cptn

2019 was another wonderful year for immersion into jpop groups. The groups from my favorites post are still the same and some additions through the year are Tokyo Girls' Style, Rising/Zero-IV, Pastel Candy.

Tokyo Girls Style

Tokyo Girls' Style is among the top of my new discoveries of 2019. Although a new discovery for me, the group will be celebrating their 10th anniversary in early 2020. Tokyo Girls' Style's “ミルフィーユ” showed up on my Spotify playlist for the last year or two. Other than enjoying the song whenever it came on I had never bothered looking further into them. Earlier this year I was listening to another mix on Youtube and “おんなじキモチ” started playing. I instantly fell in love with the song and started looking for more music from the group. I found the music video for the song and was absolutely overwhelmed by the cute theme. Since then I've gone down the TGS rabbit hole and have been acquiring as many CDs, photobooks, and live concert blurays as I can. I've had the CDs and live concerts on repeat these last few months. I would have loved to find this group earlier since I feel like I've missed out on so much but at the very least I've had fun discovering them this past year.

Hitomi Arai

Tokyo Girls' Style's Hitomi Arai started her solo idol career with an 80's style theme. Hitomi pulls off the retro style so well. She's one of my favorite members of TGS and I look forward to her future idol career. 2020 might be the year I finally make a trip to Japan and I would love to see Hitomi (and TGS) live.

Rising/Zero-IV and Pastel Candy

Rising/Zero-IV was brought to my attention around October and I instantly fell in love. Two of my favorite members in the group, Mio and Miduki, are also part of the sub-group, Pastel Candy. Both girls actively participate in photo events and fans in Japan are nice enough to share their photos with everyone. Mio and Miduki are overwhelmingly cute and I look forward to following them this year.

Honorable Mention

Oh! My Kitty

I found this group through IdolL0v3r's blog last year and was instantly a fan of the group. My only complaint is they are not very active and only have a few covers to listen to on their Youtube channel. All I could find was a group Twitter page with few unique updates. I hope 2020 is a good year for this group.

Disbanding

monogatari

One of my favorite and longest followed groups, monogatari, recently announced disbanding by February 2020. I've followed a handful of the girls ever since they joined Millennium Girls. Amu graduating in November was somber news enough so this news is quite hard to hear. I've enjoyed watching the girls grow up as well as grow in their idol careers. The announcement mentioned some members will continue some kind of idol activity so I hope I can follow those that do continue. I wish all the members well wherever they end up. They will be missed.

idolL0v3r wrote an extensive blog post called “The Different Lives of monogatari” for anyone interested in the history of monogatari.

Bonus

Christmas photo of Kotoha because she's way too cute

#monogatari #pastelcandy #ohmykitty #2019 #TGS #TokyoGirlsStyle