Well, this year’s WACK AUDiTiON CAMP certainly was eventful! Auditionee Waki Waki Wakki got added to WAgg and WAgg member Kira May who’s been apart of the group for 3 months got added to GANG PARADE.

…for all of 3 minutes. GANG PARADE will be splitting into two smaller groups. Just as BiS2 made the decision last year to break up, GANG PARADE will be doing the same thing. But in a completely different manner that’s effectively not the same as breaking up. Totally 100% similar.

This is the culmination of an internal decision between members and staff. In Kamiya Saki’s previous graduation announcement, she revealed that she felt like she was holding GANG PARADE back and while Watanabe, the fans and the members probably don’t agree, it set something new into motion. If you can’t achieve your goals after reaching a certain point, it’s okay to try again from the start isn’t it? So, we’re here now, with two new groups born from GANG PARADE splitting into two.

First new group is the dark and noisy GO TO THE BEDS:

If you need a reference point for previous GANG PARADE works, this wouldn’t go out of place on “LAST GANG PARADE” or “GANG PARADE takes themselves higher!!!” – in fact the guitar in this contains a reference within it’s motif to GANG PARADE (the song). Comprised of Coco Partin Coco, Yui Ga Dockson, Yumeno Yua, Can GP Maika and Yamamachi Miki, this is the group carrying the torch of GP’s mismatched chaos that shouldn’t work but manages to come together perfectly.

The second group is the softer and synergized PARADISES:

Still very much a GANG PARADE product but this ebbs closer to the softer “BARELY LAST” and “LOVE PARADE”. The current members are Tsukino Usagi, Naruhaworld and Terashima Yuka! New girl Kira May will join this group eventually.

If you’ve been keeping up with GANG PARADE activities, this might not come as such a shock. A few weeks prior, a mysterious Guerrilla EP titled “GP?” was on sale for just 100 yen at Tower Records. None of the tracks contained any song metadata but the 6 songs were clearly split into two distinct groups – the first now evident to be GO TO THE BEDS and the second PARADISES but with the since-graduated Haruna Bad Chiiiin. Given her presence on the mystery EP and a few cryptic tweets about life changing before her account vanished into the ether, it’s not hard to imagine this might have been in the works for a while and might be why she left.

And of course, there’s still a loose end here: Kamiya Saki. She’s still scheduled to graduate from GANG PARADE but as it stands, she isn’t in either group and is the only member who’s Twitter handle and promotional images contain any kind of reference to her being a member of GANG PARADE. On top of that, their upcoming “My First Hall Tour” is still being billed as GANG PARADE.

So, what exactly does this mean? How can GANG PARADE be splitting into two groups if their tour is a GANG PARADE tour? Will the two groups promo together like BiS1st and BiS2nd did (also don’t worry, this isn’t league based so nobody is competing against one another) or apart? Will they perform together or as two groups during the tour? Do they know why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch? How is promo going to work if the tour does turn out to be together as GANG PARADE?

Absolutely none of those questions have been answered. BUT, their debut digital singles and EP are coming soon. Tomorrow on streaming services, the songs in the previous music videos will go up on streaming services and on April 1st their debut split EP “G/P”, billed as “GO TO THE BEDS and PARADISES from GANG PARADE” will be released. 7 tracks: three G, three P and one Kamiya Saki solo song.

Just like when BiS2 said “I don’t know what will happen”, nobody does here either. But it’s just not WACK if it isn’t confusing, slightly irritating but also new and exciting. So let’s all go to bed to be able to reach paradise ey.

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