<p>I thought I'd try to make a place for conversation about this here, rather than just all going to the comments section of
℃-ute and other various pages.
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Regarding the discussion of who succeeds Yajima Maimi as leader of Hello! Project, I think it's hard to say. Tsugunaga and Wada seem like they'd likely be high on the list, but they've also been around as long or nearly as long as ℃-ute, so at this point it's hard to even guarantee they'll be around any longer than ℃-ute.
</p><p>One part of the announcement that's not very clear to me is why they won't be participating in the 2017 Winter H!P concerts? Maybe UP-FRONT LINK's English version is just not very clear. "<i>Since there will be a period of around 3 months by thinking of rehearsals, performances schedule, ℃-ute will not take part of the Hello! Project tour which will start from January 2017.</i>" It's not like they'd need to be rehearsing a June show in January, though. Maybe they'll have a big farewell tour through most of the first half of next year? I guess if that were to start soon enough after the H!P concerts it would be understandable.
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