It’s hard to compete with E-girls, who are one of the best J-pop groups we have right now (that the biggest influence on E.G. CRAZY/”E.G. COOL” is 1990’s Janet Jackson, makes it all the better), but I’m slowly warming to predia. They’re striving to have the same kind of edge without the benefit of distinctive and well-known individuals in their group — and the word individual is important here; we can instantly pick out faces and personalities like Ami, Reina Washio, and YURINO (or at least, personalities as they’ve been sold to us), but does a casual fan know any of the members of predia? The latter functions more like a collective unit than E-girls does, and its telling that an inability to connect with the group on any level other than superficial is mostly because none of the members stands out as more talented, or particularly interesting, than any other. I’m sure more enthusiastic fans beg to differ. Furthermore, because predia doesn’t have the advantage of sub units, like E-girls’s conjoining of dream, Happiness, Flower, etc., there’s less chance to see different sides of any of the members in other iterations.
Still, predia functions along much of the same ideology: a tougher, more-than–just-idols group (Avex would call them a “dance group,” I guess) that is built to increasingly appeal to female fans rather than male ones. It’s part of what I like about them so much. The other part is their music, which in a bid to compete against a group like E-girls, increases the chances that they’ll come out with something I like. Their new single “Kindan no MASQUERADE” is a great example of the type of aggressive pop that has become their hallmark. It’s nowhere in the realm of the funky-dance and cool that a group like E-girls now pulls off backwards and in heels, but there’s a studied skill and sharp attention to detail in the choreography, and the absence of a make-believe coyness, the sugar-coma levels of cute of a group and song like, say, Country Girls’ new “Peanut Butter Jelly Love.” They’re essentially incomparable, is what I’m saying, an instant plus.
I doubt that any one member of predia will eventually make inroads like former label-mates PASSPO☆ did, but it’s an appreciated alternative, and if their producers can break through the business-as-usual pop songs to release something that transcends their niche among the more mature sounds of groups like Da-iCE (say, a “Pink Champagne” or “E.G. Anthem“), they might prove some staying power beyond what anyone could easily estimate as their shelf-life. And hey, E-girls aren’t perfect either: they could take some tips on ways to fit all the girls on a jacket sleeve without resorting to terrible Photoshop templates.
GEM: Girls Entertainment Mixture: I’m a sucker for Avex’s dance-groups, and GEM fits in nicely where Fairies went on some kind of unspoken hiatus (only one single release the entire year) TOKYO GIRLS’ STYLE is 
Sumire Uesaka: 20 Seiki no Gyakushuu: Definitely the winner in this year’s bat-shit crazy, hard rock album of the year category. As usual, we’re dealing with a hyper-kawaii female idol with an angle (she loves Russia and Russian things?), contrasting those high-pitched, delicate vocals against music the likes of which would find a comfortable home on a Metallica album. You either love it, hate it, or are slowly getting sick of the sheer number of albums that come out in Japan like this in hopes of both appealing to otaku and breaking through that niche market. Still, Uesaka’s stab at it is quite fun, a 22-track almost-rock opera of Russian space-age miscellany. 
Arashi: Are You Happy?: 2016 was the year J-pop boy bands in general, and Arashi in particular, finally managed to chip away at my icy, stone-cold heart. Only a time machine could correct the mistake of keeping Japonism 
BABYMETAL: METAL RESISTANCE: There’s a lot to process here in my top ten East Asian pop albums list, namely the inclusions of groups and styles of J-pop that I have been historically averse to (idols, I mean idols). But with the challenge to myself to be more open to embracing the ubiquitous new styles of J-pop, comes the freedom to enjoy even the most media-saturated groups that top the Oricon chart to the chagrin of “true” music fans. 2015 saw no lack of effort in my 
Tomomi Itano: Get Ready: And quite possibly, my favorite album covers of the year, as well. I was a late-comer to Itano’s brand of pop, unsure and slightly uncomfortable with what angle they were getting at with 2014’s SxWxAxG. Get Ready is a bit too mixed-bag to be a cohesive original album, with teen house-party dance (“COME PARTY!”) mixed with some genuinely interesting creep-factor pop (“Hide & Seek”) and hard-hitting EDM (“You Should Try HARDer,” of course), but the parts that don’t make up any kind of logical whole are fun, if a bit questionable. Perhaps if they stopped pushing Itano in four different directions and gave her sound and image more focus, with the capability of filling in some kind of needed gap in J-pop, we’d get something that resembles a bit more of the solo singer she is capable of becoming. Listen: “
AKB48 Alumnae 2016 Debuts: Misaki Iwasa: Misaki Meguri ~Dai 1-sho~/Minami Takahashi: Aishite mo Ii Desu ka?/Atsuko Maeda: Selfish: Three former AKB48 members released debut albums this year, with Maeda and Takahashi cornering the pop/rock market and Iwasa making inroads with a somewhat poppier, mainstream-friendly enka in the vein of a Yuko Nakazawa. They’re all fun albums without anything in particular to say, though the lead track off of Selfish definitely offers the best of the three, with the album coming in as a respectable mirror image of AKB48’s 2015 album Koko ga Rhodes da, Koko de Tobe! And I rather like Iwasa’s album, even though I’m not very interested in enka, and even though I think, in terms of what the genre demands, she has a long way to go to produce the necessary vocals it requires. Still, since this list is basically turning into a run-down of J-pop at its most J-pop, you can choose any one of these three for this spot while discarding the others and I’d be okay with whichever decision you’d make. They’re really that interchangeable. Listen: “
TAEMIN: Press It: SHINee is one of the best boy bands in East Asia right now: they had an incredible 2015 with Married to the Music, an album that 
callme: This is callme: You can argue that Perfume’s COSMIC EXPLORER had better singles (“
G-Friend: LOL: LOL was chosen, in part, for all the similar-sounding K-pop albums it represents then on the strength of just itself. Alone, it’s a great album, but is it really any better than all of the other girl groups re-creating SNSD’s debut? Not really. Fortunately, SNSD had one of the greatest K-pop debuts years of all time, and their most ardent imitators, 
Nicole: bliss: Despite the number of great K-pop EPs and mini-albums to come out during the course of the year, their Japanese-release equivalents can and do often surpass their Korean offerings. AFTERSCHOOL was one such group, and now ex-KARA vocalist NICOLE can be added to the list, with her Japanese-debut album bliss, a quaint, mellow take on the most common-denominator pop known to the genre. Despite this critique, it’s nowhere near as tedious as it might sound: there is still ample space to add hints of something special on an album that is the very median of pop music in the 2010s, and NICOLE’s producers make the most of this stab at inoffensive, disco-lite, average groove, the very opposite of the lengths K-pop will sometimes go to churn out louder-than-the-last trendy hit singles. Both have their place on my list. Listen: “
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