rank

Idol Covers I’d Love to Hear, Ranked

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

A few days ago, everybody’s favorite Babymetal Wales tour organizer tweeted:

What an interesting thing! I have no disagreement with any of that. It did get me thinking, though, because every time I consider what I’d want my entirely hypothetical idol project to do, it includes a lot of covers to both show respect for the group’s influences and to put a new, unique spin on some classics (and definitely not in any way to pad out albums or have quick-turnaround releases, you jerks!).

Also, it’s been longer than I’d anticipated since the last Ranked post, so I thought this might make for some fun over the weekend, too. As usual, this is just a ranking, not the all-time ranking, merely a collection of songs that would make for cool idol covers that are ranked relatively to one another. Continue reading →

Incomprehensible Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da Song Titles, Ranked

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

I was bored yesterday, and I was thinking about the title of the new Zenkimi single, and I thought about how their song titles, even when they probably actually make perfect sense, often look and sound like some combination of gibberish and the results of giving a gaijin one of those live translation apps. In other words, if you let Maniac title songs!

So I went a-digging through Zenkimi’s surprisingly deep discography and pulled out a list. Like all of the ranks, it is neither exhaustive nor even particularly comprehensive, but is merely a ranking of titles relative to one another. Continue reading →

Times I Went “Oh Hell Yes!” While Listening to an Idol Group for the First Time, Ranked

/ Homicidol Maniac / 2 Comments

When Tsurezure dropped their “Paradise Lost” MV the other evening, I sat in and enjoyed it in much the same way as other people. Then I clicked to another tab while the track finished up, and YouTube did what YouTube do, and I was immediately left with the same incredible feeling of hearing The Idols Now Known as Not Secured, Loose Ends for the first time, and thinking that this was a group that was going to eventually blow the hell up.

And I thought, hey, you know what’s awesome? That feeling, of hearing or experiencing a new thing, and getting that sudden jolt of … of a lot of things! It can be awe or fear or adrenaline or or or. But when you hear the thing, and your response is along the lines of “OH HELL YES,” that’s a good thing.

Here’s a non-exhaustive, barely sequential ranking of times that I heard a thing for the first time and went “OH HELL YES”: Continue reading →

PassCode Songs, Ranked

/ Homicidol Maniac / 3 Comments

Another new feature that I’ve been dying to bring to ol’ Homicidols.com is another one that fellow Deadspin readers may appreciate. Just to get this out of the way: It’s meant to be funny, you guys, not to be taken deathly seriously.

  1. “TRACE”
  2. “Club Kids Never Die”
  3. “Toxic”
  4. “Now I Know”
  5. “MOON PHASE”
  6. “rise in revolt”
  7. “Never Sleep Again”
  8. “Orange”
  9. “NINJA BOMBER”
  10. “Nextage”
  11. “XYZ”
  12. “MISS UNLIMITED”
  13. “Same To You”
  14. “Asterisk”
  15. “Let the revelry begin”
  16. “Dream Maker”
  17. “affair”
  18. “bite the bullet”
  19. Being hit by a bus
  20. “from here”

Where Our Idols Stand vs. All Idols

/ Homicidol Maniac / 4 Comments

A lot has changed in idol over the years; from basically being Japanese entertainment’s version of flyover country to some of the biggest stars in the world, and up and down and back and forth, idol itself has waxed and waned in its popularity. And then you get into the culture change and shifts in musical variety of the last several years — you know, that whole raison d’être of this stupid website — and various individuals becoming pop culture touchpoints, and you kind of wonder maybe exactly how it all fits together.

That is, relative to the rest, exactly how popular are our idols?

You should check this out, then. Trigger Warning pinged me on this the other day: Continue reading →

Did the Mask Girls Manage to Make #1 Again?

/ Homicidol Maniac / 5 Comments

Last week, Kamen Joshi released their much(?)-anticipated single “Personia/ISUMI,” with a very clear goal of matching the success of 2015’s “Genkidane”: Reaching the weekly #1.

Here’s the short version of the MV; why it’s short, not even our friend Char T Saki understands.

Immediately upon release, though, the push for #1 began in earnest:

They made it to #1 in the daily rank, but did they make it there for the week? Continue reading →