In the latest news from Tokyo Idol Festival weekend, both BiSH and the unit formerly know as EMPiRE have withdrawn from the event due to COVID diagnoses. Not that it impacts us too much since overseas otaku got region-blocked from the whole festival. But who needs TIF anyway, right? There are a ton of stellar units out there having an amazing 2022 who didn’t get invited to TIF either, like:
MAD JAMIE, who continue their streak of stellar singles.
I’ve really enjoyed the week. With GARUDA and 2& spending last weekend in the UK, NECRONOMIDOL running all over Europe and ATARASHII GAKKO! touring California, my twitter feed has been full of my Western friends attending idol lives in their home countries and showing off their cheki. Sure, I’ve been plenty jealous, but it’s also been great to see and almost felt like old times. Besides, I’ll get my chance in a little over a month when MELON BATAKE A GO GO arrive in my home state for Saboten Con. I hope to see you there! Until then, I’ll just live vicariously through my Twitter feed and curate items for the Weekender, like:
ASP found a sparkly way to burst back onto our radar.
I am totally jealous of those of you in Europe at the moment. NECRONOMIDOL is working their way across The Continent while being joined by 2& and GARUDA in London for HYPER JAPAN.
Thank you for coming to HYPER JAPAN PARTY tonight!🥳🇯🇵
It was a lot of fun!✌️✌️
I’m happy that I could perform in London for the 3rd time!🇬🇧✨✨I’m looking forward to the next opportunity!❤️❤️
ありがとう！！#HyperJapan#hyperjapanfestival#hyperjapan2022 #HJF22 pic.twitter.com/2qC4ja6Ws1
— 千歳さき (２＆) (@DOUBLE_AND) July 22, 2022
Over here on this side of the pond, things are much more dull unless you happen to be at San Diego Comic Con. Continue reading
To balance out the bad news down in Oshiloss Corner, I had written a whole intro blurb about the awesome news that the Tokyo Idol Festival 2022 lineup had been announced and how epic it was all going to be. Then I discovered that, for some reason, TIF has region-blocked livestream ticket sales on their website this year. We will keep looking into the matter, but it currently looks like overseas otaku might not have to opportunity to participate in this year’s TIF.
Basically, my good news turned into crap and now I’m just kinda cranky and don’t feel like writing a new intro blurb, so let’s listen to the new one by situasion which may now be my front runner for Song of the Year.
We are one week deep into the new idol fiscal year and, compared to last week, things were pretty sedate. After surviving the near-simultaneous break-ups of Yanakoto Sotto Mute, LiLii Kaona and SAKA-SAMA, we could use the rest. Other than the website blowing up on Tuesday morning, it was a pretty laid back week. This gave us plenty of time to appreciate and enjoy the great new stuff that did drop.
Let’s start overseas with a reminder from AKIRA-KURØ that Thai idols rock hard as well.
I’m pretty sure that the Idol Fiscal Year starts on July 1st. Otherwise, it’s difficult to explain why every idol and their sister unit dropped a new release in the final days of June. I mean, new music is typically released on Tuesdays except for this week when on Wednesday and Thursday (June 29th and 30th) just about everybody rushed a new single or EP out the door. I can only assume that it must be for accounting purposes.
Whatever the reason, this Weekender is packed. Along with all the great new stuff, the transition from June to July has unfortunately brought us some pretty gut wrenching departures as well.
TRIGGER WARNING: this week’s Oshiloss Corner can fill a bathtub with wota tears.
It’s times like these that make me eternally grateful for Team and the crew over on the Homicidols Discord server. It takes a village to keep up with everything happening in idol.
I rarely get personal here, primarily because I figure folks visit because they’re interested in idols and artistry and music and not the intimate travails of Daemon: idol blogger. And don’t worry, because I’m not going to get personal now except to say that, yesterday, I had a really bad day. I only bring it up because the things that most helped me get through it were: 1. Ditching work for the afternoon; 2. A chat/venting session with Papermaiden; and 3. This infectious new single by fishbowl.
Idol heals. Let’s begin the treatment:
Let’s talk numbers!
1 – WACK Train currently circling Tokyo on the Yamanote line.
3 – Number of units that Toda Roa has now graduated from.
10 – Year Anniversary celebrated by Especia last night with a reunion livestream.
14 – Days unit the dissolution of LiLii Kaona.
50 – Years since the release of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, one of the greatest albums ever recorded.
217 – Days until PLANCK STARS London gig.
245 – Days until PLANCK STARS plays Los Angeles.
300 – Number of Weekenders we’ll hit in nine short weeks. That’s a lot of Weekenders. Here’s this one:
It did turn out to be a crazy week in REAL LIFE™, so it was entirely prescient for Chris to revive our Monday Match Game with a competition for the most mad idol. Congratulations to MAD JAMIE for taking home the crown!! The title is well deserved. Speaking of idol madness, congratulations are also in order for Richan of PLANCK STARS who hit 10K Twitter followers with less than 24 hours to go before deadline and will not be needing to shave their head. Their solo single will be released instead.
1万人おめ👏
明日ソロ曲お披露目‼️
@plasta_richan pic.twitter.com/HS2qImeiAN— プランクスターズ | official (@planckstars) June 11, 2022
It was a difficult week to be a chika idol fan with a day job that requires focus and detail orientation. Each day was packed full of distractions with idol news and excellent new releases dropping constantly. This resulted in an Oshiloss Corner that’s a bit more crowded than I like, but we at least got to be comforted by some heartfelt new releases that are going to feature heavily in playlist rotations between now and Best of the Year season. There was actually so much great new stuff that it didn’t all make it into the Weekender as it was getting pretty long. You can drop by the Homicidols Discord Server to see the stuff that we couldn’t squeeze in. For the rest:
Hey girls. situasion are the most captivating unit in idol right now.
