SPATIO is an indie idol group from Oita that debuted
on December 24, 2011. On July 22, 2018, their
sister group, SPATIO KIDS, made their debut.In February 2020 the group changed their name to SPATIO ERPHY to reflect
a new, more mature image.SPATIO ERPHY
sing SPATIO songs and various cover songs but have also released a single of an original song, “Jump!
Jump! Jump!”, in May 2020.They have
kept the same lineup since their debut.
Members:
Yua (Leader) - Born on October 11, 2007.Official Color: Green.
I thought I'd write some articles about Japanese kids idol groups that I’m currently a fan of. My first article is about KUWAGATA☆KIDS.
KUWAGATA☆KIDS formed
in April 2019 in Nagasaki.The original
lineup consisted of five girls, with Mana joining in July.Riri joined in August 2020.The leader of the group is Mari, who is not
the oldest.Rabi Rin is a sister group
with Saerin as the leader, Eri also a member and the sisters of Luna Luna and
Mirerun also being members.Moon Clover
is a subunit consisting of Luna Luna and Mana; they made their debut on
February 21, 2021.
Members:
Mari (Leader) - Born on July 20, 2009.Official Color: Red.
Luna Luna - Born on February 6, 2009.Official Color: Blue.
Mirerun - Born on September 11, 2010.Official Color: Purple.
Saerin - Born on July 4, 2011.Official Color: Pink.
Eri - Born on December 21, 2012.Official Color: Yellow.
(The above girls are the original lineup.)
Mana - Born on July 31, 2009. Official Color: Green.
Riri - Born on May 7, 2011.Official Color: Orange.
It should be noted that there are different spellings
for many of the members. Japanese people
interchange the letters r and l so sometimes there are two or more spellings
for a name. Mari is also spelled Malie
and Marie. Mirerun is also spelled
Mirelun. Eri is also spelled Elie or
Ellie. Mana is also spelled Marna. Riri is translated into Lily by online
translators.
Trivia: Mari and Eri are sisters. Luna Luna has a younger brother named Oscar
and a younger sister named Ririan.
Ririan is a member of Rabi Rin, the sister group. Oscar seems to be a child model but I’m not
sure of what role he plays in KUWAGATA☆KIDS.
Mirerun has a younger sister named Hiyorin who is in Rabi Rin. Many members of Rabi Rin are preschool age
and I don’t have a list of all their names.
Two members also play musical instruments. Riri plays both piano and violin.
Today SHIKI, former leader of Hiwillow, is 16 years old! On June 6, 2021 SHIKI graduated from Hiwillow in order to focus on her studies. She is currently in tenth grade (or JK1 - High School First Year - as they say in Japan). Originally Hiwillow was to perform live for their fans on June 5, but due to the continuing pandemic the event was cancelled and Hiwillow had a one hour live stream on SHOWROOM Live instead. During this live stream Hiwillow performed three songs, "Kuru Kuru", "Baby Baby" and "To The Top". "Baby Baby" is a newer song and this was the second time Hiwillow performed it on SHOWROOM. Before SHIKI announced that she was graduating Hiwiilow's management announced that Hiwillow will film their very first music video, presumably for "Baby Baby". Unfortunately we won't ever get to see a music video with SHIKI nor will we get to hear her sing on the single for this song. This is very upsetting to me personally as SHIKI was my favorite member of Hiwillow. I was lucky enough to get two cheki (small instant photos) of SHIKI due to a friend and me ordering one online. She personalized each one! Even sweeter, on the second one she actually wrote in English "I want to meet you!" I only wish I could have. I've never been to Japan and due to health and money issues I probably will never go. But I wanted to wish one of my favorite Japanese idols a very Happy Birthday!
Below are the photos of my Hiwillow merchandise collection, and the back of the second cheki.
As it turns out, I have overlooked a handful of songs that were released in 2020 which should have been included in my last article. I’m going to make up for this by sharing some videos and links for the artists.
First off, I made a mistake regarding the group Fluffy Star. The video I linked last time was not an original song. According to a German friend who watches anime, it is an anime song in which the character names are replaced with the names of the girls in Fluffy Star. But Fluffy Star did indeed have an original song released in 2020 titled “STEP UP”, which, believe it or not, they wrote the lyrics to! The first video uploaded with this song was from an October 3 performance. There’s some talking at the beginning and end of the video, but the song is sung in the middle.
Do you remember when I mentioned Magical Girl Momorin? Well, she’s had an image change or two. She is now simply momo (I think spelled with all lower case letters) and she released a single titled “I’ll try ~Todoku made~”. You can buy this cheap from your favorite mp3 seller. Here is the video for the song.
After I posted my article “2020 Japanese Idol Year In Review” the group CRUiSE! uploaded the studio version of their song “Heart Chaser”. It figures one of 2020’s best songs would be released on December 28, practically the very end of the year!
Boy, did the year 2020 stink! I’m not just talking about Japanese idol
activities such as break-ups and graduations either, although these things did
happen too. I usually don’t talk about
my feelings on world events in this blog, as it doesn’t relate to Japanese
idols, but no one can deny that we are in the midst of a global pandemic in
which a virus has spread, and, unfortunately, claimed the lives of way too many
good people in this world. We are forced
to wear face masks when we go out in public and keep our distance from each
other. Because of this, public
gatherings have been discouraged. This
limits what many music groups can do as public appearances and concerts are not
a good idea. Thankfully, there are
scientists working on various vaccines to hopefully kill or control the
virus. One hopes that 2021 will be a
much better year than 2020.
2020 didn’t provide many new songs from my favorite
groups. There were new groups that
debuted in this year although one I liked broke up before the end of the
year. I can’t say that I blame anyone
for wanting to stay home instead of getting together with their groups and
going into the studio to record new songs, or to perform live in a public place
with an audience. But I’m grateful for
the handful of new songs that I got to hear this year.
2020 started off on a particularly crappy note as on
January 1 monogatari’s staff announced that the group was disbanding. Their final live was held on February
16. My favorite member, Aozora Asuka,
started a new Twitter account in April which has now been deleted. I am not sure why.
Hiwillow released their debut single, “To The Top”, on
March 25, 2020. My favorite song on the
single is “cherry”. I linked a fan video
of Hiwillow last year, when the group was still a trio, but this year the
group’s official YouTube channel has a live video from last December with four
members (although the audio is the studio song). Also, here are some official links.
A Little Bit was a group that created their Twitter in
early January and their activities started soon afterward. A Little Bit featured former amorecarina
Osaka member Yano Yuka, who was the youngest member of the group. I watched some of their official YouTube
videos, but I only downloaded one, a live song named “challenger”. The video was uploaded on March 27. This is where I would normally place the link
for that video, but unfortunately the group disbanded on September 22. All their YouTube videos are now private or
deleted. I did save a group photo, which I’ll share
below.
One of my favorite members of Candy Zoo, Katayama
Yuara, graduated on January 13, 2020.
Four days later a new lineup of Candy Zoo debuted with returning member
Sugaya Natsuko. Obviously, this new
lineup was formed, and new songs were written for and practiced, at some much
earlier point before Yuara’s graduation.
All of the older Candy Zoo songs, including the Candy Zoo Nightmare
songs, have been discarded in favor of the newer songs. If anyone reading this likes the new lineup
and songs, that’s fine, but none of the newer members or songs are favorites of
mine.
Last year I linked a video for “vanilla” by Jumping
Kiss, thinking it was their first single.
Actually, it wasn’t. Oops. “Houkago Lip”, released April 23, 2019, was
the group’s first single, and there isn’t a music video for it. Jumping Kiss’s second single, “Koi wa
Ameagari ni Makasete”, does have a music video.
There are only five members in the current lineup, though. About a month after this video was uploaded
to YouTube my favorite member, Suzuki Hiyori, cut her super long hair
short. And then by December nearly every
member of Jumping Kiss got a haircut. This
always seems to happen to my favorite idols.
The seven members of White Rabbits all graduated from
the group sometime in June. Then they
reemerged as the group Fluffy Star (which is my preferred name since I’m not
sure how to spell their Japanese name) in July, signed to a new company. The new White Rabbits are a bunch of
preschool girls…which I’m not interested in.
Fluffy Star basically perform cover songs, but the video below may be an
original song.
Sakura Gakuin started the year by uploading a new
video to their YouTube channel titled “Aoharu Hakusho”. And there’s a whopping total of 73 seconds of
music in it! It sounds like it’s a great
song, but unfortunately this is probably all I’ll ever hear since it’s hard to
purchase Sakura Gakuin CDs. There was an
announcement on September 1 that they will have one final year and then disband
on August 31, 2021! That’s sad news for
fans of the group. The final lineup has
only eight members, much like the original lineup. (Longtime fans will recall that Mizuno Yui
and Kikuchi Moa were transfer students.)
Devil ANTHEM. surprisingly stayed active during
2020. My favorite song of theirs from
this year is “VS”, a rock / EDM hybrid song.
I’m glad to see Hashimoto Yume is growing her hair back. By the way, earlier this year I purchased two
cheki through the company Chaotic Harmony for their Cheki in the Time of
Coronavirus program. Below the video link is a photo of
the cheki, Takekoshi Kurumi (left) and Yume (right).
MOMOHA of Marble Angel entered the Idol Solo Queen
Contest (yeah, Idol Queen Solo Contest makes more sense, but don’t tell them)
and made it all the way to the finals! At
ten years old she is the youngest girl to get this far! Here is a video of MOMOHA performing “Maji De
Koi Suru Gobyoumae” at the contest.
Below that is a recent Marble Angel performance.
Among the idols that graduated this year were Mizuno
Zion of Jumping Kiss (who later changed her family name to Kameno when she joined NMB48 in September), Yuuna, Konami and Marino of Menkoi Girls, Reika
of W. (Double V), Miduki of RISING/ZERO and Pastel Candy, Misora of Marble
Angel and Shimizu Rion of Hoshi☆Gumi.
When one of your favorite music groups change their
lineup, should you keep on supporting them?
This is a question that often goes through my mind. Candy Zoo have gone through a handful of
lineups since their formation in May 2013, and the current lineup seems like a
talented bunch of girls. But still, all
the girls that I liked the most have now left the group. And while I have no proof or facts to back up
a theory I have about the current lineup, if anything I suspect is true then
I’m pretty upset.
I was a big supporter of the original
lineup up of Candy Zoo as well as the first person to write about them in English. They seemed like a fun and cute
group of girls with some exciting songs.
I liked all the girls, but had my favorites, as many idol fans do. The first girl to graduate from the group was
Ootsuka Minami, the lion of Candy Zoo and my favorite. I continued to be a fan despite that she
left, though. New members continued to
join just as some of the original members left.
I remained a fan through all of these changes. By May 27, 2018 all the original members of
Candy Zoo had graduated.
Later in
2018 remaining members Katayama Yuara (who joined Candy Zoo in April 2015) and
Sugaya Natsuko - or Kako, as she likes to be called - (who joined in February
2016) were joined by two new members, Nakahara Fuumi and Hashimoto Ryoka. Although Yuara is younger than Natsuko, her
longer tenure in the group presumably made her the leader of Candy Zoo. Interestingly enough, it was Fuumi who created
her own SHOWROOM Live live stream “room”, which no other Candy Zoo member had. Being the oldest member, an unfamiliar new
fan might have mistaken Fuumi as being the leader. In March 2019 Candy Zoo credited their nighttime performances as Candy Zoo
Nightmare, complete with electric hula hoop dresses. Their electronic reworkings of older songs
and several new songs made me think that Candy Zoo were heading in a new,
interesting direction. Then Natsuko
graduated from Candy Zoo on September 8, 2019, making Candy Zoo a trio.
Everything I just typed in the above
paragraphs are fact. From this point
forward almost everything is my personal theory that I can’t back up with
proof. Candy Zoo’s company, RIZE Idol
Productions, probably wanted to create a new lineup without the older members
in 2018 so all the remaining original members, Yamamoto Himiko, Nishisato Rina
and Sakamaki Yuuna, were asked to leave.
Sometime after Fuumi and Ryoka joined RIZE probably were thing about
creating a bigger lineup, and with Fuumi as leader. The only way they could do this would be to
get Yuara and Kako to graduate. So they
asked Kako to leave the group with the promise of bringing her back later. Then RIZE asked Yuara to graduate in January
(which she did) while they were auditioning new members. With Yuara, the leader and member with the
longest tenure in the group, gone, they were free to declare oldest member
Fuumi as the new leader. RIZE added four
new members and brought back Kako, who could not be the leader since she had
left the group temporarily. Fuumi’s fans
are probably overjoyed with this, while this Candy Zoo fan is not. And while the newest songs are decent “cutesy”
pop, similar to older Candy Zoo songs, I doubt if the Candy Zoo Nightmare
songs, designed for a quartet of singers, will be sung again. So much for the new, interesting
direction!
Yes, another year comes to a close and end of the year lists appear all over the media! 2019 wasn't all that great of a year, even taking into account all of the graduations, break ups and various changes that any idol group goes through. It was one of those years when I had to decide before writing this article whether or not to include some of the more mediocre idol songs that I've heard this year just because I felt my favorites list was a bit short. My opinions and interests are obviously going to different from everyone else who listens to idol music, since I rarely pay attention to the mainstream, so here is what I felt about idol music of 2019.
2019 began differently for me. For the first time ever I started paying attention to Korean pop music. This is mostly due to a friend who told me about a Korean kids idol group named Vitamin, created by Clevr Entertainment & Music. (Yes, Clevr is spelled this way.) Through Vitamin I then discovered their sister group PIERCE. Both groups featured a talented girl named Kim Naye. Naye became my favorite Korean idol rather quick due to her beautiful, multi-octave voice. So there was life beyond Japanese idols! It has made me wonder if I should start a blog about Korean idols or if I should write about them here. But I've resisted the urge to mention my interest in Korean idols (at least those from Clevr E&M) until now. I may not write more about them here, but those who are interested may join my fan group for Vitamin & PIERCE.
On July 15, 2019, one of my favorite idol groups, amorecarina Osaka, broke up. I wrote about them extensively in my last article for this blog. Since then I was lucky to acquire a 4 disc DVD-R set containing their last performances! I don't think this was done when amorecarina Tokyo broke up, and I don't think amorecarina Nagoya has DVDs available either. I feel very lucky to have obtained them.
I think I'll just get on with my favorite songs of 2019 now.
My favorite song of 2019 comes from a group named Hiwillow. They are a local idol group now consisting of four girls, although they had three when they debuted. One of the original members, a girl named Maaya, has left the group. The group now consists of Shiki, the leader, Risa, Runa and Mei. There are a few videos for Hiwillow on YouTube, but many of them are poor quality or have the songs cut short. I am going to link a full live for Hiwillow, although the first song and my favorite, "Cherry", starts at 4:11 into the video.
One of my favorite new groups of 2019 isn't technically a new group. SAKURA MODE is the reformation of the group Otan 43, a part of SAKURA MODE PROJECT. I also wrote about them in my blog earlier in 2019. SAKURA MODE consists of three girls, Harashima Miu, Yuduki Ramu and Harashima Ruka. Two other girls from SAKURA MODE PROJECT are performing as soloists, but SAKURA MODE are the only ones with new, original songs. Unfortunately SAKURA MODE disbanded on December 21, 2019 when sisters Miu and Ruka both graduated. This really disappoints me as the manager of the group, Shun Eguro, actually thanked me on Facebook for promoting SAKURA MODE on my page Young Idol Singers! He even told me they intended to go global.
Here is the song "MY MODE".
COLORLESS are a group that's been active for a year, but I guess I never paid attention to them until recently. I started watching a girl named Shimooka Rihika on SHOWROOM Live during the summer. Around October I saw a COLORLESS live video on YouTube and then promptly forgot about the group. Then after hearing an audio-only video for the song "PUZZLE" (which doesn't seem to be on YouTube anymore), which was linked to Rihika's SHOWROOM Live room, I suddenly became interested in the group! Doing a bit more research as I write this I now see that "PUZZLE" is not a new song from 2019, but rather 2018. This video seems to be the original version of the song, from November 2018. However, I'm going to include a link for the new live version simply because I like the group and this escaped my attention last year. Actually, there were songs I would have included on last year's best of list had I remembered or waited until after Christmas to write my article. Anyway, here is the live debut of Rihika, which includes "PUZZLE" shortly after the intro.
I've been a fan of the group Devil ANTHEM. ever since their debut, but I think I've only mentioned them once in my blog. Well, it's time I mentioned them again as they have one of the most rockin' songs of 2019! "Fake Factor" mixes some heavy guitar chords in with Devil ANTHEM.'s usual EDM (Electronic Dance Music, for those who don't know) and it sounds pretty good to my ears! I also love the special effects in the video.
A group that debuted last year performing classic Japanese pop cover songs is Marble Angel. The group had two original songs released this year, including this song, "Smile". Unfortunately for fans of Yamaguchi Raira, the girl in the pink costume in this video, she has now left the group. On the same day (November 10) that Raira graduated, three new members were introduced but didn't actually perform with Marble Angel until December 15. Here is Marble Angel's live debut of their first song from July 7.
monogatari came back strong in August 2019 with the short new single "for Me", which features some nice vocals and, in my opinion, good percussion work! The heavy eye makeup is a bit much, though.
Si☆4 released a new CD for their single "Niji Iro ☆ Mirai", but it was track two, "Kimi ☆ Adventure" that caught my attention. I still wish a studio video with the girls wearing jungle outfits, as the promo photo features, would be nice. (Note: In January 2020 I realized these are American Indian costumes, not jungle girl costumes.)
Jumping Kiss has taken much of my attention as of late, but I only really started paying attention since August or so. It suddenly became my mission to record down the names of all the members and I have found the names (but not the birthdays or other info) of the current lineup. Their video for "vanilla" is something I've played several times because it is catchy and fun, like all of the idol songs I'm interested in. Members Suzuki Hiyori and Mizuno Zion are my favorites.
W. (Double V) has released a number of good songs since their 2018 debut. Their first new song of 2019, "fake", is my favorite from this year. It starts off with a cool EDM beat and just gets better. Sadly, Kurumi has now left the group.
I haven't stopped watching White Rabbits all year! This group has kept my interest with their cute songs, including new song "Hakutoshin ~Ikusen'nen no Omai~". Member Ao will be graduating at the end of this month.
Sakurai Yune released a single early this year that was a tie-in to a game titled "Sweet × Sweet My Candy". The game is called 'Sokubaku Kanojo' and Yune voices a character in the game. The song is just as cute as she is!
Oh! My Kitty was one of my favorite new idol groups last year. They formed with six members, added a seventh but starting in early 2019 have gradually lost members. Their first original song "Helo!Helo" was performed live in March of this year, but I'm not even sure if this song is available on CD or not. Unfortunately the group now has just four members. But fans of Juna will definitely want to check out a commercial that she has done.
Well, that's it for this year's favorites. I'm sorry that I didn't do more research on COLORLESS before I started typing and released that it wasn't a new song. Last year Hoshi☆Gumi released a new song on Christmas day, and I posted my article on December 22. New songs for favorite groups turn up on YouTube when I'm not paying attention or have Internet-related troubles and I can't watch. As always I want to thank you for reading and I hope the new year brings you much joy!
