Due to an ongoing conversation with Kerrie about some stuff that we can pull into the Friday Fun series, I’ve had idol performance on my mind a lot lately, and, while this is a music website first and foremost, dance is a pretty big part of the idol experience, and the idea of loudols doing choreographed, athletic routines being a perfectly normal thing is probably an important step toward normalizing idol for the normies.
So! Last week, the Monday Match Game featured a hip-hop beatdown of epic proportions, as the original Koutei Camera Girl flat-out smoked Girl Zwei and Gal by a cumulative 2:1 margin, thereby earning the right to face off against Drei after they debut and get out some material. Good times!
That was a question of beats; this is a question of steps. And twirls. And stuff. And while there are plenty of idols who are good-enough dancers, there are those who flat-out excel at it and have the ability to move on stage and tell a physical story to the music. And among those, there are those for whom dance is the very center of their game.
This week’s participants aren’t just at the top of the world of idol dance; they have something very important in common, too. Yes, friends, this week’s Match Game pits dance-unit-turned-idol against dance-unit-turned-idol. In the red corner, hailing from Osaka and led by the soulfullest voice in idol, a former high school dance unit that added vocals and never looked back; in the blue corner, from some posh boutique that we aren’t cool enough to enter, a former pro dance unit that added vocals, immediately became a thing and is about to make their major debut.
Similar backgrounds, similar timelines and a whole mess of muscle control. When the lords of idol dance enter, only one will survive! Continue reading →