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The story
A thread on 5ch’s Hello! Project board lit up over the idea that Juice=Juice’s success partly comes down to barely changing its lineup. Since 2022, only two members — Inaba Manaka and Uemura Akari — have graduated from the group, whereas roughly ten members each have cycled through Morning Musume。and ANGERME in the same period, posters noted. But others pushed back, arguing that ‘staying fixed’ isn’t itself the secret — what actually matters is whether new members popular enough to offset the graduates ever join. Opinions were split.
What people said
True.
More like an 'off-shore' company than an 'Up-Front' one. (a pun on the agency's name, Up-Front — implying it isn't as transparent as the name suggests)
2024 was the only year without one, and that's just because Kawashima and Irie went on hiatus back to back.
Even that year Uemura graduated, so honestly the lineup has changed every year since 2019.
This year is about the only stretch where the lineup stayed put for over a year.
Meanwhile, here's how many members the other groups have lost in that same span —
no wonder groups other than Juice=Juice can't sell.
Momusu (Morning Musume。): Morito, Kaga, Fukumura, Ishida, Ikuta, Haga, Yokoyama, Kitagawa, Makino, Oda
Angerme: Takeuchi, Sasaki, Kawamura, Jokura, Hashisako
Tsubaki Factory: Asakura, Yamagishi, Kishimoto, Niinuma, Yagi, Akiyama
Beyooooonds: Ichioka, Yamazaki, Shimakura, Takase
Ocha Norma: Tashiro, Ishiguri
If 'fewer graduations = bigger seller' were really a rule, Ocha Norma should be about to blow up.
Isn't it more about how long the graduation backlog was before that point?
[Tough] A fixed lineup that isn't selling and can't be shaken up.
[Tough] A group where new additions are just replacements, not upgrades.
[Impossible] A survival-audition group that can't even replace the members it loses.
they still leave the newer members out — wonder if they'll get them polished up before the Budokan show.
Maybe it's just that they got lucky with patience, but I'd honestly believe it if you told me Up-Front engineered this on purpose.
If you replace graduates with new members in a group where people are already lining up to quit, those new members just join the back of the same line.
Even new songs end up burning a slot on the outgoing member.
They should be pushed harder than Beyooooonds or ANGERME.
That dream is never coming true.
Never, ever.
Unless you're greedy for a generational handoff to keep the group going another 5 or 10 years, it's better not to force anyone out.
the real answer is you won't sell unless the new members who join
end up popular enough to make up for whoever graduated.
Otherwise future members are going to end up even more trapped by the past than the people nostalgic for the original lineup are now.
If you want to build a group up carefully, you can't have a graduation announcement for at least two years or so.
It immediately makes the atmosphere hostile to new fans joining in.
Someone graduating is subtraction.
What really hurts is when a popular member who's put in eight or nine years
building up experience and skill graduates.
Keep doing that over and over and it gets rough.
If Dambara leaves, can Juice=Juice still sell itself as the group with great singers?
Takagi and Kanazawa weren't even originally supposed to leave when they did.
Kanazawa stayed with Juice=Juice until she was 26 — that was a planned graduation.
but it takes time for them to settle in, so it matters that they join while the group isn't struggling.
Looking back, that was probably laying the groundwork so fans wouldn't riot when they later poached Inoue Reon from Kobushi Factory.
Compare that to how Momusu and ANGERME just folded Country Girls members in for the Hello! Project 20th-anniversary restructuring with no real planning behind it.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Within Hello! Project, every group belongs to the same management company, Up-Front, and as a rule member graduations and additions aren’t disclosed externally until the member announces it themselves. The heart of this debate isn’t really whether an unchanged lineup is itself the reason for popularity, but whether the new members who joined were enough to make up for whoever graduated — a point that a simple ‘staying fixed = success’ argument can’t fully explain. In fact, Juice=Juice hasn’t had the exact same lineup since its formation either; it went through the graduations of popular members like Miyamoto and Inaba and still managed a successful generational handoff, which posters contrasted with ANGERME, said to have struggled under similar circumstances. In other words, the thread leaned toward the view that what matters isn’t whether graduations happen, but how well the group replaces the members it loses. Note that unconfirmed information about a graduation announcement at that day’s live show was also posted, but since it couldn’t be verified, it isn’t covered in this article.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Isn’t it also because Juice=Juice hasn’t randomly changed its lineup that it sold? Frequent graduations and additions kill sales.”
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