If I hadn’t seen a stray tweet that made me want to look at their whole feed, I would have totally missed this couple-of-days-old news from ayukuma:

【大発表！】
9月6日(水)発売！
NEWシングル「絆ミックス」
リリース記念ライブツアーの開催決定！なんと全公演フリーライブ🐻

さらに豪華特典会も開催決定！&新ビジュアルも公開！！
詳しくは▶︎https://t.co/LXwQoWvD9P#絆ミックス#あゆみくりかまき pic.twitter.com/jhbgBSP5M6

— あゆみくりかまき (@ayukumaofficial) July 5, 2017

New single (in September), with a free tour to support it. That’s cool?

Don’t get me completely wrong — I love me some ayukuma, but in a very particular way and in a very particular era, specifically the period that began with “Shake! Shake! Shake!” and ended a little over a year ago; I didn’t much like “Tabidachi no Uta” (despite publishing the video on YouTube for gaijin audiences), and “Goma slipper” was fine enough, I guess. But I really missed the hard-partying bear idols, the lousy fun and no-bars-held attitude.

Now, they, the people, are still extremely fun (made for summer!), and I’ll agree with myself that they’re still enough on pace to break the curse upon them and get to go back to being bears by announcing a Budokan show (I was too lazy to see if the free tour and one-man tour coincide at all). The big question for me is whether they’ll ever get back to putting all of that into their 100 mph music and being this perfect, made-for-Maniac miracle that I just miss so much!

Like, what if the single sucks? Or is at the very least boring? What if the three weirdos who somehow hosted Saku Saku and wrote party songs about salmon and made this incredible video … what if they’re gone?

There are headbanging bees, for cripes’ sake!

Everybody matures, even bear people, I guess. I just wish that I could feel secure in the knowledge that what’s coming up is going to make me want to dance around like an even bigger idiot than usual.

UPDATE! Hooray for Viz Major!

あゆみくりかまき / Ayumikurikamaki 「絆ミックス」(Kizuna Mix… by idolvizion

I’m very okay with this.