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Background and Key Points

Hello! Project (often shortened to “H!P”) is the idol collective founded in 1998 under producer Tsunku and now managed by Up-Front Group, home to Morning Musume, Angerme, and junior units like BEYOOOOONDS, where Kojima Hana and the other members discussed in the thread are currently active. Unlike agencies such as Stardust Promotion — which Kojima came from, and which is built around cultivating actors and general tarento — or Yoshimoto Kogyo, the country’s dominant comedy agency that Ikuta Erina has separately signed with, H!P’s business has historically centered on live concerts, CDs/DVDs, and stage work rather than TV crossover. That makes the two commonly cited exceptions, Yaguchi Mari and Fujimoto Miki, notable: both parlayed Morning Musume fame into long-running variety and talk-show careers, Fujimoto even co-hosting radio with Akashiya Sanma, one of Japan’s most influential comedians.

The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t about Kojima’s talent, which nobody contested, but about why H!P as a whole produces so few variety-ready members now: some blamed agency training and image restrictions (hairstyle, contacts, media bookings), others blamed individual members for lacking the aptitude, and one post undercut both by suggesting H!P’s own fanbase wouldn’t tune into variety appearances even if they happened.

What the thread doesn’t address is that this may be a deliberate business tradeoff rather than a failure: since H!P’s revenue model rewards stage and merchandise loyalty over broad TV recognition, reduced variety exposure could reflect strategy, not neglect. Readers should also note “ogiri” (mentioned once, unexplained) refers to improvised comedic-answer games, a specific skill Japanese TV variety heavily tests and rewards.

Background and Key Points

Ashida Mana became one of Japan’s most recognizable faces as a child actress, breaking through in the 2010 TBS drama “Mother” and going on to front dozens of commercials; her reported ¥680 million annual income reflects that rare status of a former child star who successfully transitioned into a top-tier CM (commercial) talent. This is billed as her first regular drama role in two and a half years, which is why a simple café sighting with co-star Takahashi Fumiya became newsworthy at all — Japanese entertainment reporting treats these “two-shot” (futari, or paparazzi-style spotted-together) photos as inherently suggestive of romance, even absent any real evidence. The thread itself was posted to 5ch’s Hello! Project board, an idol-fan subforum, despite Ashida having no connection to that talent agency group — a reminder that 5ch threads often migrate across boards based on which community is currently roasting the subject.

Posters didn’t really split over whether something romantic happened; nearly everyone treated it as innocuous. The actual divide was over her acting ability, with critics arguing her heavy commercial/variety-show workload has left her skills stagnant, and others pushing back that such criticism is unnecessary or that she simply isn’t being offered dramatic roles suited to her age.

What’s easy to miss: nothing here confirms a relationship — it’s a single unverified sighting reported by a tabloid-style outlet, and the ¥680 million figure is an outside estimate, not disclosed income. The “Meruru” nickname reference to Ami Umi is also an in-joke unrelated to Ashida herself, likely triggered by a resemblance rumor rather than any real link between the two.

Background and Key Points

The rikei/bunkei (science-track vs. humanities-track) divide is a fixture of Japanese education — students are sorted into one or the other as early as high school, and the split feeds decades of good-natured and not-so-good-natured sniping online about which group is “smarter” or more useful to society. Newsoku VIP, the board this thread comes from, is one of 5channel’s oldest anonymous forums, known for recurring “theory” threads where a single poster returns again and again with the same pet argument to bait reactions; several posters here note explicitly that they’ve seen this OP’s “borderline personality” thread before, which frames the whole exchange as a known ritual rather than a fresh debate. “Borderline personality” (境界性人格) is being used loosely as an umbrella for Cluster B traits (narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial), not as a rigorous clinical DSM diagnosis.

The thread didn’t actually split over whether STEM people are superior — almost nobody engages with that claim on the merits. It split over whether jargon is a legitimate way to argue at all: the OP insists critics name a specific term they don’t understand before he’ll explain, while critics counter that an inability to restate a claim in plain words is itself evidence the arguer doesn’t fully understand it. Neither side moves.

What’s easy to miss is that the OP’s own “problem” framing was never established before he was pressed on it — a poster (>>96) points out the phrase “borderline personality problem” appears nowhere earlier in the thread, meaning the OP was retrofitting his conclusion. That’s less a philosophical disagreement than a rhetorical improvisation being caught in real time.

Background and Key Points

Not being able to see my kid, I lost my reason to keep living

The bitterness in this thread traces back to a structural fact about Japanese family law: Japan has no joint custody after divorce — it’s the only G7 country without it, though a 2024 civil code revision (taking effect by 2026) will introduce an optional joint-custody system for the first time. Under the current sole-custody regime, courts and mediators (chōtei) overwhelmingly award custody to the mother, especially once she has already relocated with the child, as poster >>83 notes. Japan also has no enforceable visitation mechanism comparable to Western court-ordered parenting schedules; a father who “agrees” to divorce in mediation is, in practice, agreeing to a sharp cut in contact with his children, which is why the OP describes his life as suddenly empty a month out.

The thread doesn’t actually split on the custody system itself — everyone agrees it’s stacked against fathers. The real fault line is the tangent that hijacks the back half: whether a divorced man in his 40s with kids is more or less “marriageable” than a same-age man who has simply never married. That argument (>>17 through >>84) runs on pure vibes and self-deprecation, with posters trading claims about height, education, and age as if these were fungible dating-market credits, never citing any actual data on remarriage rates.

What outside readers will likely miss is that the OP’s “no choice” framing (>>66) reflects a real practice: Japanese divorce mediators commonly steer reluctant spouses toward settling by suggesting that contested cases invariably end in divorce anyway after the mandatory separation period, which is a persuasion tactic, not binding law — a nuance no one in the thread challenges.