{"id":532,"date":"2013-07-16T02:26:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T08:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intlwota.com\/happydisco\/?p=532"},"modified":"2013-07-16T02:26:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T08:26:17","slug":"tokyo-idol-festival-2013-the-acts-part-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/2013\/07\/16\/tokyo-idol-festival-2013-the-acts-part-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Idol Festival 2013: The Acts part 9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sun-\u03bc<\/strong><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/idolfes.com\/2013\/system\/wp-content\/themes\/ali-han-neon\/profile\/images\/sanmyu_L.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sun-myu is the idol group from Sun Music (clever, I know) with the concept of the &#8220;first pure idols of the 21st century.&#8221; By pure they mean that they want to have more of a showa era idol appeal, which is great for people who miss that type of idol. Formed in 2012, the initial concept of Sun-myu was that they were a beginner group, airing a lot of their training on their Nico Nico Douga channel (though now they&#8217;re discovering more of Youtube). This is a really great thing for people who like brand new\/indie idols.<\/p>\n<p>Recently they released their latest single, a cover of the JITTERIN&#8217; JINN classic Natsu Matsuri, which is pretty much one of my favorite songs of all time. And they actually do a really good job of it. Watching their PV preview, they don&#8217;t seem like pure beginners, but do a really good job at this song. At first this seems like a standard arrangement of the song, but actually deviates in a pretty good way. I don&#8217;t think this will ever beat the original, but the original is so good that this is good by default.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t see quite as much on Sun-myu&#8217;s stuff about being pure beginners anymore, but I&#8217;m assuming that&#8217;s because they&#8217;re surprisingly polished. The performances I see in Natsu Matsuri are very good. It feels a bit too polished for a beginner group. Still, if you want to go back, it may be easy to see their growth. They posted a lot <a href=\"http:\/\/ch.nicovideo.jp\/sun\">HERE<\/a> on Nico Nico Douga and on their YouTube (which I will link later). This is more footage than a lot of indie acts get!<\/p>\n<p>I like them. They&#8217;re not the most interesting group, but there are eight really cute, now polished members who performed one of my favorite songs. I&#8217;m going to keep an eye out for Sun-myu in the future!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/11ZXpCzOoUY\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>JK21<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/idolfes.com\/2013\/system\/wp-content\/themes\/ali-han-neon\/profile\/images\/jk21_L.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>JK21 stands for Japan Kansai 21, with 21 being the 21st Century. This group has been appearing at TIF since I started covering it. They formed in 2008 and made their major debut in 2010. Currently they have 7 members, which means that there are some new girls since last year! Probably their biggest claim to fame is being the group to do a Hanshin Tigers theme song &#8220;Win! Win! Tigers!&#8221; so if you follow baseball at all JK21 might be the group for you.<\/p>\n<p>They haven&#8217;t put out anything new since last TIF; their most recent single came out in March 2012. However, they&#8217;re putting out an album on July 30th, &#8220;Lucky Tripper ~Sorezore no Natsu~&#8221; so they&#8217;re clearly pretty active. Other than that, there&#8217;s not too much else about them. They&#8217;re pretty cute and have solid music, despite their inactivity. If what you want is a pretty standard idol group it might be good to follow them, but there&#8217;s nothing that extraordinary about them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/npdIhtte9rw\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>GEM <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/idolfes.com\/2013\/system\/wp-content\/themes\/ali-han-neon\/profile\/images\/gem_L.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a group I&#8217;m sure a lot of you should be pretty familiar with! GEM stands for Girls Entertainment Mixture and they&#8217;re the third group to come from Avex&#8217;s iDOL STREET, and is made up of former Idol Street Sei trainees. They&#8217;re a fairly new group that was formed late last year\/early this year and their only release has been on a Street sei album (I&#8217;m taking this from the avex site; if I&#8217;m wrong please correct me!). They have ten members whose ages range from 14 to 20, so much Super Girls this is a pretty varied group, age-wise.<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, they haven&#8217;t done all that much. They officially confirmed their members in June, have a few original songs but no singles yet, and are still new. However, since they&#8217;re avex, it&#8217;s reasonable to expect a good group with high quality releases. Personally, I don&#8217;t follow any of the iDOL STREET groups all that much and I don&#8217;t seek out avex groups. However, both Super Girls and Cheeky Parade are solid groups, so GEM should be, as well.<\/p>\n<p>From their first big video &#8220;Speed Up&#8221; it looks like they&#8217;re going for a polished look, with a cooler feel. There&#8217;s definitely both dance and vocal skill here, and for being so new GEM is pretty polished already.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I don&#8217;t know how much I&#8217;ll be able to get into them, all things considered, but if you&#8217;re a Super Girls or Cheeky Parade fan this is a group to follow.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B_PIv78bWFs\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>G\u2606Girls<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/idolfes.com\/2013\/system\/wp-content\/themes\/ali-han-neon\/profile\/images\/g_girls_L.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>G stands for Gravure. So right off the bat you know what you&#8217;re getting into with them. An idol group by the gravure magazine FLASH, G Girls&#8217; goal is to bring the charm of gravure into their singing and dancing. So for anybody who&#8217;s really into gravure idols, this may be a good group for you. To be honest, I don&#8217;t follow the world of gravure all that much, so I don&#8217;t know how recognizable these girls may be. They have people who entered the Miss Flash Grand Prix contest in 2011 and in 2013, so they may be well-known. As of last year when I covered them all the girls were over 18, and thus wanted to do a sexier, more adult performance.<\/p>\n<p>Last year there were 9 members; now there are five. I don&#8217;t know if these girls are all new (at least one has joined, and she&#8217;s the first profile listed), but it appears there&#8217;s a pretty big turnover rate. All the girls are very pretty, as you would expect from a gravure-centric unit. They&#8217;ve released one new single since last TiF, Tik Tok (Ke$ha?), which came out right around last year&#8217;s TIF, so I don&#8217;t know how many of them are still in it. Tik Tok is a pretty enjoyable track, if a bit forgettable, which is focusing on being a cooler single than their first one.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, with this group you know what you&#8217;re going to get. Like gravure? You&#8217;ll probably be cool with this group. If you don&#8217;t care about gravure? It&#8217;s probably not for you.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SkWJKJV42iE\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Shizukaze &amp; Kizuna~KIZUNA~ <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/idolfes.com\/2013\/system\/wp-content\/themes\/ali-han-neon\/profile\/images\/shizu_L.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"436\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Take one duo unit of Shizukaze, add sister unit Kizuna ~KIZUNA~, and you get Shizukaze &amp; Kizuna! One thing this group is very proud of is that they&#8217;ve gone to every TIF since 2010 when it started, a pretty impressive feat given how relatively small TIF 2010 was. (this is also the unit that has the C-side Yellow Fuckin&#8217; Idol, which may be one of the best idol song names ever).<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve put out three singles as Shizukaze &amp; Kizuna; their most recent one, Tsukushinbou, had two song versions: idol version and rock version (since Shizukaze &amp; Kizuna is a self-proclaimed rock unit, this actually makes sense. Last year I noted that their vocals didn&#8217;t sound the greatest live, but on the recorded version of this track they actually sound really great. I actually really like Tsukushinbou (rock version); it&#8217;s a really nice track, and the chorus sounds really great with some harmonies. This song\/PV really makes them feel like rock idols as opposed to an idol group with rock inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>If you like rock \u00a0music or if you like idols with different music\/sensibilities than typical idol stuff, you really should check them out. They&#8217;re really growing on me as a group, and have improved a lot over the years.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LekMqWYl4LE\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sun-\u03bc Sun-myu is the idol group from Sun Music (clever, I know) with the concept of the &#8220;first pure idols of the 21st century.&#8221; By pure they mean that they want to have more of a showa era idol appeal, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/2013\/07\/16\/tokyo-idol-festival-2013-the-acts-part-9\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tokyo-idol-festival-2013","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mescallado.com\/happydisco\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}