Music Column: Should Juice=Juice add a second generation?

Juice=Juice had their first Budokan concert last week and a lot of fans assumed their would be a big announcement. Yet there was non. 

I asked myself the question: did I expect an announcement? Did I want an announcement? 

I came to the conclusion that I did expect and wanted an announcement. Juice=Juice is a great group. All members are great, interesting and vocally on point. The group is visually nice to look at and have a lot of interesting songs on their sleeves. 

Yet with everything happening to C-ute, Momusu, ANGERME, Country Girls and Tsubaki, they are kind of in the shadows of all the other groups. They haven't had any line-up changes since Aina left and this year they only had their drama and Budokan as high lights. 

Within the J-pop world a group has to stand out to get fans and get attention. A lot of groups do this by changing their line-up once in a while, but should Juice=Juice do this? 

It's an incredible hard question. Should Juice=Juice change the line-up they have worked with until now. It actually pains my heart to say: Yes, yes they should. From the very start of this group we knew it wasn't ment to stay the same for very long. The whole reason of this is our leader and sub-leader. Both girls were already quite old to be put into a starting idolgroup. Miyazaki Yuka is currently 22 and was 19 when she was added to the group. Kanazawa Tomoko is currently 21 and was 17 when she was added. Yuka was an age that is ruled out of most Hello!Pro auditions and Tomoko was on the edge of it. Ofcourse Idols can stay as long as they see fit, but coming to any age above 20 does bring other questions: "should I go to university?" and "I wanna fall in love." These girls are already adults and it would be only logical for them to want more of their lives than being idols. Tomoko also has her illness, which sometimes prevent her from preforming. 

Non of these girls showed any interest in graduating, yet with their age it could always happen. I think Juice=Juice should stay a group with more than 4 members, so this means they should look for new members. During their drama Budokan, they also talked about the importance of new members. How they should push the other members to go out of their comfort zones. I think this could actually help Juice=Juice grow. 

If we are talking about timing, I think they should be added sooner rather than later. The longer the girls are just the 5 of them, the more they will resent new members. Look at C-ute, we can't imagen them having other members, while Tsunku did talk about this when Kanna left and Erika was set to graduate. 

I do think Juice=Juice should get some members from the Kenshuusei. Juice=Juice has quite a high level of preformance and I think new girls should already be able to sing and dance well. Otherwise they will be just pushed to the back until one of the main girls will graduate. 

Now the biggest question: will this happen? Yes, I think it will. I don't know when, but mark my words. Juice=Juice will get new members and I actually hope they will be able to pick members like Ayacho and Kanyon did for S/mileage 3rd gen. These groups should stay a while and this can only be achieved with new members. So what do you guys think? Does Juice=Juice need new members? And what girls whould you like?