Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto has passed away at the age of 71. Sakamoto was a part of the trailblazing electronic pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra. With his bandmates, Sakamoto established the foundation for modern electronic pop, both in its sound and in its technical composition.

Boys Planet is back again, and it's just like Girls Planet 999, but with boys. And without 999. And heavy BL vibes. And good.

Despite all the warnings, hurdles, and ill omens along the way, Kakao's curious experiment, the Virtual Idol Reality Survival show Girl's RE:VERSE, avoided a premature demise, getting it's copyright in order and premiering right after the new year. And after trying to watch a few episodes, I'm not sure it was worth it.

Yukihiro Takahashi leaves behind a deep, worthy solo discography as well as being key part of the most influential Japanese music ensemble of all time.

Oh how I can't wait to cover a whole season of this wonderfully complete and definitely-going-to-air television show

Each group comes out to greet the substantial and frothing masses gathered in the studio. For some reason, Mnet chooses to use the first bars of BLACKPINK's "How You Like That" as walk-up music.

We've talked about hit Chinese reality television show Sisters Who Make Waves 3 already, most for the obvious reasons. But Jessica "听不懂"-ing her way through the show is not the only big story to come out of the premier. Taiwanese idol Cyndi Wang has also blasted back into public consciousness, on the back of a trend of viral videos showing middle-aged men dancing along to her introductory stage from the show.

Episode 9 closes out the third round with the last half of the FANtastic Queendom performances. The show gets to it right away, calling LOONA to the stage for their update of fan favorite, "Butterfly".

Episode 8 basically revels in Korea's pandemic "victory", in quotes only because they're still at around 25k new cases a day, though I'm all ears for discussions on the balance between safety and allowing people to live their lives.

In this episode, we finish the first half of the third round, with some surprising results. After some light reminiscing about how great Meat Party was and how wonderful it …