I woke up this morning to finally read the member comments translated. My headache was too bad last night to wait up for them.

What did I get from them? Well, first off that this decision was not made lightly and probably months, or longer than that, in the making.  Ryo had been working a lot with Kanjnai8 for quite a while now and acting at the same time, making it hard for NEWS to do things together. I think Kanjani8 would have slowed down their releases if Ryo still wasn’t thinking about leaving. As for Yamapi, I think he simply was more successful in his solo work than he thought he would be and finally decided to follow his best bro Jin going solo (not being mean or sarcastic here. I truly believe it). Because Ryo was thinking about leaving, why not he leave at the same time while he has the chance; like ripping a bandaid off. I don’t believe any of this Ryo and Yamapi fought stuff.

Second, the members are all very sorry for this happening … for the exception of Yamapi, in my opinion. I just didn’t get that from his comment because he didn’t even apologize at all. Ryo, I felt, had a apologetic tone because he said that he was burdening both groups by holding back CD release dates and such, just for him.

After reading the comments, I went to the Johnnys site and looked at the NEWS page. There were only 4 member’s faces there. That is when reality finally set in for me, but I did not cry. Johnnys is a business.  In the end, they do things that will only profit them. They decided that Ryo will be more profitable in Kanjani8 and acting, Yamapi will be more profitable solo, and that NEWS is STILL profitable with 4 members. Keep that in mind, guys. Johnnys could have just disbanded NEWS because the two golden boys left. Tegomass is popular, so they could have just stuck with them doing their thing, Koyama doing his news show, and Shige acting a bit here and there … but they did not.

I believe that NEWS will not be the same, but I beleive that we have to be positive about this. Maybe KoyaShige will finally debut? Who knows. The one thing that I do know is that change is a must and I have to stay positive that this will be the best thing for NEWS and Johnnys. It sucks that this happened, but I believe that something great will come out of this … like Johnnys finally having an international presence in places other than Asia. Watch out world, Johnnys has started going global!