Banner Image: MAZARI.
It was a strangely quiet week. While some of our favorite art, shoegaze, and dream pop idols dropped new releases, most of the louder and darker units seemed to take it easy, perhaps in preparation for next weekend and Halloween, one of the biggest holidays in the idol calendar.
Let’s try this one again:
You may have seen a half-baked version of this article post on Tuesday. I wish that I could say it was all an illusion but, no, it was just another one of my screw ups. I could have sworn that I had calendared it to publish on Thursday but, instead, it went up on Tuesday well before it was ready and I had to scrub it from existence.
It is one of the enduring mysteries of this site: while there are any number of qualities that contribute to our status of being the longest running English language chika idol blog on the planet, competence is certainly not among them.
Banner Image: NARUKAMI.
It’s been a perfectly normal week in the chika idol scene meaning a big unit called it quits, a storied idol announced her intention to vanish into the void, and fantastic new songs and MVs dropped to keep making it all worthwhile. All of that is below, but first:
Banner image: DorothyDrop.
Two weeks into October, it’s firmly turned into that time of year when everyone else starts flirting with the idea of “dark aesthetics,” while the chika idol scene just shrugs and says, “Welcome to our whole wide world.” With Halloween creeping closer, there’s no shortage of chilling tracks, moody MVs, and ominous member announcements to keep us entertained and/or traumatized. After a while in the chika idol fandom it’s hard to tell the difference.
Well, look at us. Almost ten years old. Only a handful of idol groups make it that long and, honestly, we’re just as surprised as you are. What started as a questionable idea (“let’s write about underground idols from half-way around the world who perform in and speak a language that we don’t even understand; how hard can it be?”) somehow mutated into a decade-long obsession that’s eaten up countless weekends, introduced us to innumerable friends from around the world, and exposed us to a legion of idols and oshis and losses that we’ll never emotionally recover from.
In that time, we’ve watched the scene evolve, implode, and reinvent itself more times than we can count and, somehow, our humble corner of the internet has managed to survive right along with it. So, as we hit the big one-oh, we thought we’d take a look back at our journey in cold, hard numbers.
Banner Image: MØZU.
It’s October! This is one of our favorite months of the year because it contains one of our favorite holidays: Idol Halloween. Idols are already getting into the Halloween spirit!
