As noted in the Weekender, yeah, it’s Halloween season, and while idol Halloween is arguably the best event on the Idolverse calendar, what’s inarguable is that it’s just plain not going to seem right this year. Our pandemic-riddled world may be getting better at finding ways to be “normal” (whatever that means) and getting back to business, and that’s true of idol too, but there just isn’t going to be the same concentration of events, the same impetus to have costumed lives and the like, and maybe the mood’s even off. I don’t know! I just know that this is usually the time when we start to see the holiday-appropriate videos and photo galleries come along, and so far I haven’t seen too much.

But that being said, hey, here’s one of my favorite groups come along with what I’m going to call the first unofficial anthem of idol Halloween largely because of my own biases and because doing so confirms them! But yeah, it’s NEO JAPONISM and something that I think they’re doing just because they can:

There’s so much at play here that I almost don’t know what to say about it. It’s obviously a Halloween release, but if you either ignore or otherwise figure out how to remove the really on-the-nose stuff, what are you left with? A pretty awesome idol metal song with a fun-and-actually-pretty-dark-and-no-not-just-the-lighting video. Just fun all around.