C-UTE

In 2002, the Hello! Project, a collective of female idol singers in Japan, held an audition for tweens and pre-teen girls to join the group. This culminated (after 30,000 or so auditions) in the Hello! Project Kids, a 15-girl strong group of ultra-saccharine singers and dancers. While the group in its larger form performed well, there was a decision to break the group into smaller subgroups, similar to the approach taken by Morning Musume (the adult stars of the Hello! Project stable), who occasionally subdivided into smaller constituents. The "Kids" were thus broken up into (...