Earlier this week we posted a short retrospective of THE SPUNKY, one of the sunniest gems in the history of underground punk idol. It was a nice reminder that alternative music doesn’t have to be all maudlin doom, shrieking angst or screaming against the inevitable darkness of the void, as much as we truly love that stuff too. Judging by this week’s releases, we weren’t the only ones who wanted to start the year off with an upbeat shot of positivity, comfort and confidence.
So let’s see how long this new season of cheerful optimism lasts! I give it until Tuesday. In the meantime:
You’ll Melt More! released a feel good MV for their surprisingly named single, “!!”.
The first week of 2022 was a bit quiet unless you are a fan of the newly resurrected GANG PARADE. Most everyone else seemed to be sleeping off their New Year’s hangovers or out playing in the Tokyo snow. But some people still had to show up for work this week, such as:
Nerun Poku Poku who, last year, taught us how to tell the difference between a katana, an office lady and a shelf. Now she’s back to teach us how to count in Japanese!
People will either be cheering or weeping when they say, “Twelve more months of this!!”
Planck Stars kicked off the new year with a new MV.
If that’s not enough chaos for you, there also dropped whole album of insanity.
Need to warm up after that? GRATIA-ALA dropped in with some sunny weather.
I don’t think we’ve ever featured LYSM on the site before, but they were recommended by Karli over on the Homicidols Discord Server. This is a very nice track.
If you missed Okinawa Electric Girl Saya’s new year’s livestream, here’s a small dose.
沖縄電子少女彩、2022年の幕開けは彩アレンジの沖縄民謡『耳切坊主』舞から歌へ。
Okinawa Electric Girl Saya, the beginning of 2022 is from the Okinawan folk song "Mimikiri Bozu" dance to song arranged by Saya. pic.twitter.com/CsNgXBtplD
— 彩Saya(沖縄電子少女彩)Okinawa Electric Girl Saya (@Tincy_saya) January 7, 2022
A lyric video is an odd thing to get from MIGMA SHELTER because it’s so hard to read while dancing.
I mean, it’s still live RAY with a band set, but the vocals are way too low in the mix, sound guy!!
And if you want even more RAY, how can you resist a 360 VR video of Kai Marino, Kotoyama Shizuku, and Tsukihi harvesting sweet potatoes? This is just the kind of idol content we need more of!
Another Discord Server recommendation, this time by Ziensa who always seems to find interesting stuff. Here’s some live PAPIPUPEPO wa Muzukashii.
By the way, Don Guri, the giraffe member, has some very devoted international fans.
There’s nothing better than You’ll Melt More singing one of their timeless classics.
Fingers Cross spin-off project SHIMMER SHRIMPMER have a new innovation… reacting to their own MV as they view it for the first time! It’s a little difficult to precisely follow it all if you don’t understand Thai, but their emotions and reactions still manage to come through. Also, their song “Drawing the Sky”(Which is amazing!) is available for streaming…
Happy New Year! It is officially 2022 in every time zone on the planet that uses the Gregorian calendar (to our Ethiopian friends, I hope you are having an enjoyable 2013). If you missed it, we posted the results of the Homicidols Best of 2021 yesterday. We also pretended that the Friday Fun was a defunct WACK unit and resurrected it without warning, so be sure to post your #2022IdolPredictions on Twitter. The prize for getting the most predictions correct is to be burned at the stake as a witch, so you may want to keep those prognostications a bit vague.
So, welcome 2022! Please be kind to us. We’re keeping our expectations low so you don’t need to try too hard. If nothing else, thank you for kicking off the year with the traditional day of idols in kimonos.
We are now witnessing that rare conjunction that occurs only once every seven years where the Weekender and Christmas align to fall on the same day. So, Merry (or Happy) Christmas if you celebrate that kind of thing. Over in the Homicidols Discord Server, we’ve been collecting pics of idols in holiday cosplay so I snagged some of them and threw together a little X Mas e-card for everyone, just like Grandma used to make.
The end of the year is going fast as we race through the holiday season to the end of 2021. For all of those in school, I hope you were able to successfully put the seal on your capstone projects, ace all your finals and put another semester behind you.
A quick note on the Homicidols Best of 2021 timeline:
Hello and welcome to another Homicidols Weekender! We’ve been having a lot of fun recently in our new Discord server, so much so that we’re replacing the usual songs at the end of the weekender with a community built playlist. Every week we’ll be collecting submissions of all kinds of music so that hopefully, you’ll be able to discover something fun through a short sample of our collective tastes. Could be on the heavier side, could be on the quieter side, you’ll just have to read the weekender to find out! So, onwards we go:
MANACLE dropped an MV for “BAN your HURT”, the title track off of their EP being released this coming Wednesday.
End-of-the-year wrap-up season is officially upon us, so be sure to tell us your nominations forHomicidols Best of 2021. Nominations are open until this coming Friday, December 10th.
While it just barely missed the cut-off for consideration for this year’s awards, Minami of WAGAMAMARAKIA’s side project, DEATHNYANN looks like a promising candidate for next year.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the U-S-of-A, which can only mean one thing: it’s the unofficial start of Homicidols XXXXX of the Year Awards season!! We (meaning “mostly Kerrie”) are wrapping up things behind the scenes, so keep an eye out for your opportunity to nominate picks for Best Album, MV, Single, and Debut as well as Saddest Graduation, Disbandment, Disappointment and many other categories. We also have a new award this year: Best/Worst Unit Name. It looks to be a very competitive category, but I’ve got good money on STAiNY.
Since the awards recognize work released from December to November, this is the final week of eligibility for this year. Here are some last minute entries:
BLACKNAZARENE has a new single, new costumes, new live DVD and a new MV.
I have been on vacation this past week so it would seem like I have plenty of time to keep up on idol world news. Unfortunately, between travel time and spending two days at Head in the Clouds festival (during which my phone turned into a incommunicative brick) I feel like I’m way behind and may never catch up. I would just check out The Weekender to bring myself up to speed except that I’m now responsible for putting the thing together (with the help of Team, who were equally overwhelmed this week). So now we find ourselves in a bit of an ouroboros of idol news.
I guess what I’m saying is, sorry if I miss anything this week. A LOT happened and I wasn’t always paying attention. Here’s some of what I did catch:
Sari, our Eternal Queen, has blessed us with a new release.
Our Team Homicidols chieftain Daemon is out doing cool stuff in real life, so this Weekender edition intro is being guest-written by myself, (supreme nothing) who feels very weird writing this in third person.
I’ll admit to ya’ll a little something, I don’t always get to read every single article on this site in real time, and sometimes I miss things on here entirely, but one thing I always make sure I do read is the Weekender every Saturday morning, usually on the back porch with some coffee. I’m a lover of ritual, and I find that consistency calming and relaxing. I enjoy the Weekender because not only is it a nifty little recap of things I may have missed, but I also enjoy the intertwining of everyday existential philosophy that gets mixed in with all the idol chatter as one reads the intros. I don’t know if any of you get the same feeling, but I hope you do, or at least get your own positive thing out of this every Saturday.
What is this blog to you readers? I’d imagine it’s the “news” for some of you, and maybe for others it’s “hot takes”, and maybe oftentimes it’s just good silly fan-driven fun. You can get all of those things from here I’d like to think. But for me, (even before I started contributing) this place has been a little bit of comfort food in an occasionally frustratingly loud and anxious world. The Team means the world to me, and this community makes me all-too-happy to share silly/weird/fun/dumb/inspring/quirky things that we can enjoy together. I love the sense of belonging in our mutual fandom love as much as I like actual idols. Thank goodness for all of you.Thank goodness for idols.Thank goodness for idols bringing us together.
It’s the weekend. Let’s do this!
Let’s start with this literally-just-added-at -the-last-minute bit of news… Yurasmile joining APOKALIPPPS!!!! Can you think of a more perfect casting ? Congrats to Yura, congrats to the group, and congrats to us for getting to live on the same planet with them…
