Jyujyu

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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Look out for KING SARI’s imminent debut!

/ Papermaiden / 1 Comment

At Homicidols, we try not to post about a unit before they release anything. After all, how many groups have looked extremely promising and yet disbanded with nary even a CD-R in sight? But this upcoming group has so much backing we had to mention it.

Created as the official rival group to Anthurium, King Sari, despite what its name suggests has nothing to do with ex-Necronomidol members nor a very talented soloist currently active. However, while they had their member preview which did include a (now former) Anthurium member, our excitement lies especially in the presence of this young lady:

https://twitter.com/kingsari_0430/status/1517458288518254593?s=20&t=yVfI5LJ4h0TtTCtBlyyJlg

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JyuJyu Becomes Apocalypse

/ Homicidol Maniac

Now that there’s a little bit more time to pay attention to recreational interests, one of my favorite activities over the past few days has been to clean out and update my system of idol notifications. Like, only a lunatic would deliberately comb all of idol media all the time to find the stuff they want to blog about! No, a milder form of lunatic (a maniac, if you will) uses the Powers of Technology to get immediate tips about particular goings-on, and then responds accordingly. It’s just … man, it gets to be a lot. And during my long hiatus, it became obvious that some work needed to go into cleaning up all of that. Out with the old, in with the new, etc. etc. etc. And with that, I purged quite a few artists, some of which have demonstrated that they just plain aren’t worth following that closely, and others that barely do anything to warrant so much attention span (yes, there’s a difference), and yet more that, well, I don’t think anybody really cares about anymore.

Which brings me to JyuJyu, who I will tell you I saw in my list and stayed purely because they don’t have the world’s most active Twitter account, so there’s a higher likelihood of a meaningful announcement than you see from basically anybody else in idol. Also, because I genuinely really like the group and find their management inexplicable, I’d have to keep putting in extra work to check in on them, and work just isn’t something that’s terribly attractive these days.

ANYWAY, today, JyuJyu, notifications, announcement. Oh, and what an announcement it was! Continue reading →

JyuJyu and the Unsettling Summer Single

/ Homicidol Maniac

This post, you guys, I’ll tell you: I started this the day the following MV (spoiler alert!) dropped, and wrote ~most of the~ post before being called off to something else. No big deal, I thought, I’ll wrap it up tomorrow. Days later I finally remembered what was up (such is life nowadays) and I was going to CYA and put the thing into the Weekender.

What stopped me?

It’s too damn good, that’s what.

So without too much further ado: JyuJyu, not at all still reeling from the hyper-contrived nontroversy with Chunpi, are releasing a new single, and doing so in collaboration with Tenma from URBANGARDE, which is a sentence that’s always a joy to write. Watch as styles collide less heinously than you might expect, and idols whose whole angle is being cursed and doomed rip off maybe the best song of the summer: Continue reading →

The Italian Job: One Englishman’s First Idol Concert

/ chris / 1 Comment

Our story starts on the morning of the concert.  I had been doing a spot of sightseeing in Bologna…

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Making an Idol Monster: We Talk to the Creative Team behind Monster of Dolls

/ DAEMON / 1 Comment

Just a few months ago, Homicidols published a profile of fans-turned-promoters bringing alternative idols to the Western World.  Looking back now, the article is a bit embarrassingly anglo-centric. Unbeknownst to us at the time, a group of Italian-speaking fans were putting the finishing touches on their own considerable efforts to launch an alt-idol festival in Italy. When the final lineup for the event was revealed in mid-February, it was clear that there was a new and significant player in the business of importing underground Japanese idol to the West.

https://twitter.com/monster_dolls/status/1096753534014578688

Seemingly overnight, the hardol diaspora had grown another tendril.

On May 11th in Bologna, Italy, Monster of Dolls will play host to alt-idol A-listers LADYBABY, the Western debut of JyuJyu, and an appearance by the legendary Sari of NECRONOMIDOL fame. The event’s biggest coup, however, is scoring the first ever overseas live for perhaps the hottest chika idol act in Tokyo: Melon Batake a go go.

The appearance of this top-tier alt-idol festival, seemingly out of nowhere, was the most pleasant of surprises. Our curiosity was piqued, not just about the cost of plane tickets to Italy, but also about the festival itself, the brains behind it, and about the Italian-speaking fandom whose presence we had been totally ignorant of until now. So we reached out to our new Italian allies in the quest to bring alt-idol to the West in the hopes that we could learn all we could.

We think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Here’s All the Jazz with Monster of Dolls

/ Homicidol Maniac

Folks, a new idol event has sprouted from the fertile soil of Western music fandoms, and the time has arrived for all details to be known and tickets to be available.

Monster of Dolls, a one-day event (May 11) in Bologna, Italy, is bringing as fine an assortment of idols and personalities as you can shake a stick at:

You can actually skip the Facebook thing if you don’t like being part of a massive data-mining scheme and just click here for tickets. Continue reading →

This JyuJyu Story Is So Stupid

/ Homicidol Maniac

To be filed under “Items That Maybe Should Be in the Weekender But Naw” comes this tale that I just now removed from said Weekender because I was looking at it and thinking to myself, nothing about this makes me think that it’s either that big a deal nor not a deal at all, and sometimes stupid things need to be demonstrated as being stupid.

So the story, such as it is, is encapsulated in a very low-key way in this blog post from the Cursed Idols:

tl;dr version: Chunpi was quietly carrying on a relationship of some sort with some fan, against the rules, and was caught and apologized in that unique way that only idols can and cleared up with the fan that this totes wasn’t romance bro and everybody walks away feeling just fine, with producer-san vowing to keep a tighter leash on things. Continue reading →

The New JyuJyu Could Stop You Dead

/ Homicidol Maniac

Golden Week isn’t actually over yet, and though there are some things to be expected very soon from some big-time idols, it’s safe to say that the real rush of the week is just about over. JyuJyu’s going to be wrapping it up, in fact, with a one-man on Sunday, their fourth. And at that show, in addition to this grim spectacle, they’ll be rolling out this new one:

It’s funny, I was reading the Hammer’s review of the new Dimmu Borgir just before I came back to listen to this again, and now I’m like, this is what Dimmu Borgir would sound like if there were idols involved. Continue reading →

Didju View the New JyuJyu To-do?

/ Homicidol Maniac

Don’t do it, Maniac. Resist!

YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

Seriously though, did you get caught up on the latest from the cursed idols? They’ll never top the absolute reduction of disaster that was “Noroi Hajime”, but there is no better JyuJyu than menacing, otherworldly, possibly undead JyuJyu, and that’s exactly what we got!

Yes, the pitch-perfect choral melody and fantastic use of blue notes make this a JyuJyu song, but it’s one of the very best pieces yet released this year, a simultaneous MV and song rankings topper. I just wish that I understood how XiDEA approaches JyuJyu’s management, because this isn’t a new piece in the sense that it’s happening now or soon, but “new” in the sense that it was on the album that they released more than two months ago (which was already very well promoted!). Maybe it’s to promote their spring/summer schedule? Celebrate the big win in Tokyo Idol Queen?

I also don’t really care! Please just keep doing these only-you things, JyuJyu, and all cognitive challenges will be forgiven.