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The story
A remark reportedly made by Juice=Juice’s Matsunaga Ria has been read as an ’empty seats’ jab, drawing backlash from former dedicated fans who’ve followed the group for years. On 5ch’s Hello! Project board, critics argue the comment—about audience turnout at shows—sounds like a swipe at other groups, while defenders counter that a member with results to show for herself has every right to say it. The debate spread to whether the line ‘selling well doesn’t mean the music is good’ holds up, and to fact-checking whether the group ever really went through a stretch of playing only small live houses.
What people said
There hasn't been a turnout that bad at NHK Osaka since Matsunaga joined. It's genuinely disappointing that the live house shows got remembered that way.
@tsubo_san_dayo
She's getting way too full of herself.
That's a boomerang then (comes right back at you).
Matsunaga's got the results, so everything she says is fair game.
Basically, it's like this:
If that's the issue, go cheer for ANGERME instead.
Seems he's actually an Ocha Norma fan these days and isn't that into ANGERME.
@tsubo_san_dayo
Like, people think 'if ANGERME gets three NHK Osaka shows, give one to us instead,' but saying that out loud just sours things between fanbases, so nobody actually says it in public.
Every show on the Queen of Hearts tour was a live house except the finale at Nippon Budokan.
They can only get away with saying stuff like this right now anyway, so let them talk.
Make up your mind already.
Current Juice=Juice is stacked with enough talent that they shouldn't have had to know any hardship at all.
If anything, some of them are victims who got stuck shouldering a bit of that hardship only because the original members stuck around longer than expected.
But they did play Budokan though.
Was there ever a tour that ended with nothing but live houses and no big venue at all?
Going by the nuance in Re: #1, it never actually says the tour was nothing but live houses start to finish.
Juice=Juice could honestly step straight up to an arena tour.
'Selling well doesn't mean the music is good' > makes sense coming from King Gnu's Tokita, whose band sells insanely well.
'Selling well doesn't mean the music is good' > coming from Matsunaga, it's like… does she think they're selling at King Gnu's level?
That's the thing, she's just lacking perspective.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE sells even more than King Gnu and they don't go around saying stuff like that.
Though professional songwriters who just churn out tunes aimed at little kids don't exactly have room to talk either.
If the current lineup doesn't sell, the senpai don't get any attention either.
That Yoyogi show wasn't even full though.
Which one? How many hundred million views does it have?
The best-selling music in the world wouldn't even stop at hundreds of millions, would it?
Oh really, trillions then?
Let's see it, show me.
The point is write a song yourself and have the group actually perform it—not just dabble in composing as a hobby.
Depends on whether Taisei (a Hello! Project staffer who signs off on releases) gives the okay.
Just because they've made it big doesn't give them the right to do that.
This is a group popular enough that even the Orix Theater can't hold all the fans, you know.
You should probably stay out of this if you don't even know the right unit for the world's best-selling music's view count.
I see, I see, so if it's not trillions, quadrillions then?
Didn't realize Matsunaga had written a song like that.
If you build up popularity like Juice=Juice did, you'll get bumped up whether you like it or not.
Not on Taisei's team, but there's a recent example of something getting through via Tasaki Asahi, so maybe it comes down to connections.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Juice=Juice is a Hello! Project group that brought in members like Matsunaga Ria after early members such as Uemura Akane departed, and has expanded the scale of its live shows over the past several years. The thread kicked off because Matsunaga’s remark could be read as mocking past audience turnout or other groups, drawing backlash from longtime fans who’ve followed the group for years. The dispute boils down to two main points. One is a question of standards: does having results to show for yourself justify saying something like this? The other is that the line ‘selling well doesn’t mean the music is good’ lands very differently depending on who says it—coming from an act with overwhelming numbers like King Gnu versus coming from Matsunaga. Worth noting: the remark itself is presented as a quote from X (formerly Twitter), and the thread never actually verifies its original source or context. There’s also back-and-forth fact-checking over things like whether the group really only played live houses at some point, but none of that is definitively confirmed either.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread ‘Matsunaga Ria’s ‘Empty Seats’ Comment Sends Former Juice=Juice Die-Hards Into a Rage lol‘.
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