KASHiWACK Cataclysm

/ Cal

If you haven’t been keeping up with the news lately, this might come as a major shock: AKB48’s Kashiwagi Yuki (also known as Yukirin) joined every single WACK group at once! How do some people find the time, honestly.

It probably goes without saying that you know who AKB48 are – they’ve been the nation’s girl group for what seems like several lifetimes now. Trying to explain them in a short paragraph wouldn’t come nearly close enough to doing justice to their brand staying power, iconography and sheer entertainment value. In fact, without AKB, we might not even have many idols in the way that we do now given that they really patented the idea of “idols you can meet.” While the brand is everlasting, the fact it’s also ever changing throughout the different generations of girls means that some have been able to see more success than others, with idols such as Watanabe Mayu, Maeda Atsuko and, of course, Kashiwagi Yuki, making a real name for themselves.

That’s where the KASHiWACK collab comes in. 7 groups, 7 singles, 7 music videos. There’s so many that it would be impractical to talk about them all at once but as a whole, it’s been exactly what you’d expect. This is not only a collab between Yukirin and WACK but a chance for AKB fans to basically speedrun WACK as a company and get a taste of everything. Naturally, BiSH released a ballad rock song just as BiS released something pop-punky, ASP released some grainy punk rock and GO TO THE BEDS released some fun industrial rock. For the naysayers who nay and say that they don’t really know what each group is doing then well, here’s your chance to get accquainted with the current state of things and stop complaining in the quote tweets of articles.

Because this is something from WACK, the antics didn’t just stop there. An AKB-like election was also held to determine which members would get to join a special one off group in the style of SAiNT SEX or HOLY SHiTS, with Yukirin as the lead. Complete with a single too. The special WACK SELECT 7 election was held throughout the past month, culminating in a very fun surprise indeed.

YUI GA DOCKSON ONLY WON

That’s right! GO TO THE BEDS’ strange siren took first place. After coming last in WACK’s last popularity ranking so many years ago, Yui Ga Dockson is now the queen bee. Her, Tsuki, Yuyu, Atsuko, Yua, Miki and Chitti are the women of the hour. Smashing the idea that we’d be getting BiSH with a few tagalongs, we got most of GANG PARADE back instead. We do love a good surprise.

Oh, and Nainai, YU-Ki EMPiRE and Lingling will form a special “shit unit” for the single b-side after having their names drawn out of a box. It just never ends does it?

So, that was how WACK saved christmas after ruining it by announcing BiSH would break up. The songs are pretty good too! Hop on over to Yukirin’s Spotify page to stream them, or her YouTube channel to watch all of the videos and wonder how much of the budget went on ASP.