BiSH was streaming their tour final “today” (I don’t care where you are in the world, 4:30 a.m. ET is unacceptable), and they made a pretty major announcement:

【速報!!】BiSH2016年5月4日にエイベックストラックスよりメジャーデビューが決定しました!!

— BiSHオフィシャル (@BiSHidol) January 19, 2016

That’s big news! And, like Ronald Reagan making a point about a budget bill, they used wonderfully outsized props to do it:

BiSHリキッド終わり。 またフリ素が増えてしまった、、、 pic.twitter.com/kjbtDz9AeR

— きま×BiSH (@Kima_BiSH) January 19, 2016

I’m going to look around a little bit to figure out exactly what this means (by which I mean, snoop around Twitter and talk to people who can, in fact, read Japanese), but it speaks well for BiSH’s longer-term viability. If they can make money, they’ll keep at it.

UPDATE: This came out just a little while ago.

So: What’s the release on May 4? Another album? Given that FAKE METAL JACKET is half reissues, that wouldn’t surprise me. Or they’ll reprint it. (Literally the worst thing about idols.) Or is it the Budokan show? Or both? Or something else? It wouldn’t make a ton of sense to be like “hey, on the eve of our second album’s debut, we announced that we signed with a major label” if there weren’t something significant planned for that.

Of course, this is Watanabe that we’re dealing with. It could be a marathon. It could be a reprise of the old BiS hugging events. It could be an ultimate idol battle with real swords. It could be a pornographic photobook with all of the nudity covered by dinosaur stickers. Pretty much everything’s on the table until we hear otherwise.

UPDATE #2: According to TGU, the Avex debut will be a single (great! also kind of a letdown!). Also some other interesting info in that article.