NEO JAPONISM

In Which NEO JAPONISM Pursues the Pinnacle of Idol Expression

/ Homicidol Maniac

I’m still fighting through the mini ‘rona you apparently get when this double-dose vaccine built with the intention of stopping a previously unstoppable — heretofore unknown! — virus in its tracks, so forgive the shortposting, but also the title says it all. You sometimes just don’t have anything more useful to say than to point at the thing and tell other people to go look at it. I’d have preferred that NEO JAPONISM have dropped this when I was both available and hale, but as it stands I was none of those things and now the last thing I want to do is put thought into a post. So:

Also, I apparently missed Hina going with blue hair

I mean, cool song and all, but it’s actually the video that I love best. I’m split between whether it’s innocently the most idol thing in existence — determination! perseverance! togetherness! running! — or deliberately (and therefore less charmingly) so. Either way, it was exactly what I needed to see this morning. Go get those flags! May we all be inspired to metaphorically do the same things in our own lives.

NEO JAPONISM Is Modern Idol Writ Small

/ Homicidol Maniac

NEO JAPONISM, who absolutely own and really need more love among you blockheads, released their latest album, THE SPIRIT, about six weeks ago. We did the lead single when it dropped, and frankly I thought that was going to be the end of it. But then this morning brought a shining ray of more NEO JAPONISM MV to gawk at, and in doing so I had a thought that hadn’t struck me when listening to the album, but suddenly seemed fairly clear: If Yanakoto Sotto Mute are the perfect modern idols, are NeoJap the most modern idols?

Let’s do that MV:

Continue reading →

Let NEO JAPONISM ‘Trigger’ Your Awesome New Year

/ Homicidol Maniac

I can’t believe how much great stuff has been published in the Loudolisphere over the past week! Seriously, I personally have 12 drafts from just the last several days, and whether I get to half of them before the next week is out is purely speculative. I’m nonetheless jumping NEO JAPONISM and their “it’s a new year and you all need for us to set you right” new MV for “Trigger” to the front of the list because it’s NEO JAPONISM, who are incredible, and the song and MV are 18 kinds of awesome. If you only want one thing to prep you for 2021, make it this:

Continue reading →

NEO JAPONISM Escorts Us Fully Into Halloween Season

/ Homicidol Maniac

As noted in the Weekender, yeah, it’s Halloween season, and while idol Halloween is arguably the best event on the Idolverse calendar, what’s inarguable is that it’s just plain not going to seem right this year. Our pandemic-riddled world may be getting better at finding ways to be “normal” (whatever that means) and getting back to business, and that’s true of idol too, but there just isn’t going to be the same concentration of events, the same impetus to have costumed lives and the like, and maybe the mood’s even off. I don’t know! I just know that this is usually the time when we start to see the holiday-appropriate videos and photo galleries come along, and so far I haven’t seen too much.

But that being said, hey, here’s one of my favorite groups come along with what I’m going to call the first unofficial anthem of idol Halloween largely because of my own biases and because doing so confirms them! But yeah, it’s NEO JAPONISM and something that I think they’re doing just because they can: Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Guide to Tokyo Idol Festival Online 2020

/ DAEMON

Attending the Tokyo Idol Festival has always been on my bucket list. The primary barrier for me had been, having grown up in the Sonoran desert, a complete lack of tolerance for the humidity levels of Odaiba during Japan’s late summer. Hope was kindled in my desert rat heart when it was announced that TIF 2020 would be held in October when the heat and humidity is much less gruesome. This hope was, of course, dashed completely by the COVID crisis. TIF organizer’s decision to deliver the festival entirely online for 2020 has generated a new kind of hope. This livestream format gives many of us foreigners the opportunity to check “Attended Tokyo Idol Festival” off our bucket lists, even if the accomplishment will have a COVID-shaped asterisk next to it.

https://twitter.com/TIP_TIF_staff/status/1306865546625859586?s=20

Whether you have already invested in tickets to Tokyo Idol Festival Online or are considering the reasonably hefty purchase, we have prepared the following resources for you.  Continue reading →

This Is and Is Not a Review of NEO JAPONISM’s New Albums and Such

/ Homicidol Maniac

After a few false starts, I finally get around to writing up something approximating a review for “NEO JAPONISM’s new album” that would only have been accurate if I’d waited a minute to include the second album released a mere week later, and then subsequently two additional tracks that appear on neither album but did get MVs. Correct — I waited myself into complete uncertainty as to what or when anything would happen, and then lost impetus for the project. But now that I think we’re safe from any extra releases, why not dig in and actually talk about this stuff? Continue reading →

NEO JAPONISM Is the Reward

/ Homicidol Maniac

Gee whiz, gang, now that I’m alive again, which idol should I write about first? I know! Let’s put the giant-ass index that D built into a tumbler and pull out something at random!

/puts giant-ass index into tumbler
//spins tumbler
Oops!
///tips tumbler over
Oh no, what have I done
////rifles through entered idol names until I find the one I want

What a random coincidence! It looks like I get to write about NEO JAPONISM again! Continue reading →

Enjoy More New NEO JAPONISM, Get the Visual of a Grown Man Crying Tears of Joy

/ Homicidol Maniac

When the Best of 2019 opens up this week, friends, I fully expect that you’re all going to join me in smashing that vote button for NEO JAPONISM as Best Reboot. They are clearly the best and also recency bias is a brutal fact of our lives, so brutal that you are helpless against it, not to mention helpless before my very persuasive arguments. In fact, the great crime being perpetuated by this year’s voting is that none of these new NEO JAPONISM pieces are in the running for other awards despite their clear superiority to everything. Including this new one that’s technically eligible for all awards because it’s still November for a few hours!

Fight for the Right to what, though

Lyrics!

Just listen to that. That’s basically everything good and right in loudol — creative structure, aggressive, pop hook that somehow doesn’t take anything away from the sheer volume, another dang breakdown — and I’m absolutely beside myself that something so good and right exists in my world, a reminder of the peak of what idol can do.

Every New NEO JAPONISM Track Restores My Faith in Powers Greater Than Myself (for instance: NEO JAPONISM)

/ Homicidol Maniac

I’ll tell you, if 2019 is remembered as being as bad as it usually feels in real time, I want to be the person who’s all “yeah but did you hear some of the really awesome music that happened anyway AND ESPECIALLY THE NEO JAPONISM THAT SAVED CHRISTMAS?!” After returning to life just over a week ago in what’s rapidly emerging as my favorite event of this otherwise godsforsaken year, NEO JAPONISM has even more jaw-kicking idolcore for us, and friends, I don’t know where they’re going with this, but I’m officially along for the ride:

God damn. God DAMN. I’m not completely sold on marrying that chorus to the verses, but this is the kind of hook to the face that I used to delight in finding back when idol was so new and exciting and nobody had yet invented the word “Codomocore”. FFS, it has a goddamn breakdown in it, albeit one that fits the material more than the occasional wedged-in instances that are often more laughable than laudable.

Lyrics!

A week ago, I was loudly demanding that NEO JAPONISM be worked into the Best Of mechanisms and then waving last week’s post in everybody’s face to make sure I was being heard; today, I feel like I’m ready to give them all of the awards (even the ones that don’t pertain!) just so for vindication’s sake. What an absolutely gorgeous return to life they’re giving us.

I Could Not Be More Excited about the Return of NEO JAPONISM

/ Homicidol Maniac

Everybody’s done the heartbreak thing this year, it seems. Groups and individual idols have dropped like flies, literal icons of the business and the tiniest of unknown chika acts as well closing up shop or undergoing massive changes almost as if they all know something we don’t. I’ve personally had my share of blank-eyed staring into the distance at one bit of news or another, and one that I definitely didn’t make enough hay about when it happened was NEO JAPONISM.

For about a year, they were arguably my favorite thing in the business, this hard-rocking, all-out unit that didn’t pull any punches and seemed to make a mark every time they released something into the world. They were just a really fun group to follow, although harder in a lot of ways to love right because there was so much else going on. But did I miss a chance to lavish praise on them? Absolutely not. And so earlier this year when the ~original~ group disbanded in the kind of mass graduation that has been so typical of 2019, I was kind of floored. Unlike all of the other instances, though, manager-san immediately set the record straight and announced that NEO JAPONISM as a thing wasn’t going anywhere, and there would be a reboot on the near horizon. That gives one hope, which gives one optimism, and when little bits of info started to trickle out, it started to become real.

And that’s where we land now! Here are the members: Continue reading →