Welcome to The Avocado’s weekly discussion of Japanese pop culture! During the month of October I fall into a kind of Halloween wormhole where I only listen to spooky music, watch spooky movies/TV, and read spooky stories. So I didn’t even realize that LiSA, one of my favorite singers, released a new album a couple weeks ago! This is very exciting news for me, and so, naturally, I decided to share it with all of you. If you aren’t familiar with LiSA, and you like J-Pop, I highly recommend you give her a listen (although you’ve probably heard her before because she sings a lot of anime theme songs). I can recommend specific albums or songs if you like in the comments (right off the top of my head I’d say Launcher is probably my favorite album). But you can also just jump right in with her new album, Leo-Nine. I haven’t had time to give it a proper listen yet, but the preview sounds good! One of the singles I have heard, “Gurenge” is pretty fantastic, and this video of her performing the song in one take is incredible:

In addition to her new album, LiSA also recently released a new single, “Homura” (theme for the Demon Slayer movie), that has ranked #1 in the Japan Single’s Chart for three straight weeks. That hasn’t happened in thirteen years, according to this article I read this morning, so that’s pretty exciting. Here’s the song if you’re interested:

And, as always…

What have you been watching/reading/playing/eating/listening to lately?

Happy Wednesday! 🙂