Good morning! Allow me to preface this Weekender by saying that it’s effectively the anti-Weekender; if I created this this 194 weeks ago as a way to give some recognition to more throwaway idol content, or to at least make mention of things we couldn’t get to, this week’s edition is a gross perversion of it. Look at how full it is! With big-name stuff! And I actually had to stop myself from adding some things that I still mean to get around to writing about.
If you ask Team, that’s the mantra of the week. We all reflected on this the other day: “Oh wow heck we been busy.” Whether it was work or personal, we all had big limits to our personal time, and man did it show. We somehow missed real-time reactions to, like, a bunch of stuff that we’d ordinarily blog the hell out of. Funny. A couple of years ago, I’d be panicking; now, honestly, it just feels like something to catch up to one way or another. No big deal!
So as we get back about our business, you should too, friends. It’s Saturday, after all, a good time to focus on the things you enjoy. Do it, and if that happens to be several hours’ worth of idol stuff from throughout the week, then by all means make the Weekender your entertainment center of choice!
Oh Wow, You Weren’t Kidding
Attention fellow Haru fans:
I have bad news. My first North American tour has been postponed again from next September (2020) until next March (2021) due to Coronavirus situations. This tour would have been done last March (2020) originally so I’ll have to let you wait for a year.
📸 @fkmr_08 pic.twitter.com/B0DSwwS5z3
— 春 ねむり HARU NEMURI (@haru_nemuri) August 2, 2020
Watch my girl Cinnamon:
The new post-NECRONOMIDOL home of Okaki, Rei, Hina and a friend:
MANACLE(マナクル)始動。
8/23 (Sun) Debut LIVE
@ MsmileBOX pic.twitter.com/xVON2TVmze— MANACLE (@MANACLE_0_0_) August 3, 2020
The ongoing attempts to make something productive over at the Ska Idol project has resulted in what I guess is correctly called BOMBSHELL, which seems to have no actual relationship to any music called ska at all!
Melon Batake a go go did this long-ass stream:
While we’re at it, how about Bed-In?
MAMESHiBA NO TAiGUN had the most expected major debut ever — the girls are now on Avex along with their sister groups BiSH and EMPiRE and are celebrating with a new single to boot:
BiS also dropped a new music video for I WANT TO DiE!!!! from their upcoming EP “ANTi-CONFORMiST SUPERSTAR”. It’s silly super sentai action on a small island!
Filed under “Friends of Homicidols”, Ryan B who you might know as the producer of PIGGS dropped a new single under his pop persona Brian Shinsekai:
EMPiRE released a tearjerker of a video for “I don’t cry anymore” from their SUPER COOL EP:
Maniac to Cal: Hey what’s Zsasz doing anyway? Cal to Maniac: *way more detail than anybody expected*:
Idol in Focus
This week’s Idol in Focus is sora tob sakana for two reasons. The first is that they created something of incredible beauty that will nonetheless get buried by the end of the year:
But on top of that, the heartbreak:
This little project of alt-pop perfection kept showing up in my 2016-era YMM YouTube deep dives, the same as Avandoned and the early efforts of Maison Book Girl, and I loved everything about them from the jump. This is sad.
We’re contractually obligated to mention Up Up Girls at least every other week:
If the best punk is raw punk, then ELECTRIC HEARTS has never seen an oven.
O’CHAWANZ is proof that there’s still good in the world:
If that doesn’t do it for you, maybe another group with a La-La tie-in, the sublime SAKA-SAMA, will:
BABYMETAL featured very heavily in the latest episode of the Gen Hoshino dorama MIU404.
まさかの"PA PA YA!!" feat りょうさん#MIU404 #BABYMETAL pic.twitter.com/cDjBQAKuRS
— Jill (@yurixanex) August 7, 2020
Our friends at Chaotic Harmony did an interview with Owaranaide, Yoru
How about some live SAKA SAMA?
Have a great weekend!
Sorry to bother you since you don’t talk about them much but… CY8ER is disbanding in 2021, I don’t really know japanese so I’d really like to know why, and since you are my main idol news source I thought I could ask you
The Homicidols staff had a conversation about this in our team chat and we’ve concluded that they’ve mutually decided that with the upcoming Budokan concert, they’ve achieved a good plateau to disband while at their peak. Two of the members are in their 30’s now and likely want to move on, and this was a level they had set as a goal for themselves.
So while it’s always a bummer when a group you follow disbands, one can at least take comfort that this is happening on their terms. Hope this helps a little bit!
Also, thanks very much for reading and taking time to write a comment!