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

/ Homicidol Maniac / Leave a comment

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 →

Your Homicidols Weekender #157

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Good morning!

Yeah, it’s Saturday. What a week. At least I’d been loosely following Twitter up to a point! I checked in yesterday evening and had this massive, sudden realization that not only had Friday come and effectively gone, but that I had barely even though about much of anything beyond work since, well, the weekend before. But did putting this together help to cure what ailed me? In small measure, friend, it did.

Seek Help

The last time I led off with Up Up Girls 2? Never!

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Your Homicidols Weekender #156

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Good morning, ya goofs! Today is a special day. Yes, it’s Saturday, and yes, by the vagaries of the turn of the year and a few fortuitous personal circumstances, I for all intents and purposes completed my meaningful job-work for the year yesterday. Stress is down, hope is up, and while it’s true that the winter chill has arrived a little earlier than usual to Maniac Mansion, I’m looking forward to some wonderful time that begins basically now.

But that’s not what makes today special! No, today’s special because, if you math along with me, you’ll see that this is the effective third anniversary of the Weekender, which (do not try to correct me) I believe is the longest-running weekly episodic blog post about idols who scream and swear and so on. I’ve done a lot of these, and some of them have been good (this one is good) and some of them have been bad (I make no guarantees though), but all of them have been done in an effort to capture a much wider sampling of what’s happening in the hard side of idol in a given week, and maybe expose you all to some related things that might otherwise slip through the cracks. The Weekender has evolved to include more big-ticket stuff in recent months, but its core purpose and stupid format remain largely intact since the very beginning.

Anyway, I enjoy it, and I hope you do, too. Data suggest that a good number of you do! So that’s fine.

Now go play the Fun and let’s look forward to at least a few dozen more!

That’s an Odd Way of Saying “Seven”

There’s a (great so far) new project from tapestok records; give a listen to Los An Jewels:

satis faction is already my favorite idol ever

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Your Homicidols Weekender #154

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Good morning! Good heavens, what a week that was. I write you today in the pre-dawn hours as I enter the final day of a whirlwind that fortunately brings one phase of one thing to an end and leaves me space for a little while until the next phase begins. And what a week it was! When I checked in yesterday afternoon to try to get some additional items for this here Weekender, it was done under the impression that, well, that I really needed to find some stuff for the Weekender. Little did I know that it would blow up like this!

So enjoy, and relax, and spend some time outside in what’s a beautiful time of transition all over the world except for people in the tropics or the polar regions. Here we get fallen leaves; people in the Upside Down have spring; and it’s all good. And play the Fun while you’re at it, because Halloween is mere days away and you may as well get your nightmares solved early!

What Are You Calling a Nightmare?

Our old pal Montero has safely delivered!

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buGG Is Good

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Hey, here’s a quick post! You guys all dig on buGG, the PIIIIIIIN and Queens little sister group that’s fun as hell, right? Of course you do! So as luck would have it, they had their first anniversary the other day, and to commemorate released a new song:

Lyrics! Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Weekender #153

/ Homicidol Maniac

Well that was certainly a week, wasn’t it? Idol is just the most infuriating thing. Yes, musical acts disband or retire all the time in every scene, but I’m yet to encounter a comparative for how deliberately and frequently it’s the practice in idol, and that after the incredible effort put into the endeavor by everybody involved. And people wonder why I resist going Full Wota! Anyway, 2019 has been pretty much the worst of all worlds.

And yet we slog on! Look, Idol Halloween will begin in earnest next weekend, and with it a pretty darn good season. There are plenty of releases in autumn, and then Idol Christmas happens, and of course we’ll be in Best Of mode before you know it. So just as you’re thinking, but Maniac, this is all bad and dumb, guess what: It’ll get better, because it’s idol and it always does. Now go play the Fun.

Pushy, Pushy

Our girls CY8ER going major:

I know, I too was surprised that they hadn’t yet been picked up Continue reading →

Here Are a Whole Bunch More Songs and an MV from CARRY LOOSE

/ Homicidol Maniac

Feeling really unmotivated, folks, but sometimes the best therapy to facing the idoling loss of two of the most important in it to you as one of your favorite groups disbands is to force-listen to and then share via your fancy idol website an ongoing mess of new material from a successor of the group one of those favorites founded almost a decade ago and then the other favorite joined a few years later. You know?

Yeah, I thought that the huge-ass Weekender Idol in Focus entry was timed well enough to sufficiently put a cap on this smorgasbord of individual track releases from CARRY LOOSE, but boy is my face red now! So let’s cope together with this new MV of theirs and listen to it all and download. Continue reading →

Let Us Be Powered by 143

/ Homicidol Maniac

Holy hell, as I return to this post to put some finishing touches on it (what do you mean, there isn’t even a whole paragraph here, you say, and I give you a nice knuckle sandwich for the trouble), I have finally found the group that completely vexes my creativity. Every post has a boring-ass title! Is 143 good and fun? They are. Have they, in their 18-odd months of existence, grown and developed and become a presence? They have. Do they impress upon the casual Westerner, especially the non-weeb variety, anything that would inspire the kinds of devotion that leads to one receiving angery comments on the internet for acknowledging the fact that, no, the answer to this question is no? No. At least, not that I’ve noticed.

So maybe let’s see! This is a fun song — I wanted a whole post for it the second I heard it — and maybe some of 143’s patented emotional idorock is exactly what you need this Monday morning, regardless of whether a typhoon has unleashed nature’s wrath on you.

You want lyrics? Continue reading →

Your Homicidols Weekender #152

/ Homicidol Maniac

Hey folks, a little bit of a somber one this time because Japan — you know, the place and culture that makes this stuff we love happen — is getting absolutely assaulted by Typhoon Hagibis and there was apparently an earthquake in more or less the same area at the same time. Short of a radioactive monster suddenly appearing, I don’t know if that situation could get more Japanese. Or worse, frankly. So do the #PrayforJapan thing if prayer’s what you do, or consider that there might be some need for aid in the coming days and what you can do to help. No, buying more cheki from Idol Underground probably ain’t it.

For everybody in a safe place now, though, it does you nor they nor us any good to dwell on bad things, and lookie here at all of these (mostly) good things. You know that idols are going to play a role in a the very least cheer up people affected by the typhoon, after all, so may they right now bring some cheer to you whether you need it or not. Also cheery? Playing the Fun and thinking about idol movies!

Cheers

Yeah, go read it:

Continue reading →

This Is What AIBECK Sounds Like Now

/ Homicidol Maniac

It was with a heavy heart that I had to acknowledge, from a time of my not-quite demise, that AIBECK — somewhat-longstanding not-quite-doyens of the chika scene, gamely ambitious and well-supported — had a mass graduation and was now moving forward as a duo. It gave me a sad, especially at the thought that I wouldn’t be seeing my girl An’z around anymore, probably, and she was the first idol to ever tweet an English phrase back at me, which practically means that we were bound at the soul.

Nevertheless, idol never truly rests, and it was good and necessary that the resultant “new” duo version of the group would make good on a release in October. Maybe this is where we land today!

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