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The story
Breaking news hit the 5ch Hello! Project board that the venue for Morning Musume。’26’s Oda Sakura graduation concert has been set as Yokohama Arena. The thread immediately buzzed with unconfirmed reports that Juice=Juice — which also has a member set to graduate around the same time — would hold its own graduation concert at the same arena, making it a “2-day” run, though nothing about this was ever confirmed and the speculation ran well ahead of the facts. The conversation eventually drifted from the venue’s size itself to comparisons of drawing power and big-venue track records across other groups like Juice=Juice and ANGERME, spiraling into arguments about the pecking order between Hello! Project groups and heated exchanges between fanbases.
What people said
MC thoughts
Tour finale
If anything, Yokohama Arena might even be too small for them.
So even if Juice=Juice gets an extra show, it'll cap out at Yokohama Arena — though it doesn't even look like there'll be an extra show.
Because Kato Taka said flat out that Pia Arena will be Juice=Juice's last stop, with no additional shows.
Well, Yafuzo got all coy when asked where the tour finale would be on Bakuya (a late-night radio/variety show)…
Though it's entirely possible that was recorded before the schedule was even announced.
Who's Kato Taka?
Someone connected to the industry?
Danbara's graduation concert is the day before, so it'll be a 2-day run at Yokohama Arena.
The graduation announcement itself comes at the Hiroshima show on 9/22.
Michishige retired right before the "Moremi" era, so we never got to hear what she thought of it. ("Moremi" is fan slang, likely tied to a heavily edited/filtered photo trend.)
Hirai Miyo's birthday (turning 27, born 1999)
9th anniversary of Kudo Haruka's graduation from Morning Musume。'17 (2017)
Yajima Maimi & Ishida Ayumi / stage play "Taku Fes Vol. 14: Kita no Shima Kara" / Venue: Sunshine Theatre, Tokyo
Same day as Kudo's graduation anniversary, huh.
Whatever happened to scheduling graduation concerts so they don't overlap?
Though that would upend the group pecking order, so a K Arena show probably won't happen at all.
Way too safe a choice.
The group's own 30th anniversary is next year.
Hello! Project's overall 30th anniversary — the one they'll really go all out for — is the year after that.
This year isn't anything special yet.
They'd never sell it out.
Would they even sell it out, though…
The 30th anniversary year actually started back in September.
Sure, but there's no way they go full throttle right out of the gate.
It does, actually.
They're dead set on never letting Juice=Juice play Yokohama Arena without a graduation, and that's the whole complaint.
Is that actually true?
Pacifico Yokohama and Yokohama Arena are coming for them.
I can already see this going exactly as predicted and turning into a copy-paste flame war between ANGERME and Juice=Juice fans.
Fireworks only last a moment, after all.
Why are you assuming that in the meantime other groups will rise up, or at least hold steady?
So that confirms ANGERME won't get a big venue after all.
Probably worried about losing the ticket lottery.
If even Juice=Juice can't guarantee a win in the lottery, the other groups' shows must be practically empty.
Maybe they figured there'd be a separate big-venue show apart from the tour finale?
Background and Talking Points
In Hello! Project fandom, the scale of a graduation concert venue is often treated as a direct measure of a group’s or member’s “rank,” and the pecking order among venues like Budokan, Yokohama Arena, and Pacifico Yokohama is a constant topic of fan debate. This time, with Juice=Juice’s tour finale already locked in at Pia Arena MM and apparently without any additional shows planned, frustration surfaced over the fact that Morning Musume。’26 — a group with comparable drawing power — secured Yokohama Arena while Juice=Juice reportedly can’t land a big-venue show of its own. The claim posted in the thread that “Danbara’s graduation concert will also be at Yokohama Arena, making it a 2-day event” came from a poster claiming insider knowledge, but it remains unverified, and other posters responded with skepticism. Arguments over relative drawing power and “rank” between groups are a long-simmering fixture of Hello! Project fan discourse, and this venue announcement reignited that debate once again.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “[Breaking] Morning Musume。’26 Oda Sakura Graduation Concert Venue Confirmed as Yokohama Arena Kita━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━!!.”
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