Month: November 2018

Yeah, PiGU Will Rise Again!

/ Homicidol Maniac

I think Chris spoke for all of us (who were previously enormous marks of that bizarre Osaka-based cosplay cafe group that couldn’t ever decide on a sound and definitely couldn’t ever decide on a membership for more than a month at a time) when he tweeted this yesterday:

What he was so excited about? What he so earnestly wanted to share? That PiGU’S GONNA AT LEAST KINDA COME BACK INTO OUR LIVES YEAH!

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A Fun for When You Have That Uneasy Feeling about Something

/ Kerrie

It’s almost December already? Just like 99% of my oshis, this past year has just disappeared before my eyes! Soon we’re all going to be drowning in Best Of 2018 preparations! But don’t get too excited for the Holidays yet, we’ve got to cry over last week’s tragic auditions first.

I swear, with the news of BiSH starting a new show where they explore Japan’s ins-and-outs, I was so so tempted to do another WACK-inspired fun this week about idols exploring the hidden cultures of other countries. But:

  1. Having two WACK funs in a row has been banned ever since I got that anonymous letter that said “Coco’s next if you don’t stop this”
  2. It would literally just be me, Salem and Chris spamming the “Necroma eating Greggs” photo and nothing else

So thank goodness that the newly designated “Homicidols Official Target For All Jokes About Heavy Membership Turnovers” have had a hectic couple of weeks, especially this past weekend, bringing in plenty of potential meme fodder in the process. Nothing ever seems predictable about this group, but god damn if that’s going to stop us from trying to predict what’ll happen next! Continue reading →

This Might Be the Most Interesting Song You’ll Hear Today

/ Homicidol Maniac

I’d say “this week,” but let’s be real, that Yanamyu EP drops tomorrow and the sun very may well cease to cross the sky when that happens. Heaven help us all.

Instead, let’s focus on what’s directly in front of us! And what’s directly in front of us is the kind of astonishingly perfect glory that happens best in idol, when genres collide and tempos are upbeat and the only way to describe the mood that comes over you is “great”:

That’s yes-it’s-still-just-them prog idols xoxo EXTREME with friends MELLOW GREEN WONDER performing a song from that collaboration record that I mentioned a while back. It is aptly named!

Them’s Fightin’ Idols: Meet SKIRMISH

/ Homicidol Maniac

2018 has been a banner year for idol debuts, at least in the chika scene and among those whose sound could best be described as “rock-inspired.” At one point near the end of the spring debut season, it was like new units doing cool things were falling out of the trees. I could not have approved more. The only problem, especially now as the year draws to a close and especially as the Homicidols Best Of 2018 timeline shuts the door literally tomorrow, is that I’m terrified of missing out of somebody who warrants real-deal attention.

Take for example SKIRMISH, who are the entire point of this post! They debuted less than a month ago and are already responsible for one of my favorite tracks of the last couple of months: Continue reading →

No, Melon Batake a go go Doesn’t Have an Off Switch

/ Homicidol Maniac

Game gotta respect game, and who else in idol, period, maybe ever, brings quite the same level of total creative vision as Soze and Melon Batake a go go? The answer is pretty much nobody! It is right and good to worry about the state of that vision anytime anybody from the depths of chikadom gets picked up by a major label, because of course said label is going to want to direct the show to an extent, but if anybody can brute-force their way through some meddling producer’s insistence on being right, it’s these girls.

And think of the benefits! Like, it’s possible that Melon will, after demonstrating a strong business case and projecting a viable ROI through omnichannel (zzzzzzzzzzzzz) DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB AND MAKING MONEY, get some extra lucre to do neat things with. I am, of course, in this case electing to be an optimist.

But hey! There’s been new Melon stuff lately, in preparation for that move out of the indies, and there’s more of it now! Continue reading →

We Review Things: “It’s a SAKA-SAMA World”!

/ supremenothing / 2 Comments

SAKA-SAMA have been something of a favorite with Team Homicidols since they first formed in 2016, but at the same time, they’ve remained a perplexing enigma of an idol unit. Constantly shifting membership rosters are always part of this territory, but this group seems especially prone to changing it’s line-up with each passing season, with only Kokone and Dr. Mahiru providing consistency as it’s founding members. And the music of SAKA-SAMA, primarily billed as “Low-Fi Dream Pop”, is in truth equally unpredictable, with a wide variety of unique genres and styles that run the gamut of shoegazey indie-pop to oddball quirky country songs and spoken word pieces, making it a rather difficult task to describe what exactly the group does. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint by any means, I’m just trying to clarify why writing about TRASH-UP!!’s in-house idol group is well… quite a challenge. 

So after a couple of years of compilation tracks, EPs, singles, and one live recording, SAKA-SAMA have finally released an actual, honest-to-goodness full length album, titled, appropriately enough, “It’s a SAKA-SAMA World’! I’ve been excitedly anticipating this release since the moment it was announced, and I eagerly snatched it from OTOTOY right away. I came to realize quickly that this is an album that, just like anything related to SAKA-SAMA, has certain unique traits that can’t be summed up after a breezy listening session. This is what we call a “grower”, or a “slow-burn”, wherein one must dig in deeply to truly reap the rewards of the listening experience, and develop an opinion based on multiple takes instead of relying on easy gratification. 

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The NEMLESSS Horrors That Await Us

/ Homicidol Maniac

I don’t want to speak for anybody else, but yours truly is still in recovery from that whole Sari’s-moving-on-with-her-life’s-work thing, so NECRONOMIDOL gets me feeling a little bit jaded at the moment. This of course was delightfully ripped asunder by the revelation that:

  1. There’s a new release in the works
  2. It’s coming in December
  3. There’ll be a release live
  4. It involves none other than the NEMLESSS solo power electro-idol herself, Utane Yuki

/record scratch

What?!

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Schools Old and New Having Themselves a Nice Collaboration

/ Homicidol Maniac

Good gods, this song:

So that’s Atarashii Gakkou no Leaders — Leaders of the New School — “dancing” for URBANGARDE’s latest, which just so happens to be coinciding with their announced transition to the “Shoujo Era” (the kind of thing that comes up when you’re in a group chat with officially all-over-the-place Japanese music hobbyists!) (this also makes so much sense in context!). It’s not URBANGARDE’s first mix-up with idols that we’ve even covered here in the venerable HTML margins of Homicidols Dot Com, nor is it the first pass at Leaders, though it’s obnoxiously removed from previous connections with them because they used to be region-blocked to death.

Anyway, that’s a wild-ass song! Depending on your tastes, possibly the best (or at least most interesting) idol-related collaboration this year. Certainly memorable! I feel like Suzuka (leader of Leaders!) needs to have her face cast in pliable bronze or something, the better that those expressions are preserved for posterity.

This Is a Good Opportunity to Get into Re:LAYz

/ Homicidol Maniac

No! I’m a living and breathing “Life comes at your fast” meme now. Though I’ll give myself a little bit of credit: I was vaguely aware that something Re:LAYz-related was afoot! Man, I miss being able to blithely cruise through Twitter like in the good ol’ days.

Anyway! Let’s get down to business, which is now officially a week late and so doesn’t qualify as “news” except in the most oblique of John Oliver-esque senses, which is to say not at all! Except that, like, records indicate that this unit has never been Homicidoled before! Continue reading →

The Hell Is Happening with THE BANANA MONKEYS

/ Kerrie

Banamon, please, please, I already wrote one baffling piece on you this week, stop fueling me.

Oh, god. At this point all I can really do for introductions to this Hell-group is…

PREVIOUSLY ON THE BANANA MONKEYS IDOL DUNGEON…

PHEW. Alright. Continue reading →