Minna no Kodomochan are Back with a Bleak and Brilliant Single, “The Final Blinkings”

/ DAEMON

Minna no Kodomochan have been relatively quiet during the pandemic period. Sole member Cinnamon has kept busy with almost-weekly online cheki sessions and some appearances as a solo idol. She has also performed a handful of lives fronting Kodomochan over the past two years or so, but other than last December’s single, “Don’t Lie About my Existence”, we’ve not seen any new music in quite some time.

That all changed last midnight when Everyone’s Children blessed us with, “The Final Blinkings”, an hypnotically lurid piece of dark wave and doom metal accompanied by an equally mesmerizing, yet disturbing, MV.

In the lyrics of the song, Cinnamon compares herself to a dead bird lying in the street being run over again and again. It’s a grim metaphor in sullen harmony with Kodomochan’s original worldview: that we are all children sent out into the world without defenses (or, in the unit’s vernacular, “without walls”) and vulnerable to life’s indiscriminate cruelties. This kind of confrontational melancholy, tempered only slightly by an overtly stoic sense of humor,  has been Kodomochan’s signature since their 2016 debut single, “I wish I were dead when I wake up”. The perspective seems almost prescient now that Cinnamon has given us the perfect song to close out 2021.  

In addition to the digital version, the single is also being released at select Tower Records on CDRs hand-illustrated by Cinnamon herself. If you happen to be passing through Shinjuku, please try to snag me one. They’ve already sold out once already.

To help promote the single, Minna no Kodomochan will be appearing on the YUNIKA VISION screens in Shinjuku at 25 past the hour for the next week.

“The Final Blinkings” is available on your streaming platform of choice.