Yume-kawaii

Non Idols On

/ Homicidol Maniac

How about that for a title, huh? It actually undersells the whole, but I don’t know of very many people who don’t dig on ex-DEEP GIRLer Non. She’s back, in case you couldn’t tell, and not in the way that she tended to pop up here and there for her random jazz vocals and the like — no, she’s back, with a posse, doing something that I’ve legit never seen before.

This is the group:

Which I surprised to see when Trigger Warning shared it with me yesterday, and then it popped up in the group — I’ve been seeing Candye Syrup something-or-other for a long-ass time, which their Twitter profile confirms, seeing as they go back almost two year at this point, and have historically rubbed elbows with a lot of our idol mainstays because it’s a, uh, hair salon.

Anyway, this is a big ol’ step into the unknown. In addition to Non and her mouth piercings doing yume-kawaii, they’ve managed to take that whole image and not super-idol it the way Rinahamu’s various projects tend to; no, they took yume-kawaii and made it nasty:

Of course, they won’t exclusively do that and will dabble, but sweet holy moses, I love this juxtaposition of pastels and cotton candy and screaming. I love it mucho. Also trying to figure out how many of those members are people that I know from other things, because I swear that it’s more than just Non. OH WELL.

Monday Match Game: A Question of Style

/ Homicidol Maniac / 6 Comments

Now that all of our other work is behind us, friends, and we’re firmly into 2017, it’s time to bring back the Monday Match Game. This one is … a little different.

Kawaii. It’s the foundation of the idol look, no matter how it manifests; it can be cool, creepy, goth, brutal, adorable and so on. Really, the only limits on how to express kawaii are the limits on the human imagination. And, as something of a culture unto itself, kawaii has its own subcultures, some of which become fashion-forward trends that manifest on the idol stage.

In this corner, the kawaii of illness and addiction, pale and pastel, self-loathing and society rejection; in the other, fantasies that are just a little bit off, like a dreamscape filled with wonders that melt every time you try to touch them. Two definitive trends in idol enter, but only one will survive! Continue reading →