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The story
A thread went up on 5ch’s Hello! Project board about the public’s reaction of “Wait, is Morning Musume still a thing?” It started from the gap between the public’s perception—frozen at golden-era hits like “LOVE Machine” and “Renai Revolution 21″—and what the current members and follow-up groups like Juice=Juice are actually up to now. Some pointed out the group’s last big hit was nearly 30 years ago, while others drew a contrast with AKB48’s 20th-anniversary appearance on NHK’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, which pulled high ratings—sparking disagreement over just how much media exposure actually matters.
What people said
ANGERME isn't recognized by the mainstream either
Even if the general public knew about them, it's not like the general public would actually pay money for it
They've spent forever basking in a hit song from a quarter-century ago, yet not only does nobody show up to current shows chasing that nostalgia—they don't even perform that quarter-century-old hit live anymore. It's a mystery of a group
You'll have to find someone else
because unlike the other Hello! groups, Juice=Juice is now the only unit still branding itself as a "little sister" act
Even once every Morning Musume member becomes their junior, they're still the stubborn "baby sister who doesn't care if you've got a problem with it" type
From their very debut they never called themselves "Hello! Pro"—they've always gone with "little sister unit" instead
AKB48 got high ratings performing on Kohaku for their 20th anniversary,
but Morning Musume never gets invited
Showing up on media regularly to keep your presence felt really matters—
AKB's center Ito Momoka went viral just for running on "All-Star Thanksgiving Festival"
if anything, be ashamed of your own ignorance
when Juice=Juice showed up on TV, the reaction was more like "oh, Hello! Project still exists?"
nobody would even imagine there are other groups like ANGERME or Tsubaki Factory in there too
The public knows Morning Musume's heyday, but they've never once heard of "Hello! Project"
they don't even realize Juice is part of Hello! Project
Last year Ito wasn't even center yet—she was a total nobody (lit. "air member," slang for someone with zero presence)
It's not even close—we're talking a gap of two digits, not one
Hello! Project as a brand name has less recognition than even Berryz Koubou
Well, obviously—but that's peak-era Morning Musume
Ever since they started numbering the generations, they've had zero public recognition
Even topping the handshake-event sales charts over and over to fake a "comeback," not a single song actually hit
These days it's Juice
unless you're the type who actually goes to shows in person or one of the hardcore fans (nicknamed "wolves"), nobody's going to casually call them "Musume" or "Morning" lol
and almost nobody who was popular 30 years ago is even still in the group
it actually matters that a new generation is going viral on its own
Who? Morning Musume?
their performances of the old songs are great
Even when 5th-gen Ogawa got caught by a tabloid, the reaction was "who's this?"—
so yeah, it really is only up through the 4th generation
those were genuinely mainstream hits, not just fan favorites
For some reason, old-school fans from the Central era (an earlier management-agency period for the group) actually rate the current members' performances highly
who cares about "skill"—that kind of talk is just noise
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Morning Musume formed in 1997, born out of an audition on the TV show "ASAYAN," and had a golden era defined by the explosive 1999 hits "LOVE Machine" and "Renai Revolution 21." The group has kept going for nearly 30 years since, continually swapping out members. What split the thread was how to read this "frozen name recognition." On one side were voices treating it as a problem that only the golden-era songs and image have stuck in the public’s mind, while the current members and Hello! Project as a whole go unrecognized. On the other side were voices arguing that, since the business model runs on a fixed fan base built around the fan club and handshake events, broad public recognition doesn’t really matter in the first place. The comparison to AKB48’s high-rated 20th-anniversary Kohaku appearance also came up, raising the question of whether media exposure directly determines whether a group stays known after a generational turnover. One point readers might easily misread: this "never heard of them" reaction doesn’t itself signal the group’s decline—it stems from a difference in how the group operates.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “The Public Be Like: “Wait!? Is Morning Musume Still Around?”“
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