Talk:SHINING LINE*/@comment-14175765-20140718002226/@comment-10901459-20140719180203

A japanese idol has a limited time to be one...

Once they reach a certain age, they are forced to retire as one (idols can only be idols during their teenage years), this retirement is called "graduation", and so they are cut off from their projects as idols.

After that they can either leave the music industry or stay in there as a solo artist...depends on their lifes choices...etc.

And yes, it is because of the rankings...in the anime they were replaced with otome and seira because seira is important to the plot, while otome is the starlight queen and wouldnt be logical if she wasnt there.