So Daemon comes into the Team chat a few weeks ago, or maybe it was Papermaiden (they’re hard to tell apart, see, because they both stan Tsurezure), comes barging in all like “hey, check it, hikikomori idols!” and there was much chuckling and gawking and it was a really good time. Except from yours truly, who idly clicked the Follow button on their Twitter and then immediately went back to being 75% engaged with something of marginal interest to anybody else. That pandemic life, bros!

But as all things go, we made it back to these glorious idols of extreme social isolation, and they are good, and I’m going to tell you about them now as if you, personally you, have never heard of them before.

Hikicomo Teikoku! They’re the best at self-isolation and crippling social anxiety! What an appropriate project to emerge a) from idol b) in 2020! Also I only realized that they were spelling it that way when they published this art, which really got my head spinning but dang it all I’m not going to get lost in nuance, the point is that these are hikikomori idols, w00t.

HKCM, we’ll call them because they seem to like the abbreviation, debuted a few months back (yet another excellent 2020 debut!) and have good stuff in the hopper already, but this is from just last week:

A little older here, and I warn you, this is extremely awesome:

The live experience:

I make fun, but this is legitimately a really good group (shame we didn’t get to Let’s Discover with them prior to the Best Of time!), and the members seem like bright and happy people. I’m legitimately excited to see what they have in store for next year!