New Up Up Girls. Also, Technology Is Amazing!

/ Kerrie

Oh UUG, you’ve been keeping me so mercilessly busy as of late. Mere hours after I finished writing an article about their smartphone app/VR kissing simulator, they announced the winners of the “Up Up Girls 2 Audition” and now I have to merge both articles! Wish me luck.

So, the most important news first, the new Up Up Girls members/sister group/servants/whatever they are; to be honest, I’m still not 100% sure if these girls are going to be added to the group proper or if this is a sister group. But these comments from Mori and Azusa seem to suggest the former:

“Changes and evolution was necessary in the sixth year since our formation”

“There’s been seven of us and it would have gotten difficult if we didn’t blow a new wind soon”

Don’t get mad at me if this translation sucks, all I did was use Google translate then attempted to make the robot language understandable to actual humans.

So they felt the audition was necessary because they’ve been the same seven members for too long. Well, at least its better than a graduation…

I hope I didn’t jinx that.

Up Up Girls 2 will be appearing as “guests” at Up Up Girls’ live on April 8, which just honestly just confuses this idiot even more; are they full-fleged members or just friendly underlings that’ll occasionally show up at their concerts? If you can understand Japanese better than either of us here at Homicidols, please clarify!

But anyway, onto the newbies themselves:

Those lil’ cuties up there are Riko Hashimura (Age 17), Mayu Yoshikawa (18), Chinatsu Takahagi (19) and Aya Kajishima (17). Good luck to all of them and I hope I can make sense of this soon!

Now onto the less important, but arguably much more interesting news; now you can kiss an Up Up Girl!

At least, you can if you’ve got their VR device and a smartphone on hand:

The “Up Up Girls (Kari) Seifuku Seishun Collection Apuri” (Or “Up Up Girls (Kari) Youth Uniform Spring Collection”) project was actually announced a few months ago alongside the (Freakin’ awesome) Apuga VR Goggles, (and the member auditions, funny enough). What is it? Possibly the dream of horny fans everywhere:

“Up Up Girls (Kari) Smartphone application that sees a mini-drama of each of the seven members at very close range”

“Watching with “Apuga VR Goggles (Kari)”, or similar VR goggles for smartphones, you can watch the real performances of the members with impossible proximity, in addition to seeing them watch you, calling out, speaking to you and confessing! Please enjoy being so close to the members you can even hear them sigh. Furthermore, if there is a download code attached to an “Apuga VR Goggle (Kari)” you can also download a special movie. The “Special video” brings you even closer, with seven 3D kiss videos! That’s right!”

Yup, still using that Google translate. Technology really is amazing when your only knowledge of the Japanese language is through memes and repetitive song lyrics.

A smartphone app where you can date members? And even receive a (digital) kiss if you shell out on some special edition VR goggles? This feels very AKB48-like to me. Sometimes I wonder if Up Front sees the weirder stuff 48g pull out, think “That’s a cool idea” but aren’t brave enough to inflict it upon their Hello! Project girls so they make their idols outside of H!P be their guinea pigs:


OH, YOU~

By the way, there’s already previews of each member’s route (minus the newbies) on Youtube, go nuts:


^That thumbnail tho

No news on if Up Up Girls 2 will be added in the future, but for now this is certainly… a thing.

The app is already on the (Japanese) Android store, with an iOS version soon to follow. The bad news is that the Apuga VR goggles were apparently only sold at their Budokan show, so we’ve just got to hope/wait for some jammy git to upload the kiss videos online before we can all experience them.

Too bad, those goggles looked rad:


Look Maniac, I’m a poet!