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The story
On 5channel’s Hello! Project board, a heated debate broke out over whether the agency (Up-Front) has been giving Juice=Juice the cold shoulder. It started with a post claiming “Up-Front hates Juice=Juice,” which drew a wave of rebuttals pointing to the group’s experiments with new music-video production techniques and their track record of becoming a genuinely profitable group amid surging popularity. Others countered that ANGERME has been the agency’s favorite for years, while the thread also veered into the generational divide between newly minted fans and longtime veterans, plus predictions about how the pecking order between groups will shift next year — scattering the discussion in several directions with no consensus in sight.
What people said
Juice just caught heat for using AI and it blew up into controversy — that's why people turned on them.
Then why not make Tsubaki Factory a generative-AI MV too? Tsubaki fans would probably praise it.
Stuff like that is already standard in MVs — drone shots and the like.
It's just a bunch of out-of-touch old geezers who couldn't keep up, got spooked, and kicked up a fuss over nothing.
Wait, I mean — it's 'Juice = the Agency' (a pun on the group's 'A=B' name format).
Profitable or not, they will never stop favoring ANGERME over Juice.
Hello! Project is a 29-year-old institution, you know?
Blame your own history — all you've built up barely kept the place from collapsing.
But those are basically the only people still paying into it these days.
If you're not spending money, just stay quiet — that's the vibe.
These bandwagon-jumpers who only discovered Juice=Juice this past year because of the 'Moreme' boom, lmaooo
Don't underestimate us old-timers with 10+ years as Hello! Project fans, lmaooo
Anyone who isn't from Ai no Tane (Juice=Juice's original fan club) counts as a newcomer.
Hello! Project stays the same as it's always been — over 20 years running, unchanged, unchanged.
Nothing changes. Hello! Project is Hello! Project. In the end nothing changes. We won't let it change. This is our home.
Attendance has been dropping, so clearly things ARE changing.
By next year it'll all go back to normal, lol.
So who's going to be the big seller starting next year, then?
Next year the Juice fever dies down too,
and Hello! Project goes back to feeling like it did two years ago, lol.
You actually want it to go back to that? There'd be nothing left to talk about.
Next year is Morning Musume's 30th anniversary.
The year after is Hello! Project's 30th anniversary, you know.
Fan club membership fees are the most direct source of income, though.
Morning Musume.
OCHA NORMA.
As opposed to what, exactly?
Juice was clearly getting the royal treatment.
Then other groups should put out EPs too and their fans can just be happy about it?
But this EP also flopped hard in sales and Juice stumbled —
no wonder people are giving up on them.
Morning Musume, ANGERME, Juice=Juice, and BEYOOOOONDS will all be running neck and neck.
A step behind them: Tsubaki Factory and OCHA NORMA.
And further down, Rosy Chronicle will suddenly surge and start closing in on their senior groups.
The gap that opened up this year will narrow again — that's the Hello! Project scenario for next year.
They won't end up neck and neck — the talent level is just too different.
That's basically just the same story as when Sato was popular back in the day, isn't it?
Sato's boost was just existing fans shifting over — it never translated into a surge of new paying members.
Hello! Project's real sponsors are the fan club members.
Then what exactly are you asking for?
Aren't you basically saying they should land glamorous corporate gigs and the like?
How is any of that going to generate more buzz than Juice=Juice did this year?
Morning Musume's 19th generation is getting a real talent —
someone from Shikoku is joining.
Also, for Hello! Project's 30th anniversary, Berryz Kobo, Matsuura, Manoeri, Buono!, and Melon Kinenbi (minus Otani) are all reportedly reuniting, with the current lineup mainly centered on Juice.
Morning Musume's 19th generation is getting a real talent —
someone from Shikoku is joining.
Also, for Hello! Project's 30th anniversary, Berryz Kobo, Matsuura, Manoeri, Buono!, and Melon Kinenbi (minus Otani) are all reportedly reuniting, with the current lineup mainly centered on Juice.
it would've killed their momentum — I think that's why they released it as an EP instead.
It was heading for #1, so they made it an EP specifically to kill the momentum.
Background and key points of this debate
Hello! Project is the roster of female idol groups under the Up-Front Group umbrella, and both Juice=Juice and ANGERME belong to it. What split the thread was a gut-level disagreement over which group the agency actually favors: one side pointed to the MV’s new production techniques and the EP release format as evidence Juice=Juice was being shortchanged, while the other argued that fan club membership fees — not flashy exposure — are the real backbone of the agency’s revenue, so visibility alone doesn’t tell the whole story. On top of that, a generational divide between recently joined fans and longtime veterans became a recurring undercurrent, with both sides quietly using different definitions of what counts as the group ‘making money’ — easy to miss if you only skim the replies. The fact that next year marks Morning Musume’s 30th anniversary, and the year after marks Hello! Project’s 30th anniversary overall, is also part of why the debate over next year’s pecking order got so heated.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Hello! Project board) thread “Up-Front: ‘I hate Juice=Juice because they don’t make money’ / Juice=Juice: ‘We’ve evolved into Hello! Project’s only cash cow!’ / Agency: ‘…I hate what I hate’.”
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