The 2019 Homicidols Corenament Elite Eight Is Great, So Let’s Cut That in Half

Dang, you guys, this year’s Corenament — sans the usual convoluted rules, sudden twists and manipulative attempts to drag things out — has tons of cool turns anyway. I like it!

Yesterday, we wrapped up the Sweet Sixteen (parts 1 and 2). I was out watching some of the regular men’s tournament and not-enjoying having all sense of goodness and right trod upon several times in quick succession. It was rough! But not as rough as seeing quite a few personal favorites get eliminated from this annual extravaganza.

Today begins our Elite Eight, to run through tomorrow before next weekend’s big Final Four showdown. This is no tricks, no frills, just straight-up MV vs. MV battles for supremacy and the coveted championship belt fanfic post. Oh, and being treated like royalty by editorial policy, too, I guess. Continue reading

Your Homicidols Weekender #124

Good morning, and a very happy Saturday to you! I hope that everybody had a good week — idol certainly did, and between this and all the rest of the posts and of course the Corenament, it’s like we barely scratched the surface. It’s a good time of year.

Of course, this is 2019, so the run of absolutely gut-punching graduations continues to mock and dismay us. Honestly, who’s even next? Papermaiden mentioned in the Team chat the other day that Yotsu from Zenkimi would be the next according to how things have gone in her list of favorites, and you talk about a sucker punch, that’s what Yotsu’s graduation would be like. Aina. Any of several Mashir/los. Beni. Ano. The Goddess Among Us that we’re allowed to call First Summer Uika. No, please, thanks.

Anyway, let’s focus on the good stuff. The Fun, for instance, is a very good fun! Also the Corenament, which I’ve decided to run for the Elite Eight today and tomorrow instead of just tomorrow, largely because it’s accurate and also because I’m lazy and also because traffic dips on the weekends, and far be it from me to not have lots of votes for something as important as the Elite Eight. Oh, and some other posts! It’ll be great!

Spring Does Not Suit You

You can get a couple of pre-downloads from PassCode’s new album:

Which is like pretty much moot because the thing is out in a couple of days, but still

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The 2019 Homicidols Corenament Sweet Sixteen, Part the Second

Holy crap, you guys, yesterday’s Sweet Sixteen first half was awesome! Zenkimi won out after a furious (if by “furious” I mean “six hours long”) comeback, BiSH narrowly pulled out a tight one against JyuJyu … and YONEKO was the day’s Upset Special, humiliating BBTS after a back-and-forth battle. It was so wild that Minna no Kodomo-chan drowning NaNoMoRaL in a bathtub (metaphorically!) was actually the most shocking result, and it shouldn’t have been, because these things get seeded the way they do for a reason, kids.

Anyway, the bracket now looks like:

And today’s Sweet Sixteen second half is going to be an absolute bloodbath! Continue reading

Eat, Drink and be Merry Merli

When we heard Merry Merli were coming back, there wasn’t a lot to go on, just a short clip saying they would restart on March 13.  So what happened with that, I hear no-one asking?  Their Twitter got reactivated, a website appeared, and the members of the rebooted Merry Merli were introduced.  But I missed all that, until a new MV dropped yesterday.

That’s “Drink me, Eat me” and isn’t it pretty?  I spent my first play through trying to work out why one of the girls looked so familiar and trying to work out what group I might have seen her in before.  Turns out I’m stupid and that group was…Merry Merli, as Maria Otonashi was in the group the first time around and is now the centre — and the producer!  Together with her new cohorts Yumeka and Elise they bring you a group with the theme “Alice in the bright and the dark side” and doesn’t that sound delightful?

Sorry metalheads, if this is all a bit soft and girly.  They can do dark and spooky too, let me find you an old example …

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A Palate-cleansing-but-Brain-Busting Friday Fun

I was going to avoid Twitter this week. I wanted to avoid this audition. But noooo. All the big news just happened to arrive this week! Necroma’s Europe tour, my favourite idol duo of all time releasing lost material after 14 years, my current favourite idol duo releasing material after about year and a halfish, and I think Kamiya Saki just drew fanart of something I tweeted last year. So I came back, I saw the tweets about the audition, I wept for Trivago a second time in a row, it was chaos! But how correct were your responses?

Speaking of WACK, we all know WACK stands for “Watanabe Artistic Creative Corporation” BiSH stands for “Brand-new Idol SHiT”, BiS is “Brand-new Idol Society”, and amiinA stands for “Awake mind into ideal naked Avalon” (according to the mysterious stranger that submitted this week’s hashtag into the Friday Fun suggestion box I keep saved for whenever I forget to write something up again) but what about our other favourites? Yeah, PassCode might SEEM like a straightforward name for an idol group, but who knows if it really means “Please Ask Sally’s Secretary, Caitlyn, On Data Entry”? And what the hell does Gu-Gu LULU even mean!? I need answers and I need them now!

This week’s hashtag is #IdolAcronyms and … sorry about the WACK Audition guys. Yikes.

We Wanted This Bed-In Post to Include Lots of Innuendo But Maniac Won’t Let Anybody Have Any Fun, But Letting You Know about the Bed In Album Would Have Been Pretty Funny

If you haven’t discovered Bed-In yet, now would be a pretty good time to look into them. I wrote a bit about them last year, but 2018 was a fairly quiet year for the duo, as they spent more time touring and being best friends with First Summer Uika than they did releasing any new material.

Thankfully, next month they’re finally releasing their third album, and what better concept for an 80s-themed idol duo to come out with than a whole album of 80s J-Pop covers!

We haven’t got any full-length music videos yet, but some of the songs have already been made available on digital platforms. And if you’re not sure if you’re ready to open Spotify yet, well, Bed In also uploaded some not-quite-MVs-but-not-quite-commercials (teasers?) for said songs on their YouTube:

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The 2019 Homicidols Corenament Sweet Sixteen, Part the First

Welcome back, friends, to the 2019 Homicidols Corenament! Last week’s opening round of 32 was … well, it had some interesting results. You can check out the first go and the second, plus overtime in what would have been the biggest upset in Corenament history had not somebody stuffed the ballot box Kaqriyo Terror Architect hit their buzzer-beater and advanced. Ah, March Madness!

The bracket:

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You Ain’t Scene Nothing Yet!

Hands up who wants to see a new video of a pair of idols getting chased around by a pink hippo and playing cardboard instruments to an upbeat thrashy punk tune which then segues into something like listening to nursery rhymes on flu medication? Well, put your hands down again because this isn’t a “new video”, it came out six weeks ago and if you’re cooler than me, perhaps you may have already seen it.

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There’s a Lot of Zenkimi Going on in This New Zenkimi MV

Well if I didn’t pick a great day to commute in early! It’s been a while since the original MV release to support Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da’s double A-side single, when they gave us the very good “Romance Sect”, and in the intervening time there’s been an absolute rash of photography from what was obviously MV-related but at no point indicated when or even if such a thing would be delivered. I honestly started to wonder if it would be a DVD feature instead.

It’s not! Finally, today, they give us “Natural Born Independent” in all its glory:

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NECROMA’s 2019 European Tour: Vampire Castles, Loch Ness and HYPER JAPAN

The NECRONOMIDOL EUROPEAN INQUISITION 2019 announcement has dropped, short on dates but full of intriguing details. For those of you within affordable travel distance of London, the one date you will certainly want to save is the mid-July weekend of HYPER JAPAN.

NECROMA will be joining the distinguished ranks of former HYPER JAPAN alumni including Yoshiki and Toshi (X Japan), Dempagumi.inc, friends of Homicidols Mutant Monster and Charisma.com, and site favorite LADYBABY.

In all, Necroma confirmed eight summer gigs in six European countries, including a couple of out-of-the-way spots with some rather esoteric connections. Continue reading