BiSH

For pages and posts that relate to Brand-new Idol Shit (BiSH).

10 Years of Homicidols By the Numbers: Top Artists

/ DAEMON

Let’s try this one again:

You may have seen a half-baked version of this article post on Tuesday. I wish that I could say it was all an illusion but, no, it was just another one of my screw ups. I could have sworn that I had calendared it to publish on Thursday but, instead, it went up on Tuesday well before it was ready and I had to scrub it from existence. 

It is one of the enduring mysteries of this site: while there are any number of qualities that contribute to our status of being the longest running English language chika idol blog on the planet, competence is certainly not among them. 

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10 Years of Homicidols: By the Numbers

/ DAEMON

Well, look at us. Almost ten years old. Only a handful of idol groups make it that long and, honestly, we’re just as surprised as you are. What started as a questionable idea (“let’s write about underground idols from half-way around the world who perform in and speak a language that we don’t even understand; how hard can it be?”) somehow mutated into a decade-long obsession that’s eaten up countless weekends, introduced us to innumerable friends from around the world, and exposed us to a legion of idols and oshis and losses that we’ll never emotionally recover from.

In that time, we’ve watched the scene evolve, implode, and reinvent itself more times than we can count and, somehow, our humble corner of the internet has managed to survive right along with it. So, as we hit the big one-oh, we thought we’d take a look back at our journey in cold, hard numbers.

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10 Most Disturbing Idol MVs in History

/ DAEMON

Last week, we published a piece recommending dark idol units for new alt-idol fans discovering the genre through Phantom Siita. The response to the post reminded me that not everyone has spent the last decade+ obsessing over and chronicling the alternative, independent, and underground idol scene. Especially the number of people who were hearing about JyuJyu and “Noroi Hajime” for the first time got me thinking: there may be a sizable number of people out there who aren’t aware of some of the other iconically disturbing idol MVs that can traumatize them for life.

For that reason, Team Homicidols put our collective heads together and compiled the following list of the 10 (+1) most disturbing MVs that are seared across our psyches and helped send our therapists’ kids to college. Please note that our recall (and judgment) may be less-than perfect, so let us know anything we missed or got horribly wrong over on the Homicidols Discord server.

TRIGGER WARNING: This is basically just a big list of triggering MVs. 

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WASTED with WATANABE: The Junnosuke Watanabe Interview

/ Cal

Some enchanted evening, under a moonlit summer sky, a drag queen is performing her cabaret number at London’s Ku Bar. Watching her show with our intrepid reporter is none other than the person behind acts like BiSH, BiS and GANG PARADE: Junnosuke Watanabe. The man in question is kicking off the night with a pint of Staropramen , while Cal from Homicidols and Porin from the band Awesome City Club (who just happened to be in town) both enjoy a pornstar martini each.

Junnosuke Watanabe and Porin from Awesome City Club

Homicidols: You always get beer don’t you?

Watanabe: Oh yes (laughs). Cocktails are too sweet for me.

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The Greatest Alternative Idol Choruses of All Time

/ DAEMON / 1 Comment

Welcome to the first installment of our latest community project seeking to identify the top choruses, drops, breakdowns and hooks in alternative, indie, and underground idol. 

Here in chapter one, we are exploring the best choruses as identified by you, the readers of Homicidols dot com and, I must say, you all got great taste. It took forever to compile this post as these are some of the catchiest and most addictive tunes in idol. They can’t just be listened to once. Each entry took about five minutes to write and then two hours of bingeing the song over and over again.  These aren’t just phenomenal choruses. These are some of the best songs by some of the best artists in the genre.

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50 Greatest Alt-Idol MVs of All Time: #11 – 20

/ DAEMON / 2 Comments

It is the next-to last chapter in our countdown of the Top 50 alt, indie, and underground idol MVs ever as chosen by the Homicidols community, a group of music aficionados with impeccable taste as evidenced below.

Strangely, none of the videos that ranked 11 through 20 won a Best MV of the Year award, although one of the tunes did win Song of the Year. It also appears that I made an error last week in identifying “Hallellujah” by  Shihatsu-machi Underground as our countdown’s most-nominated MV with four nods. It turns out that one of this week’s entries edged them out with five. As always, commentary from the nominating parties are included below. Some of them have more to say than others.

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50 Greatest Alt-Idol MVs of All Time: #21 – 30

/ DAEMON

Welcome to the third installment of our countdown of the 50 best alt, indie, and underground idol MVs of all time as selected by the readers of Homicidols dot com. This week we are seeing some truly iconic classics including “I kill” and “MEGITSUNE” who were instrumental in establishing the genres of yami kawaii and kawaii metal respectively. We also see our most-nominated music video in, “Hallellujah.”

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50 Greatest Alt-Idol MVs of All Time: #41 – 50

/ DAEMON

The Homicidols community has been busy for the past couple of months. We first asked our readers to tell us their five favorite alt, indie and/or underground idol MV’s. We then compiled those entries into a massive list of 127 music videos and again asked our readers to rate each and every one on a scientific and rigorously valid Likert scale. 

The results have now been compiled into this incontrovertible and statistically valid list of the 50 GREATEST IDOL MVs of ALL TIME (per the collective opinion of the Homicidols community).

We will present ten each week for the next (*counts on fingers*) five weeks with commentary from Team Homicidols and our readers on why they nominated the MV for consideration.

Let’s go!!

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Goodbye BiSH: A Retrospective

/ DAEMON / 1 Comment

BiSH officially disbands today, June 29th, following their last live at the Tokyo Dome. Like the members in their final official portrait (see the banner image above), the most commercially successful unit in the history of WACK ends their existence virtually unrecognizable (other than Atsuko’s glasses) from the fierce punks with all the naïve promise in the world who were booted from the 2015 Tokyo Idol Festival. While our attention on BiSH has waned over recent years as their music leaned more and more mainstream, our affection for the group and it’s multi-talented members has never wavered. Unfortunately, neither has our disappointment that BiSH, in their eight years of existence, never performed an overseas live.

It is hard to not to fantasize about what could-have-been with a BiSH that didn’t sign to AVEX and subsequently focus the entirety of their attention on expanding their appeal at home at the expense of international ambitions. But then again, a BiSH that didn’t sign to a major domestic label could not have evolved into the significant force in J-Pop music, fashion, and culture that they ultimately became. As Cal reminds me: 

“BiSH ARE one of the most popular groups in Japan with a diverse range of punk and pop rock songs who changed the world for the better.”

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Homicidols Best of the Year (so far)

/ DAEMON / 1 Comment

We are one third of the way through the Homicidols calendar year (which runs December through November for REASONS) so we thought it was time to make note of the songs, albums and MVs that we’ve had on repeat for the last four months.  When I say “We,” I mean Team Homicidols and the denizens of the Homicidols’ Discord server. We’ve surveyed the entirety of the various elements that make up the Homicidols’ hive mind and come up with the following nominations for best singles, EPs, albums and MVs of the first quadrimester of our 2023.

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