User blog comment:Hielmiez/Aikatsu Friends! Next Aikatsu series?/@comment-34477788-20180127012708

My apologize going sound rather entitled but i can understand why Bandai releasing Aikatsu Friends.When International still optimistic about Aikatsu stars but in Japan Aikatsu stars seen beyond repair and every further development/marketing is lose-lose situation for Bandai.

To elaborate:
 * Aikatsu Stars apparently really unpopular to target audience (children)
 * Apparently children dislike change to arcade (it seems the one who keep the arcade alive is adult?)
 * children is also not interested towards Aikatsu Stars anime
 * in the end this two factor lend the toys sales flop
 * Even Akari generation do rather poorly Aikatsu is still in Bandai top 10 IP sales however when Bandai sales report on year 2016-2017 Aikatsu drop from in Bandai top 10 IP sales which the year Aikatsu stars run.

About Aria: It seems Aria have rather poor reception in japan considering the low hype surrounding her and rather low fanart count.

Interesting point about Aikatsu Friends:
 * compared Aikatsu and Aikatsu Stars target demographic which is 6-12 years old Aikatsu, Aikatsu Friends demographic is 6-10 years old
 * Also compared Aikatsu arcade cabinet transition to Aikatsu stars arcade cabinet and pripara to pri-chan arcade cabinet upgrade, Aikatsu friends using same arcade cabinet with stars no transition no upgrade at all.

So in conclusion: I suspect Friends originally going be generation change like Ichigo to Akari generation, however Stars increasingly poor reception led to complete reboot (hence no arcade cabinet change) to disassociation it with Stars. I theorizing Aikatsu Friends conception begin around Aria reveal (which is around 6 months ago) Thank you for reading and sorry if i have poor grammar.