Your Homicidols Weekender #262

It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the U-S-of-A, which can only mean one thing: it’s the unofficial start of Homicidols XXXXX of the Year Awards season!! We (meaning “mostly Kerrie”) are wrapping up things behind the scenes, so keep an eye out for your opportunity to nominate picks for Best Album, MV, Single, and Debut as well as Saddest Graduation, Disbandment, Disappointment and many other categories. We also have a new award this year: Best/Worst Unit Name. It looks to be a very competitive category, but I’ve got good money on STAiNY.  

Since the awards recognize work released from December to November, this is the final week of eligibility for this year. Here are some last minute entries:

BLACKNAZARENE has a new single, new costumes, new live DVD and a new MV.

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RILISREVERSE Liberate Themselves

Everybody loves a story, even with an idol group. Anyone can sing a song about a journey ending or a long battle, but when the group has been doing so much more than releasing songs and performing lives, those lyrics feel so much more lifelike. And this new RILISREVERSE mini-album? Absolutely bursting with life.

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Your Homicidols Weekender #261

Hello and welcome to this week’s Homicidols Weekender! If you don’t know me I’m Cal and I’ve never written one of these before despite being here for 2 years. So um… hello!

As we move in to the end of the year it’s almost time for, you guessed it, end of year lists! Almost that is. We’ve got a few things to squeeze in before things are finalised because our favourite unending profit generating machine is still pumping out content for us to consume. And consume we shall! Content around here has been a little sparse for the past fortnight because various team members, unfortunately, have lives outside of the idolosphere. But, that’s one of the great things about being an idol fan, something is constantly happening!  Even when we can’t write, you guys are constantly tuned in to your favourites, posting about your favourites, informing us about your favourites.  Aint it wonderful?

That was a wee bit of a tangent but hey, Maniac liked to ramble so let’s consider this my turn to fan the flames. A lot happened in the past week, so let’s get into it.

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Minna no Kodomochan are Back with a Bleak and Brilliant Single, “The Final Blinkings”

Minna no Kodomochan have been relatively quiet during the pandemic period. Sole member Cinnamon has kept busy with almost-weekly online cheki sessions and some appearances as a solo idol. She has also performed a handful of lives fronting Kodomochan over the past two years or so, but other than last December’s single, “Don’t Lie About my Existence”, we’ve not seen any new music in quite some time.

That all changed last midnight when Everyone’s Children blessed us with, “The Final Blinkings”, an hypnotically lurid piece of dark wave and doom metal accompanied by an equally mesmerizing, yet disturbing, MV.

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Your Homicidols Weekender #260

I have been on vacation this past week so it would seem like I have plenty of time to keep up on idol world news. Unfortunately, between travel time and spending two days at Head in the Clouds festival (during which my phone turned into a incommunicative brick) I feel like I’m way behind and may never catch up.  I would just check out The Weekender to bring myself up to speed except that I’m now responsible for putting the thing together (with the help of Team, who were equally overwhelmed this week). So now we find ourselves in a bit of an ouroboros of idol news. 

I guess what I’m saying is, sorry if I miss anything this week. A LOT happened and I wasn’t always paying attention. Here’s some of what I did catch:

Sari, our Eternal Queen, has blessed us with a new release.

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Gyunou Fest’s Last Live at Studio Coast

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Good News: The Autumn Gyu Agricultural Festival is being held this weekend featuring many of our favorite units like MIGMA SHELTER, NaNoMoRaL, and Yanakoto Sotto Mute!!

Bad News: It’s the final Gynou Fest to be held at Studio Coast before the venerable venue closes for good.  

Good News: It’s being livestreamed on Nico Nico!! 

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Show Report: ATARASHII GAKKO! U.S. Debut at Head in the Clouds

It has been a rough couple of years since COVID curtailed two of my favorite past-times (travel and live music) and my absolute favorite thing (traveling to see live music). This past weekend’s trip to Los Angeles for the U.S. debut of ATARASHII GAKKO! at the Head in the Clouds festival was both my first trip and my first music festival in over two years.  

So many things have changed!!

Not only is travel and the festival-going experience itself radically different from the pre-COVID era, I realized that the nature of these show reports also needs to evolve since the last time I wrote one up. The recent ubiquity of concert livestreams (perhaps the only positive outcomes of the global pandemic) means that most of you readers who were interested in seeing the show have already done so via Amazon, Twitch or a bootleg upload on YouTube. This relieves me of my pre-COVID responsibility of composing a written portrait of the show itself, so I’ll focus on the elements of the festival experience that didn’t get captured on video (including a surprise close encounter with AG! themselves: READ ON!).   Continue reading

Your Homicidols Weekender #259

Our Team Homicidols chieftain Daemon is out doing cool stuff in real life, so this Weekender edition intro is being guest-written by myself, (supreme nothing) who feels very weird writing this in third person.

I’ll admit to ya’ll a little something, I don’t always get to read every single article on this site in real time, and sometimes I miss things on here entirely, but one thing I always make sure I do read is the Weekender every Saturday morning, usually on the back porch with some coffee. I’m a lover of ritual, and I find that consistency calming and relaxing. I enjoy the Weekender because not only is it a nifty little recap of things I may have missed, but I also enjoy the intertwining of everyday existential philosophy that gets mixed in with all the idol chatter as one reads the intros. I don’t know if any of you get the same feeling, but I hope you do, or at least get your own positive thing out of this every Saturday. 

What is this blog to you readers? I’d imagine it’s the “news” for some of you, and maybe for others it’s “hot takes”, and maybe oftentimes it’s just good silly fan-driven fun. You can get all of those things from here I’d like to think. But for me, (even before I started contributing) this place has been a little bit of comfort food in an occasionally frustratingly loud and anxious world. The Team means the world to me, and this community makes me all-too-happy to share silly/weird/fun/dumb/inspring/quirky things that we can enjoy together. I love the sense of belonging in our mutual fandom love as much as I like actual idols. Thank goodness for all of you. Thank goodness for idols. Thank goodness for idols bringing us together. 

It’s the weekend. Let’s do this! 

Let’s start with this literally-just-added-at -the-last-minute bit of news… Yurasmile joining APOKALIPPPS!!!! Can you think of a more perfect casting ? Congrats to Yura, congrats to the group, and congrats to us for getting to live on the same planet with them…

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SIPP’s Ui Makes a Solo Play for MV-of-the-Year with “Wonderful Trip”

I’ve been trying to wrap up work and get packed so I can get on a plane for the first time in two years and fly out to Los Angeles for ATTARASHI GAKKO!’s U.S. debut at Head in the Clouds Festival.  Unfortunately, I keep get distracted by Twitter notifications of idols doing idol things. By far, the most disruptive item has been the unanticipated unveiling of this solo project from Ui of SIPP. It’s been so disruptive in fact that I’m putting my travel preparations on hold entirely so I can bang out this post on Ui’s solo debut, appropriately entitled (for my purposes anyway), “WONDERFUL TRIP”.

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QUIZ: Spot The Real Idol Groups

There are many things to love about idols and one of those things is the peculiar names that some of the groups go by.  From BANANA MONKEYS to KAQRIYO TERROR ARCHITECT, we’ve seen a lot of these over the years but in 2021 we have noticed  more weirdly titled units than ever.

We have selected ten of the more ludicrous eye-catching ones and put them in this quiz.  Hell, we could have done twenty but we’re sure you’re busy people.  Can you find the genuine idol groups?