One of my favorite things about the idol scene is how hard people will stan for things that they personally love. Brian, for instance, is one of the world’s great champions of Avandoned; Papermaiden will fight anybody who would besmirch the good name of Tsurezure, especially Shidare. I can appreciate that level of dedication! I can also appreciate its ability to bring somebody back from the brink — in this case, Viz Major, who looked like he was leaving us to become a hopeless K-pop knob, came home to the dulcet tones of monogatari:
I also really like it when a thing that I got to say would happen then happens, and nobody graduates in between!
That’s, like, the entire history of Kentacore turned into a single song that’s most redolent of “ODD FUTURE” but is carrying notes from all over the SCRAMBLES catalogue (I hear “BiSBiS” in particular). These are of course pretty much all offshoots of “primal.”, which itself is probably an extension of something else that Jun or Kenta wrote in their pre-idol days. I can’t even be mad — if your formula works that well, of course you’ll keep doing it. And at least in the case of monogatari, it’s a different unit doing the performance.
But enough about the dang writers! I want to think about the idols; the former Harajuku Monogatari is in that weird popularity bracket between “could headline a lot of chika shows”, “will be at most significant idol events” and “can do endless one-mans like Codomomental”, as misshapen a triangular bit of logic as any you’ll find. One would hope, though, that they’re hewing closer to that “significant idol events” spot, at least for now, because to drop this single in the aftermath of TIF — and with @JAM right around the corner — is a good and smart move. I wasn’t there and didn’t get to watch any streams, so whether monogatari is one of the breakouts from the fest is an unknown. A tried-and-true tune like this (and considering that the members didn’t embarrass themselves with it) can be the kind of kick in the pants that helps idols break into that fan set of mainstream-like loudol.
