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The story
A thread on the Hello! Project board looks back at why the Hello! Project unit Country Girls never quite caught on. Country Girls relaunched in November 2014 after being renamed from Country Musume, and went on hiatus in December 2019. In the thread, some point to the music and management side — “they were just ahead of their time,” “that weird rockabilly sound scared off the wota (hardcore fans),” “the agency’s events felt phoned-in” — while others question the member lineup itself, arguing “you didn’t need to gather only cute members — having a mix of different types would’ve been better.”
What people said
They went on hiatus as of December 26, 2019.
Members
Yamaki Risa
Morito Chisaki
Koseki Mai
Funaki Yui
Former members
Tsugunaga Momoko
Inaba Manaka
Shimamura Uta
Yanagawa Nanami
a mix of different types would've been better
Such a shame
Bad fit for Hello! Project
Hello! Project only cares about skill
the world hadn't caught up yet
that's really all there is to it
Seriously, that's really all there is to it
Kind of like how ROSY has Oda?
that weird rockabilly direction turned the wota off
and ROSY doing gothic lolita now is making the same mistake
I still haven't forgotten it
they'd have easily been filling Budokan every year with no graduations
because all it would've taken was just doing things the normal way
that's the thing — this agency can't even manage 'normal'
you can't run it like a hobby
that's all there is to it
I think after Ma-ya and Karin-chan graduated, Funaki's fans wouldn't shut up about her being Hello Project's ace! Ace!
seriously, what a dumb agency
they just up and changed it out of nowhere anyway
Background and key points of the discussion
Country Girls was a Hello! Project unit that relaunched in November 2014 after being renamed from Country Musume, then went on hiatus in December 2019. Opinion in the thread split over the reason for their lukewarm popularity: some blamed the music and management side (event direction, promotion), while others argued the problem was the “cute-first” member selection and the group concept itself — no single explanation won out. A misconception the thread pushes back on is the assumption that “gathering only cute members should guarantee popularity”; as the discussion shows, an idol group’s popularity hinges on a mix of factors including musical direction, promotion, and debut timing. The fact that the group’s direction kept shifting over its roughly five years of activity is also seen as part of why opinions remain divided.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “I don’t get why Country Girls, who gathered only cute members, never really took off.”
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