Make Believe Mailer #139: Five 2025 First Quarter Favorites (That Haven't Been Written About Here Yet)

*Recorder Plays*

Maybe it’s just the march of time or perhaps this year really has been special…but 2025 feels like it’s going by super fast, no? I can’t believe it’s already April. Which means…we are a quarter through it all. Huh, if you say so calendar.

This week, I wanted to highlight five Japanese albums from 2025 that have yet to get their due at Make Believe Melodies for one reason or another. Consider this a catch-up post for a handful of releases from the last three months that evaded the weekly round-up or even coverage elsewhere. They range from goofy Vocaloid to mind-bending sci-fi electronic concept albums.

I will take this space to mention one other release…probably my favorite of the year so far…which I technically never did any kind of album review / write-up of, which is AKKOGORILLA’s time-bending festival rap odyssey Chimera. I did interview her for scrmbl, however, which feels like it was my chance to get into why it’s a 2025 highlight so far. Go read that too.

Yukopi — Nimaimei

Sometimes, a Vocaloid song dives into the ecstasy and agony of the heart, or perhaps it offers a cynical eye on the hierarchical structure of Japanese society.

Then other times, a Vocaloid song can focus on one’s craving for naan.

Yukopi reminds of the Goofus side of Vocaloid and other singing-synthesizer-assisted music on the kindergarten rush of Nimaime. The artist, best known for a silly number highlighted by childish recorder notes that has gone on to be one of the defining tunes of this decade — they made commercials off of it! — wastes no time across their second album celebrating this juvenile and madcap world. The songs comprising all 19 minutes here tumble and bumble forward, Yukopi using the voice of Kaai Yuki as an innocent’s eye on the world, with songs focused on wanting to stay in bed, enjoying summer vacation or eating delicious bread¹. Detours exist — the heavy-metal traditional experiment of “Engawa,” the sweet ballad of “Late Summer” — but it’s mostly the sonic equivalent of watching a toddler figure out the world.

And of course, that beginner-level recorder snakes through it all too, joined by fat xylophone notes and cartoony honks, adding to the playroom vibe.

It’s an imaginative set of songs capturing the playfulness and constant drive of the child mind really well, reminding of the sillier possibilities Vocaloid allows. Though I decided to listen to this while riding the rush hour train today and I have to say…the galloping pace of this worked really well with trying to navigate out of Shinjuku Station, and hearing a digi-kid voice say “help me futon-san!” while walking by exhausted looking adults just hit different. Listen above.

Pot-pourri — Eraser, Pencil

It takes calm to make chaos really stick. Quartet Pot-pourri don’t shy away from placidity on Eraser, Pencil, allowing songs to play out as largely acoustic strums or synthesizer mist. That just makes the moments when the group start shaking its music up — the fittingly busy shout-backed short-circuiting of “Dressed in Black (Maximum Mix)” and the electronic-assisted tumble of closer “Over (and Over)” — all the more impactful. Coupled with constant touches that add a tension to the more minimalist stretches, Pot-pourri offer one of 2025’s better exercises in artistic patience. Listen above.

Kenonary — Metropolital: to Live in the City

If an album like Nimaimei reminds of Vocaloid and synthesized-singing’s silly side, Metropolital: to Live in the City provides an amazing example of the abstract and political potential these tools contain. This dizzying set courtesy of producer Kenonary offers a jagged electronic backdrop for the muffled digi-voices they summon up to navigate, capturing the experience and exhaustion of urban life. Songs ripple ahead on robo-syllables repeating, or they skitter over ice and ample space as on “Gayagaya.” It can be disorienting and on the verge of collapse…or Kenonary can approach something sort of lighthearted, with multiple tracks here recalling the surreal loops of Earthbound boss music.

Over this electronic tossing and turning, Kenonary uses synthesized voices to explore the surreal and standard. Always making sure the singing adds to the texture of the song — to the point where “Mudai No Uta” is just a single “a” syllable pitches all over the place — they create meditations on the analysis-paralysis of living in the big city (down to talking about the ridiculously long bread sold at convenience stores) to creating a kind of Vocaloid “Fitter Happier” on “Gazo Wa Image Desu” in how it turns rules and regulations into hypnotic verse. Part snapshot of metropolis life and part effort to create a fever dream interpretation of it, it’s a triumph in showing the experimental capabilities of music tech without ever feeling cold. Get it here, or listen above.

SAYOHIMEBOU — Resonance TATTOO

There’s a sci-fi story attached to Resonance TATTOO — “in the future, fashion is no longer just clothing, but a system designed to protect personal information, becoming digital data etched into the body, enabling freedom of expression while maintaining secrecy” — but if I’m being honest it’s not really something that comes across over the course of this album. Rather, it offers a chance to experience the spitfire mutations of electronic artist SAYOHIMEBOU, a creator excelling at pushing sounds to extremes while still stacking them up to create body-moving dance numbers.

For Resonance TATTOO, there’s a greater focus on warped voices, pitched into angelic highs and robotic deliveries and digi-distorted coos. Whatever shape they take, SAYOHIMEBOU places them against discombobulating corkscrews of sound — the Heaven-ly electro-pop skip of “Black Dog,” the zero-gravity R ‘n’ B of “Nordic Green Snow,” the warp-speed jungle of “Lithium Punk” — resulting in music where every element turns hyperactive and giddy at the prospect of what it can be. Get it here, or listen above.

@onefive — more than kawaii

“Isn’t it enough to be cute?” This is the question posed by CUTIE STREET in the outfit’s viral 2024 cut of the same name (well, translated back to Japanese), and that quandary is becoming central to J-pop in 2025. We are in the midst of an idol revival, powered by Asobisystem’s too-on-the-nose-titled Kawaii Lab project, which has given the country FRUITS ZIPPER, CUTIE STREET, CANDY TUNE and SWEET STEADY². It’s this peppy-pop research center that has helped usher in a new “idol renaissance” centered on these groups, which offer internet-eyeing smarts alongside a familiar uptempo energy and innocent spirit.

The rest of the year will reveal just how big this turn back to smily idol antics has truly taken shape, but it’s reflective of an inevitable fork-in-the-road moment for J-pop. The last five years have been defined by rock-centric, Vocaloid-indebted, downtrodden artists and songs. Plenty of that remains interesting and at the top of the zeitgeist…but a sonic and mood shift was inevitable. So here come the idols ready to take the spotlight back, not only of the cutesy variety but the full spectrum, especially if this Grammy.com group list is anything to go off of.

There’s worry within this shift to me, though. When talking about the Kawaii Lab stuff specifically, I can’t really picture a world where the golly-gosh cuteness of a FRUITS ZIPPER resonates with global listeners in the way, say, a YOASOBI might, and if anything it runs the risk of shifting conversations of J-pop back to the “is this OK?” times of AKB48³. Part of the appeal of current Japanese pop is how it doesn’t line up with pre-existing trends…what happens when it runs straight into its own past?

Thankfully, idol alternatives exist…ones that seem very aware of what’s happening.

“I don’t need kawaii” goes the opening verse of “KAWAII KAIWAI,” the centerpiece of @onefive’s more than kawaii EP. The whole release — coming from a group that has always been interested in the cutting edges of idol pop sound rather than its conservative core — feels like a rebuff to idol shifts in the Japanese marketplace, with many songs either directly commenting on cuteness or offering sounds that don’t align with where this corner of J-pop is going.

On a purely sociological level, it’s one of the most interesting releases of the year — it zags while the rest of the landscape zigs towards Asobisystem, trying to look behind “kawaii” for something more⁴. Yet I also really like it as a pop listen, as the group try to explore new sonic space for them that will help them stand out. “KAWAII KAIWAI” dashes ahead and offers an urgency alongside its self flexing, while “Sit Down Please” tries to create Mustard-on-the-beat by way of Akihabara. Elsewhere there’s darty dance pop offering a disorienting view on K-pop, and guitar-aided EDM antics. Save for a closing ballad (keep the energy up, don’t slow it down!), everything moves at a quick pace and with a flavor far from where the idol world is heading towards.

There’s nothing wrong with the Kawaii Labs’ sound…but it’s essential to have different perspectives on this pop field from outfits like this. Listen above.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!

1. Kaai Yuki is a Vocaloid made using the voice of a nine-year-old girl, which I do thinks add to the sweet and imaginative songs here…but it also makes Nimaime an interesting counterpoint to “Zako,” a song originally using the same voicebank…but because the playful lyrics inched closer to something perceived as suggestive, it resulted in an online dust up that ended with the song being remade. A good reminder of the character element of Vocaloid that inspires many but also restricts what’s possible in the space.

2. Three syllables…key to cuteness.

3. I’ll note here that the sound of all the Kawaii Lab’s projects veers closer to Dempagumi.inc than AKB or Morning Musume…I think on a critical level it’s all quite hit or miss, but on a wider “will this sell in the world” space, I’m far more cynical about its chances. Though my counter to my own concerns…I also kind of think people just don’t care anymore, why not enjoy the song about freaking out about putting makeup on!?

4. While, notably, not throwing away the concept entirely — “KAWAII KAIWAI” puffs out its chest at the idea of Harajuku-adjacent cuteness, but also finds the group admitting it isn’t so bad…they just don’t settle for the cliche version of what that is, simply voicing awareness of its allure.