Gyu-no Fes

Gyunou Fest’s Last Live at Studio Coast

/ DAEMON

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Good News: The Autumn Gyu Agricultural Festival is being held this weekend featuring many of our favorite units like MIGMA SHELTER, NaNoMoRaL, and Yanakoto Sotto Mute!!

Bad News: It’s the final Gynou Fest to be held at Studio Coast before the venerable venue closes for good.  

Good News: It’s being livestreamed on Nico Nico!! 

Continue reading →

IDOL NEVER DIES: Help Create this Film about Idols at the End of the World

/ DAEMON

Gyuzo of the Tokyo Shock Boys but better known around these parts as the mad genius behind the Gyu Agricultural Festival aka Gyuno Fes aka the best recurring series of chika idol lives on the planet is making a movie!!

Tentatively titled IDOL NEVER DIES, the movie is described as a “youth fantasy” about an idol unit struggling to complete a music video on the day the world has been predicted to end. The cast of idols shooting this MV in the face of the apocalypse will include some familiar faces:

Continue reading →

Weekend Livestream Spotlight: BURST GIRL, NECRONOMIDOL & Gynou Fest

/ DAEMON

Since we launched The Calendar, the weekly livestream post got discontinued, but I thought there were a few events worth bringing folks attention to now that these notices are no longer hitting the front page.  As always, all dates and times listed are Japan Standard Time (JST) unless noted (Convert to your time here).

Kick the weekend off with a free live on YouTube by funk-and-groove flavored Nagoya standouts, FAREWELL MY, L.u.v.

BURST GIRL Continue the “BURST BIG BANG” tour to promote their Story EP. This installment sees them teaming up with DAI DAI DAI, Story collaborators THE STARBEMS and others. Streaming tickets are ¥1,800 via ZAIKO.

Continue reading →

IDOL is STILL ALIVE: Gyuno Fes is Live-Streaming Your Favorites on Nico Nico

/ DAEMON

Once upon a time, the plan was for this to be a bucket-list-level weekend. I was supposed to wake up in Tokyo this morning and hit Cinema and Boy CQ’s second anniversary live in Shimokitazawa before heading off to Hanako-San’s Death Day celebration and album release event. After a good night’s sleep, I was going to spend Sunday at day two of the Gyuu Agricultural Festival, aka Gyuno Fes (chika idol’s answer to Coachella) which was celebrating it’s fifth anniversary with an epic line-up of 50+ units that read like a Who’s Who of Homicidols. 

That was before the international travel warnings were issued, concerts were cancelled and new terms were added to our vocabulary like “social distancing” and “PPE”.

The only upside to all of this pandemic brouhaha is the dramatic increase in the number of chika idol live streams. So, even though I didn’t get to fly to Japan and attend Yanakoto Sotto Mute’s major label debut concert in person, I did get to watch it live from my living room.

And now we can all experience Gyuno Fes the same way!! Although the two-day festival has been postponed indefinitely, the organizers will be broadcasting a defiant “IDOL is STILL ALIVE” version of the event live on Nico Nico several hours from now. Continue reading →

Consider These Gyu-no Fes Highlights

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

Haven’t done one of these in a while! In an earlier era, it was commonplace ’round these parts to do video digests from big events — TIF in particular, but @JAM and Idol Koushien and things too — to help folks get better acquainted with names that they may have encountered, or expose theretofore unknown idols to new audiences — and I got away from it because it increasingly seemed like people were coming in with a little more knowledge and a lot more of an idea of what they’re looking for.

Nonetheless, partly because Gyu-no Fes was the first big idol event that I encountered in the first few months of Homicidols.com, and partly because I’ve always appreciated it, and even more partly because it’s just really good and cool, here’s a whole mess of video from over the weekend:

Yanakoto Sotto Mute


Plus new “Louvre no sora” at 10:58 or so

Continue reading →

This Road to Tochigi Lineup Looks Amazing

/ Homicidol Maniac / 1 Comment

While other Road to Tochigi events have been building to this one, I think that this is building even more to … well, an event at the actual Gyu-no farm.


Continue reading →

POP Selected for Gyu-no Fes

/ Homicidol Maniac

In a decision that’s honestly about as surprising as the sun rising in the east, POP was selected as the winner of the Road to Tochigi battle earlier this week and are headed to the main stage at Gyu-no Fes.

Awesome photo, though. Continue reading →

POP, Guso Drop, Screaming Sixties on the Road to Tochigi

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

We’ve mentioned before how idols in wrestling rings (and occasionally wrestling) is kind of a thing, but the mad genius behind Gyu-no Fes takes it to another level.

Gyuzo is a former idol / scenester who’s big into the pinchike culture and loves to promote idols from and bring idols to his home prefecture, with big shows held at the Gyuzo Farm.

For the scheduled April finale, smaller events are being held here and there to have the groups battle, not terribly dissimilarly to rap battles, for the right to move on to the main stage. Yesterday’s show included POP, Guso Drop and Screaming Sixties: Continue reading →