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The story
A discussion broke out on 5ch about what happens to members after they graduate from Hello! Project. It started with a post saying, “I wish we could do something about this hopeless trend where graduating feels like the end of the road,” which sparked a wave of replies pointing out that only a handful of members from certain generations — like Tsuji Nozomi, Fujimoto Miki, and Suzuki Airi — have managed to keep working in entertainment. The thread split between a structural view that “if you weren’t popular as an idol, switching careers won’t make you popular either,” and the opinion that “it’s fine to just live a normal life after graduating.”
What people said
There's no way changing your environment suddenly makes you popular when you weren't even popular the first time around.
Hashimoto Kanna… and, uh, Ouri.
Wife of a guy with underworld ties.
Concept-café girl (maid-café-style hostess work).
Host-club addict.
There's a little bit of everything in here.
If that counts as success, then Fujimoto does too.
It's fine to just live a normal life once you quit.
As long as it's a good memory once you're older, that's enough.
Well, Berikyuu never even had a period where they outsold the current Juice=Juice.
Maimai (Tsugunaga Momoko's nickname) is a businesswoman now, isn't she?
The healthy path is for idols to just move into normal employment after graduating.
Goto, Fujimoto, Tsuji, Suzuki Airi.
Aren't Sayashi and Kasahara doing better now than they were back in their Morning Musume days too?
At best she's only popular with the hardcore fanbase.
As long as she's stuck at this agency, there's nothing to expect.
Even the Sakamichi groups have a TV Asahi announcer.
And she's a main news anchor, at that.
I wonder why not a single Juice=Juice graduate has managed to make it outside the 'village.'
Morning Musume has their announcer.
Even Angerme has a success story — a member who became a K-pop idol.
Of course their post-graduation lives turn out unremarkable — that's just the natural result.
Pretty pathetic, honestly.
means you win by becoming a stay-at-home wife living easy.
No need to grind away desperately in showbiz.
That's down to the skills and name recognition Shinsuke built up in his own world.
You can't expect that same outcome from any Hello! Project member other than Rieda.
That's basically like winning the lottery jackpot ten times in a row — the odds are absurd.
Background and key points of this discussion
Tsuji Nozomi and Fujimoto Miki debuted with Morning Musume and belong to a generation that even performed at Kohaku, NHK’s year-end song special, continuing to appear in variety shows and photo books after graduating. Generations from Juice=Juice and Angerme onward, by contrast, have centered their activity on fan-club-oriented shows, a structure the thread pointed to as making it harder to reach general-audience recognition. Opinions split between the view that it’s fine to “just live a normal life” after graduating, and the view that a lack of second-career success makes the group look hopeless — with an underlying assumption surfacing that “those who weren’t popular during their idol years won’t become popular after switching careers” either. Note: some posts touching on personal lives or appearances amounted to baseless speculation or personal attacks, so the article has omitted them.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “Isn’t it getting pretty rough that no one from Hello! Project’s graduated members has managed to build a real second career?.”
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