Hot Damn, FRUITPOCHETTE Is Coming Back!

/ Homicidol Maniac

Cancel the next installment in the Let’s Remember Some Idols series, because the subject of that installment doesn’t need remembering. Not anymore. No, the Year of Idol Resurrections surges on. They’re going to be live, step-dancing to power metal riffs right in our faces, knocking out dual-titled tunes on some of the best-packaged records in music. They’re (hopefully!) going to grab idol itself by the collar of its lazy knock-off shirt and scream in its face and remind a bunch of people who’s really bad around here.

It’s for an indeterminate number of gigs, and probably indeterminate number of releases, but FRUITPOCHETTE, as both good and loud as it gets with practically zero contrivance, a jolt of power no matter what they do, will be back in August, and with the original duo reunited:

As Mina clears it up, exactly how active they are will depend on her health —

— but godDAMN, you guys, this is what excitement feels like. Real excitement, not ginned-up-for-the-sake-of-it excitement. That year-long run of Shiori gamely soldiering on with Rum (for like two whole weeks!) and then Kyuri, nothing really ever quite clicking, the power and raw coolness of the original getting lost in attempts to be something that wasn’t there anymore … that can be in the past now. They’re even still apparently under the auspices of Mad Magazine, which I would have thought very unlikely, but their video greeting is right on the HKFC channel:


Which is funny, because the two of them are probably the same cumulative age as all of the current HKFC

I was curious as to whether Shiori would be continuing her solo work, but she seems to be as all-in as a person can be on a not-really-full-time project, given that she graduated from her other company yesterday. Mina, of course, was basically cosplaying her way through life to avoid the performance rigors that her kidney condition made so uncomfortable.

I’m not asking for much, but maybe an EP of all-out new material and a couple of MVs? FRUITPOCHETTE has long been on my short list of idol acts to sell to Westerners, so fresh fuel on that fire would be a big get.

No matter how it turns, though, it’s just genuinely great to see these two not just reunited, but under the same banner that had them together in the first place. For all of the chatter about idols being friends, being close, you really can’t ever know for sure; with these two, it’s clear as day that they care for each other and loved working together.

And idol needs FRUITPOCHETTE. The metal side of the scene has, with a handful of notable exceptions, always suffered from a host of maladies — too much melodic, too much kawaii, an inability to neatly click extreme elements together. FRUITPOCHETTE coming back, hopefully with both guns blazing from the backs of Rob Zombie-inspired hellacycles, would raise the stakes for everybody and inject some much-needed, validity-providing quality into what people on their personal voyages of idol discovery see as exemplary.

If you can be here, be here:

If you need convincing: