Finding out earlier this week that the whole Himekyun Fruit Can structure represented by Mad Magazine records was basically being blown up (except for Himekyun Fruit Can themselves, who released an album and are doing quite well, thank you) set off kind of a tizzy. People just plain had more questions than answers. At the moment, we have a another answer.

It didn’t take long to find out that Fruitpochette‘s Teratani Mina was actually just flat-out retiring from idol due to a long-standing health issue. “Health” is often cited as a reason for somebody to graduate; right up there with “school,” it’s a perfectly acceptable reason that nobody’s going to ask too much about, and it can even be trueish enough a lot of the time. But for Mina, given her rather emotional blog post, it seems to be genuine.

Reader d0fph0t0 submitted this comment the other day:

Ayu left nanoCUNE because 1) felt isolated from her classmates as she transitioned into High School 2) Was having problems with management and other members? 3) Was thinking of the future and wants to become a manicurist 4) She also started feeling injuries from dances, and she was becoming fatigued to the point she wanted to skip school the next day….

That’s some good reason right there. I haven’t had a chance to do much yet with nanoCUNE, so here’s the short version: They’re a junior/trainee kind of group under Himekyun Fruit Can going back to the beginning; musically, they’re somewhat similar to Party Rockets GT.

So Ayu’s graduation sounds like it’s also a “for the best” situation; she’s not being fired per se, but a number of factors came along all at once. Like when that sonofabitch you used to work for gave you the “it’s just a really bad time” speech and handed you a box. You know. Right?

That puts two of the graduations into context. But what often happens (as in the case of the Alice Project) is that management will then shuffle the deck a little and promote/demote members accordingly to fill holes, and the three to-be-explained graduations* from AiCune probably mean either:

• AiCune (totally a trainee group) is being blown up, and members will be moved into nanoCUNE.
• Reboots across the board.

Fruitpochette is big enough at this point that the group will live on; someone or someones will be joining Shiori** soon. From nanoCUNE? Is there an additional reorganization on the way, potentially with neither -cune group continuing but something else taking its place. We’ll know soon, as that graduation show is coming up pretty fast.

*One easy answer: Their contracts are up. Happens literally all the time. It’s easy to demonize management because there is a lot of abuse in idol, but perfectly innocuous (or seemingly so) business decisions also do just plain happen. Members can also opt to not take another contract, a business decision of their own.

**Current actual Fruitpochette had a performance with a band (a thing they do) just yesterday, and it looks like it included a new song. So.