First, disclosure: ZOC’s official Twitter gave me a full-on heart attack the other day when I was idly just trying to clear out the notifications and I saw … a blog post from Seiko without context! DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNN. But naw, it was nothing, no graduation announcement or a “that was fun, what next” or anything, just words of praise and encouragement from the boss behind it all. Yes, the legend herself is still part of the group she founded.

And on that note, given that their first single released yesterday, it only made sense for ZOC to release an MV for the B-side!

How do I put this? That’s a very Oomori Seiko song of a certain vintage; it’s also a nice tonal shift from “family name”, which itself was also a very Seiko piece of work, and as long as she continues to be the primary songwriter for this project, I guess we’ll see a lot of this kind of thing that reflects her career’s versatility as well as her (wonderful) talent, and doing it in the context of making an idol group that’s her group and also like the best group.

Oh, and the MV’s a cool complement to the A-side too.

I opined (and remain cautiously optimistic) that ZOC’s going to do about as well as Seiko wants them to, at least from a yen-and-whatever-yen-cents-are standpoint, and while the 40,000 Twitter followers aren’t a great indication for a number of reasons — the boss’s baked-in fan base being a big reason for that — this MV has 150,000 views in a day. I’ll let that stand without additional comment. Yeah, it would’ve been cheating a little bit to say that this was a big breakout candidate for 2019, but wew lad, this is what a breakout looks like. Their next step, which I pray distorts a guitar or two, might blow the dang lid off.