning Musume and Angerme deliberately skip TV appearances and focus instead on tours, festival appearances, and TikTok.
Normally you'd just be happy seeing the members looking happy with tears in their eyes, right?
Shut up, armchair fan.
Even at a shop, you wouldn't say it's best when the staff is happier than the customers, right?
You're off base.
Comparing this to some random shop clerk you don't even know doesn't make sense.
They barely have any outside work, yet it's still hell trying to get tickets.
And the music shows have lost their freshness and gone stale.
There's more coming, so just wait.
No need to rush, no need to rush.
That's exactly it.
Music shows are just stale at this point, so it's almost better not to appear on them.
The agency probably knows this, which is why it seems to be dumping all its TV slots onto Juice=Juice on purpose.
I think the members will end up feeling sad when that happens.
There's already a real 'forced push' vibe to it.
There's basically no substance to their popularity besides YouTube view counts.
Better than not making it at all, right?
Think of how many groups never break through.
That's exactly it.
As a BEYOOOOONDS fan myself I'm not quite there yet, but I bet Morning Musume and Angerme fans are pretty furious.
Ignoring the group hierarchy in the first place is just not okay.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Hello! Project has long carried an unspoken culture of “a hierarchy topped by Morning Musume,” which creates fertile ground for pushback whenever a group like Juice=Juice suddenly grabs a concentrated share of TV slots and attention — even as fans celebrate the group’s rising exposure. “CANDY TUNE,” mentioned in the thread, is another Hello! Project unit that has likewise seen its exposure rapidly increase, and the “forced-push” criticism — over whether skill is keeping pace with growing exposure — is a debate that recurs across all of Hello! Project. The back-and-forth over comparative singing ability is part of that same context, closer to an annual in-house squabble than a one-off attack. What readers may easily misread is that the frustration over not getting tickets isn’t about “unpopularity” — quite the opposite: it stems from attendance surging faster than the agency’s venue-size planning could keep up, a point some commenters in the thread make themselves.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “[URGENT] Juice=Juice’s “Unbelievable Year” Is Just Too Much Fun wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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