Best Of

VOTE HERE!! Your Homicidols Best of 2022 Ballot

/ DAEMON

After twelve months of watching, streaming, celebrating and grieving all that the world of alternative and underground idol can throw at us, the readers and writers of Homicidols have nominated what we feel could compete for being the best and most compelling artists, acts and moments of 2022. It is now time to vote for the winners. 

We are criminally late in getting this out the door (damn you, obstructions and obligations of REAL LIFE®) so let’s just get to it: The nominations are in! Check them out below and find your ballot at the bottom of this post. (As always, please note that our Best Of award year runs from December to November.)

You have until Sunday, January 15th, 2023 to vote your hearts out.

Let’s go!!

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Your Homicidols Best of 2021

/ DAEMON / 2 Comments

It’s here! The final moments of 2021 and time to unveil the results of the Homicidols community vote for best or, at least, most significant moments and releases of the year. I want to thank everyone for their participation in the voting. We had an awesome turnout which I credit to the incredible talent of the artists we cover and the superb work they turned out in the past year. 

If your favorite idol, album or MV didn’t win in their category, just remember that geniuses are seldom recognized during their time (we stole this from SubenW in the Homicidols Discord Server as it was their reaction to the lack of any Best Of nominations for situasion; but we told them that we were going to steal it, so it’s okay).

Now, on to the winners! And on to 2022!!  My fervent wish for the new year is for a world where international travel restrictions can be lifted. Let’s go!

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Your Team Homicidols Best Of 2020

/ DAEMON / 4 Comments

You didn’t think we were going to let 2020 slip away without giving ourselves a chance to go off about our own personal Best Ofs, did you? No, friend, this annual ordeal may have begun with my commenting on community picks, but nowadays we have ourselves a proper Team post on top of the community. I like it this way — it really does highlight the difference between absolute individual preferences vs. community aggregate, maybe gives you all some leads to check out, and it gives us a chance to promote our favorites more! Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Best of 2020 Winners

/ Homicidol Maniac

Thank you, friends, one and all, for your participation in this year’s Homicidols Best Of. Because I enjoy waxing nostalgic, let’s take a quick trip dow– No? Okay fine. Point: Simpler process now, almost all of the weight on the community nominations, and of course the voting is all yours.

This year, despite all of the everything, we had our highest total number of individual votes cast ever. That’s amazing! Idol has incredible fans, and this community is at the end of the day one that’s endlessly supportive and motivated by love. Good for us. And then in a few days you’ll all get to see just how weird the community preferences are vs. the individual when we publish the Team winners!

I’ll give up the mic now so that we can get down to winners. There are some interesting narrative throughlines here, you’ll notice, that I’ll try to give some credence to.

The Homicidols Dot Com Best Of 2020

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Your Homicidols Best of 2020 Ballot #3

/ Homicidol Maniac

Final ballot! Yes I’ve been peaking at the voting so far, and yes some of the results are exactly what you’d expect, but also yes there are a few surprises shaping up (maybe). I’m really looking forward to the final results. The community vote is what makes the official Homicidols Dot Com Whatever of the Year, naturally, and those recognitions are among the most prestigious in music blogging*; additionally, it gives us on Team a chance to tell you all about how wrong you were to vote like suckers our own picks and really dig deep into some of the less-appreciated corners of loudol, at least as far as filthy gaijin are concerned.

Today’s also the last day to vote on the first ballot, and the second for the second. Do those first if you haven’t already, and then: Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Best of 2020 Ballot #2

/ Homicidol Maniac

All right, folks, though the first ballot is still open through tomorrow, it’s time to get the second part out the door (third and final launches tomorrow). This is a completely different set of categories, so vote like it’s completely fresh. It’s all good stuff, so you’ll no doubt struggle immensely and get mad at us! Love it.

Your nominees are: Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Best of 2020 Ballot #1

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well, folks, we did it — in Kerrie’s very capable (and efficient!) hands, we have our community nominations and so we have a Best Of 2020 ballot.

We’ll do this the same as in past years and stagger the actual picks out a bit over the next few days, so one set today, one tomorrow, and one Wednesday, each open for three full days. We’ll compile winners over the weekend and make the big announcement as soon as the art’s ready soon. Without further ado, your final nominees: Continue reading →

We Want Your Best Of 2020 Nominations!

/ Kerrie

Oh thank goodness, the ongoing agony that has been 2020 is almost over. Just over a month to go now, I can almost feel the collective weight that has been this hell year being lifted from my shoulders as 2021, free from possibly the worst and most confusing year most of us have had to face in our lifetimes; at least, until three days into 2021 when we’ll probably all get drafted into a war against a vengeful alien species from another planet at the same time another much-loved Homicidols figure announces her retirement. 

With it being late November, this is the time when we begin to wrap up proceedings for our annual Homicidols best-of rundown. I know 2020 has mostly been a crapshoot in all regards, but hey, it’s not been all bad; O’CHAWANZ released two entire albums!

As with previous years, team Homicidols have been collectively listing notable idol events and releases of the year into a handy list of reminders to say “Hey! Remember that single that came out really early that year?” which we then whittle down into a shortlist of our team picks.

Now, this is where you come in! Now that the team picks are ready to go, we’d like to hear from you! For the next week, we’d like you to submit your personal nominations for each category. At the end of the week, using a special, private system I’ll be weighing the team nominations with the community nominations to create a hopefully balanced and interesting shortlist. Continue reading →

The Team Homicidols Best of 2019

/ Homicidol Maniac

I hope you all got a good kick out of seeing the community’s Best of 2019 yesterday — now we get extremely heavy-handed and drop the absolute knowledge bombs that are the Team Homicidols picks, which is way more interesting than when I used to just rag on you all. As you have no doubt figured out, we are people of eclectic tastes, both relative to the community and to each other, so while there are a few things (Kai) that we all mostly agree on (Dots/RAY), we are among ourselves really all over the map. That hipster comment yesterday? Pertains!

Anyway, here are the staff picks for 2019, preserved for eternity. Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Best of 2019

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

Well, folks, you did it: After a nice fuckton of feedback and then three rolling rounds of voting, we got down to your collective community picks for the Best of 2019. There are loads of differences between the first time I did this and now, not the least of which being the level of sophistication and organization in the process, but it all comes back to the whole purpose of this site: To build a community that gives people who aren’t Japanese an easier way into the idol world and a quicker route to understanding — and supporting — these incredible performers. This year’s award winners really sum up that last part, too, I think, because while 2019 isn’t going to be remembered all that fondly by most folks, it was in fact full of great work, memorable people and big developments in this world we love in common.

Without further ado! Continue reading →