/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>33927470
>what happened? Why aren't they popular anymore?
Assuming you're not baiting, Yuko is the one who said they were never meant to be popular, If you think about it their real audience of people who buy Idol stuff has always been small, around ~200K.
Some reasons are that most popular members graduated, Aki-p seemed to have lost interest/power decision in 48g, they started losing money and fired a lot of their creative people, there's very few new girls with star-power, the ngt scandal, they started cancelling tv shows and events, then they went low-profile. Also graduated members seem to be still more popular than any other idols.

https://www.akb48.at/en/2020/06/12/nikkei-entertainment-2020-rangliste-erschienen/