So I spent a lot of time building up a good collection of Wink, Princess Princess, older H!P, China Dolls, Tarcy Su, etc., and filling in my ZONE collection. I also kept up with the post-ZONE Runtime acts (MARIA, Nagase Miyu's solo releases, the short-lived ZONE reunion), and with a few other current artists, like Huang Fei and A-Mei. I bought a lot of Runtime, Huang Fei, older Tarcy, and current Kpop online, either used through Amazon and eBay stores, or new from CDJapan and YesAsia. But I also lost a lot of interest in contemporary Jpop during that time.
In the past year or two, though, I've found myself getting more interested in current Jpop, largely because the new wave of indie/rock-based/even-sort-of-semi-underground-if-you-don't-look-too-closely idol groups, as well as the big-name acts with a fresh approach, such as Babymetal and Ebichu. Idol music has basically become an adventure again, which I like.
And things have changed enough so that I find that my current favorite resource for finding new and interesting groups is the General Idol news/culture/talk thread at H!O, which at this point has turned into a remarkable collection of the Good, the Bad, and the WTF. I've been listening to a mix of groups from that thread, combined with BiS spinoffs and Ebichu, and to me, it's as fresh and exciting as the stuff that I was discovering around 2003-2004 (which was probably the last time when everything did still seem to be a fresh discovery to me).
Which means, of course, that I'm getting enthusiastic about groups like under beAsty:
And Oyasumi Hologram:
as well as nice, fun, accessible pop like QAM:
But for me, that's just about the right kind of mix.
(And really, all three of those PVs are fun, accessible pop -- it's just that the first two make a good attempt at appearing to be something else.
)Spoiler: show
. Especially CDs, since the music is obtainable by other means (usually).
