You may say that how I feel about the status of the group is only my opinion, but the observations that I have based my opinion on is also reality, so my opinion is not baseless, and so far I have yet to see any other hypothesis that stands more true against reality.
I have to disagree on your sentiment that Idoling has been around for too long for new fans to follow, because I myself have followed only since 3rd generation and I still got myself hooked so to speak, and there are plenty of fans who got into it from 4th generation as well as 5th generation, granted the number of fans may not be many, but Idoling never had gigantic amount of fan base to begin with. Knowing that I've been a fan for a while it might seem like the value and presence of 1st generation members are paramount and rightfully so, but to a new fan it might not matter as much because it's kind of hard to care about a member you never had the chance to know about so maybe such fans will think of 3rd generation as their primary generation to relate to. As far as appeal as an entire entity goes, I used to care as a group but not anymore because there are too many members now, and it's a bit weird to consider them in the same boat because they didn't join the group all at the same time. There's already an artificial form of segregation between different generations, and at different stages of growth phase as idols, so it would be unjust to see them under the same light.
Nobody's asking Idoling to equal or surpass AKB here, there's not going to be another AKB for a long time, all I'm saying is Idoling has more potential than just being a niche group. The way things are going though, it's far more likely that individual members will break out before the entire group does, such as how Kikuchi has done, I mean who in their right mind ever thought that Kikuchi would be the first one to break out before it happened? Not many I would say, so anything is possible, and knowing that there are members who are far more talented than Kikuchi in the group, I like my chances.
Yeah, there are negatives to being over-exposed without a doubt, but that's not for the fans to decide, Idoling members want to be more popular, shouldn't you support their determination instead of playing around with what I'd call a loser mentality of being content of not being popular for fearing what being popular may bring? Honestly, I'm not really that concerned about gaining popularity, I just think Idoling has more to offer than being stuck as a niche group.
You mentioned about HP being over-exposed, but would they even be around still if they weren't over exposed in the first place? Your argument that the glass half empty is just as good as glass half full is a totally illogical thinking, that's the equivalent of saying 2nd place is as good as 1st place, no it isn't. Being 2nd place may bring good enough things, but it's still not going to be as good as what being 1st place would bring, the negatives of being 1st still far outweigh the positives of being 2nd place by a million miles.
Your statement that Japan will get tired of idols after AKB is pure speculation, has no basis in reality, and not good enough reason to be content with where Idoling is right now.
I have to disagree about Idoling not adopting AKB tactics, c'mon, Idoling does individual hand-shake events too, sure they don't go all out like AKB does, but just stop pretending that Idoling is innocent in that regard, they are not. I'm not criticizing them about it though, hand-shake has become a standard practice now for any idol groups, I can only curse AKB for it.
Wrong again, my favorite members are getting plenty of spotlight, like I said in the other post, Kaede, Yuna, and Asahi gets to sing a coupling song in a new single, I should be thrilled because they are my favorites, but I'm not because deep inside I know that they are not the best representation of the group's singing talent. My criticism of the group does not stem from such selfish reasons.
Can you really say with a straight face that 4th generation is just as good at variety than 2nd or 3rd are? I really can't, thus there's a significant decline in quality as far as variety goes. 4th generation has been doing absolutely nothing for the first 2 years, and finally in their 3rd year Yuna and Ruka is slowly developing into something decent.