Your Homicidols Weekender #208

/ Homicidol Maniac

Good morning! How was everybody’s week? The surreality of life in contemporary America continues unabated as we swing wildly from one extreme scenario to another — lots of people dying and who knows how many dollars’ worth of destruction from a mid-November hurricane is somehow the least terrifying thing to feature in the news in several months — but I’ll be honest with you: It’s feeling good to be a Maniac lately. Lots of good stuff in idol, mostly calm in the other realms of life. Yeah, we can make it work.

So this is the official fourth anniversary edition of the Weekender, and while the product is basically the same thing as ever plus or minus an occasional feature or two, how much has Homicidols Dot Com changed in this time? I can tell you with a straight face that I remember doing the very first Weekender. It was … well, it was this weekend in November. For one reason or another, I was at the parental home of the former Mrs. Maniac. I’d started putting this website thing together about a year previously, itself after a year-plus deep dive into the weird, wild world of idol, but all of it surreptitiously — the former Mrs. Maniac and I had a troubled relationship at that point, and while I thought she’d get a kick out of Babymetal and BiS and the like, in truth she at best thought it was all weird and (considering the source) at worst probably thought she’d need to call the cops. But because marriages in their death throes tend to give one a bit more personal time, I found that dedicating to this personal labor of love was actually pretty easy. If anything, I was able to do too much, and me being me kept biting off more than I could chew. On the weekend in question, on top of trying to visit with family I’d been somewhat harried during the week and, with a new job demanding more of my time than usual, didn’t have the capacity to get to all of the stuff I wanted to get to. And so the Weekender was born.

Back in those days, it was nothing to crank out 25 posts per week, including or not the Weekender; now it’s 10 if we’re extremely productive. But the site feels better now. The content is richer, the perspectives broader. Team may have started because I thought Kerrie was hilarious and Daemon had the best fan write-ups from Babymetal events that I couldn’t even dream of attending, but now those kids are the real beating heart of the site. They made it better, they made it cooler. We’re basically cheese! And because we have ourselves here the longest running weekly episodic blog post in the history of North American-based J-pop-oriented websites contributed by a group of people who are effectively illiterate in Japanese, the fact that they kept the seat warm and the engine running during my runs of personal crises stringing back to last year, I couldn’t be more thankful.

Our next milestone is coming up on February 1. That’ll be the fifthiversary of this project, something that still feels impossible. But here we are, with a mature and properly responsive website that’s (***humblebrag alert***) I think really stood the test of time and moods in the scene, outlasting no shortage of equally ambitious and often more energetic startup projects on sheer will as much as anything else.

But more immediately! We’re fine-tuning stuff for the Best Of nominations (yes, we want yours), and then it’ll be voting time, and the cycle of life continues unabated. Watch out. And until then, enjoy yourselves some idol stuff.

Do Not Let This Man Reach #416

I’m going to keep force-feeding you people QUEENS video until you give in:

Raise your hand if this announcement surprised you:

I hope this NEMLESSS live never disappears:

Good chance to get into 15GERM if you aren’t already there:

This is ostensibly cyberMINK’s digest video, but it includes more of her friends than of her:

Sayonara, PEDIOPHOBIA:

I feel like there are plural awards that could be given to this new one from femme fatale with a straight face:

Buy the final A.N.otheЯ single! Or a least the last one with Luna!

There are few projects in idol that are as hard to follow and have as bizarre a trajectory over time as yandoll:

I defy you to resist Malcolm Mask McLaren:

When renewed coronaurgency strikes but you’re APOKALIPPPS and you’re going to have your damn first one-man:

More PIGGS? Don’t mind if I do!

It’s always impressive seeing how many total hits Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da MVs get:

Say a little prayer for the ska idols whose year has been ended thanks to the rona:

Just unbelievably excited about new CROSSNOESIS:

Idol in Focus

This week’s Idol in Focus is none other than the Eternal Oshi herself, Sari, who teased us all with what looked like a preview of her new cooking show before unveiling that she’s releasing an EP so soon I can taste it:

And along with it, this MV!

I am deeply excited for the once-blackest of them all to fully embrace city pop. Let her be all cool and wholesome; any form of adoration is fodder for the undead, I’m told, especially those undead since before time began.

Bonus in Focus

Oh and hey, Wonder Lander dropped another single that I’d be more inclined to make a bigger deal out of, except that it’s a solo piece and no offense to Asahi but that only kind of counts:

It sounds good!

Who did it better? NEO JAPONISM or ONEPIXCEL?

Been missing NaNoMoRaL lately:

“Gee, how’s Wyenra holding up?” was the question that led me to this:

I had this moment the other day when I was like, I hope Bury is doing okay. And they’re fine:

Live NEO BREAK:

Here’s a nice live (one of the last!) from Up Up Girls:

Ow.

Have a great weekend!