debut

Let’s Discover Some Idols: Finally

/ Homicidol Maniac

The joke doesn’t land half as well as I wish it did

Yes, let us discover some idols! Or, in this case, re-discover some idols that we already knew and liked but now have a new wrapper. LET’S DISCOVER A BRAND. Or I guess the new product launched in direct competition to the original by people most intimate to it. The Oreo cookies, if you will, of idol.

You may remember a little project going back a couple of years, the not-quite-sung-enough 143, who we recently learned were going kaput. Bummer! And then suddenly one day idols associated with a new thing started to show up in my feed, people who I already followed despite not, uh, completely knowing who or what the heck or why. That does happen, this being idol and all! So I put a pin in it, as they say, and waited to see what happened. And what happened was our old pal Jul messaged to say, hey, have you seen this new idol group, they’re the 143 members who went their own way and are now self-produced. And I said, ah ha! It makes sense now!

And so, finally, Finally (Twitter): Continue reading →

Yeah, We Got the Takari Takara Song Too

/ Homicidol Maniac

With all apologies due to the good people at Codomomental Inc., while yes it is in fact the intention of Homicidols Dot Com to render completely void their attempts to impose short two-hour caps on the preview tracks released by the company’s artists, they must know that we do it out of love and a genuine desire to expose those artists to broader audiences outside of Japan. Timing is hard for people, even for us even under the best of circumstances, and it’s not like we profit from it, you know?

One thing we haven’t done before, I don’t think? Share the track a whole-ass day later. But, uh, it would be negligent — nay, disrespectful — of us to not share this preview/debut with the world, so, uh, let’s just drop all the pretense all the way. Takari Takara is the name, and very likely a familiar one to you. This is her not-quite-long-expected solo debut with Codomomental, and one that we here at Homicidols HQ have been eagerly anticipating. Yes it dropped under normal rules (also: yesterday!), so yes let’s follow the forms. This is how you connect with her:

And as for the song: Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: MAD JAMIE

/ Homicidol Maniac

It appears to be that time of year again, folks. That’s right — it’s the time when not a whole lot goes on for about a month, so let’s discover some idols! We’re in an odd-numbered year right now, and history has shown that (idol-ly speaking) it’s the even-numbered that tend to be chock full of awesome debuts and important albums and stuff, and the odd years when things like the Mass Graduation and Disbandment of Beloved Idol Things of 2019 happen. Like, for all its warts, 2020 was a pretty okay year for debuts! And somehow, maybe because the entertainment universe held its breath for the past 12 months or maybe just in penance for the really shitty time we’ve been having as a human society, we’re still getting good ones here in 2021.

So when Mr. Toxic Breakfast himself shared this in Team Chat recently, it definitely felt like something to run with:

That’s MAD JAMIE, obviously, which, as Chris put it, “Thankfully Mad Jamie is not the local 15 year old arsonist, but is some idols.” And what idols! Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: RIPLIE

/ Homicidol Maniac

Oh man, when was the last time we posted two consecutive Let’s Discovers, especially from two different people? Weird. But this is what happens when the MVs and major announcements (that are worth posting about) and stuff are kind of rare yet. It’s a good thing, you know? New and emerging idols are kind of the lifeblood of this whole goofy scene, what with the constant disbandments and graduations and all. And when we get a debut that feels kind of pre-fab and already likely to drop like a bomb, that’s kind of interesting!

Which brings us to RIPLIE, who first bubbled to notice around these parts when SENANAN (who is producer-san here) made it known that she had this thing started up. Of course people then flocked to see what would happen and when, and the when is “in a week” and the what is pretty much what you’d expect from SENANAN driving an idol unit themed around the consequences of being an always-online blowhard!

Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: AKIARIM

/ Homicidol Maniac

All right, let’s get back to Discovering Some Idols, shall we? I feel kind of badly that more than a few of these groups that I’ll wave in front of your face did in fact debut at points in the past and some of them are pretty good so they’re never be eligible for the kinds of major awards that can make or break an idol career, but that’s okay. We’ll enjoy ’em on their merits anyway!

And what merits! Friends, I introduce you to AKIARIM (Twitter), who are … okay, so you know how there was this global outbreak of a potentially-deadly-and-even-under-the-best-of-circumstances-difficult-to-treat pathogen and, you may recall, it kind of got a whole lot of things canceled in the early parts of 2020? Yes, like almost a year ago? Okay good. So that’s basically AKIARIM, who if I’m following the timeline correctly were like, hey, we’re a cool group with some talent behind us and some resources and we’re debut– well okay, let– WE’LL JUST DO IT LATER THEN. And so began their life in earnest a few months ago:

Continue reading →

Codomomental Strikes Twice: New Track from Tokyo Tefutefu

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well, friends, we may have lost Yukueshirezutsurezure for good over the weekend (I hear that Daemon’s working on a retrospective), but Codomomental has proven over the years to be nothing but extremely flexible no matter the circumstances, and there are a pair of new projects for us all to become irrationally excited about. The first to meaningfully see the light of day was akugi, and now today we get the first (aural) look at the latest piece of the company’s puzzle, Tokyo Tefutefu.

As usual, it’s a two-hour preview; as usual, we here at Homicidols Dot Com love and respect you and will help you listen if you miss the window.

You know the drill. Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Dang Shut-in Idols

/ Homicidol Maniac

So Daemon comes into the Team chat a few weeks ago, or maybe it was Papermaiden (they’re hard to tell apart, see, because they both stan Tsurezure), comes barging in all like “hey, check it, hikikomori idols!” and there was much chuckling and gawking and it was a really good time. Except from yours truly, who idly clicked the Follow button on their Twitter and then immediately went back to being 75% engaged with something of marginal interest to anybody else. That pandemic life, bros!

But as all things go, we made it back to these glorious idols of extreme social isolation, and they are good, and I’m going to tell you about them now as if you, personally you, have never heard of them before. Continue reading →

Let’s Rediscover Some Idols: BOY MEETS HARU

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well if this particular conceit didn’t run right into a particular failure on ol’ Maniac’s part … see, despite nothing on your computer screen being a real thing that you can hold in your hand, and basically everything on the Internet only “existing” in the sense that there is energy stored in a device somewhere and that energy is organized in a particular way that other devices know how to render into things that you might recognize (but, again, can’t touch), this exact post that I’m typing in right has existed since autumn 2019, when I first put down a draft placeholder for a BOY MEETS HARU post. Interesting project! Cool times. But I didn’t get back to it, things happened with the group (near as I can tell, during my personal hiatus), and here we are, five days since BOY MEETS HARU “debuted” again, so … let’s discover these idols! Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: Sugarpills

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well gang, I’m not sure if we’ll ever get to discover all of the idols worth discovering this year before the gate closes in a couple of weeks, so let’s expedite all of my personal favorites only the very best toward the front of the line.

A few weeks ago, while doing that thing where you look at the bills from random taibans for idols you haven’t heard of yet, and drawn like a moth to flame by the magic word “idolcore,” I went on a little riff through as-yet-unknown-to-me Osaka-area idols and found myself staring one act right in the face. Their name sounded kind of cutesy, but the limited photography of them didn’t line up with that. I figured, hey, part of why I’m doing this is to have something new to listen to for a little while, let’s see what it’s like. And oh my friends, what a good decision that turned out to be:

That’s Sugarpills, and on the strength of two whole songs they might be my favorite debut this year. Continue reading →

Let’s Discover Some Idols: Re:INCARNATION

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

The best way to discover idols, I’m told, is to follow Homicidols Dot Com; the next best way to discover idols, then, must be to do it organically by endlessly scrolling social media while bored and/or avoiding other obligations; and the worst way of course is to get referrals from your friends. Yes, this is all on the up-and-up.

But yeah, I can’t tell you exactly how Re:INCARNATION came into my life a couple of months ago, save for it being one of those times that a tweet from one thing got pushed into my feed because other people had liked it (see: anybody who follows Viz Major always having gravure in your feed!), and one thing led to another:

Continue reading →