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The story
A video related to Hello! Project’s Juice=Juice went viral on YouTube, sparking a clash in the comments between longtime fans (the “old guard”) and fans who joined more recently (the “newcomers”). It started with a comment worrying that “going viral will make tickets harder to get,” which spiraled into exchanges like “it’s the newcomers’ fault for not shouting during concerts” and “newcomers who don’t know the group’s history are trying to argue down the old guard.” Claims also circulated that seats at Budokan and PIA Arena sold out instantly through fan club presale alone, highlighting both the group’s soaring popularity and the generational friction among its fans.
What people said
tickets are gonna be even harder to get now
The old guard is the reason it's a pain
the crappy agency is the reason tickets are hard to get
you all need to cheer louder
the group's history is just gonna get erased
Oh no… poor Chan-san
Then don't come to Hello! Project shows
Save that opinion for K-pop concerts
They're probably not planning to quit anyway, and honestly, they're not needed
Yep, that's exactly what I'm hoping for
=LOVE has members in their 30s, you know
If the original members were really the best, they'd have been huge back in the original-member era
Nobody's talking about "troublesome vs. wholesome" fans here
Then again, a crowd that's 100% newcomers doesn't sit right either
Both Budokan and PIA Arena sold out all 8,000 seats in the first round with just fan club members, so please get a bigger venue
What do you mean?
Yeah right, no you didn't
The point was that the old guard is the annoying one though
But that's just a fact
it's 'We're here, Tomoko' (dueling versions of a concert call-and-response chant)
Ancient-old-guard fan: "There's no such chant in the original song"
Background and key points of this discussion
Clashes between “old guard” and “newcomer” fans are a recurring topic among Hello! Project idol fandoms. As a group’s lineup changes over the years, fans who remember the original members (the “orimen” era) and those who started supporting the group after a later breakthrough often differ in how well they understand — and how attached they are to — the concert “call” culture (the shouted chants and cheers). One post in the thread claimed that seats at Budokan and PIA Arena sold out entirely through fan club presale alone, but this is simply a claim made on an anonymous message board and has not been confirmed by any official figures. The debate also tends to get framed simply as “old guard vs. newcomers,” but factors like the venue’s seating capacity and how tickets are sold play a role too — it isn’t purely down to individual fans’ attitudes.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “[Sad News] Juice=Juice’s Old-Guard Otaku Get Dogpiled in a YouTube Comment Section…“.
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