AIMI News Report

From the beginning, AIMI’s solo career has been an intricate succession of ever more secretive activities. One might think that it’s because news is difficult to find without being able to read Japanese, but in fact there has not been any publicized news concerning AIMI’s new solo career. Draft King, on the other hand has not only been frequently published in eggman’s free paper but they have also found their way into the online rock magazine BEAST, most recently for an interview.

There is no doubt AIMI can garner as much, if not more attention than Draft King. Armed with nothing but cat-talk, AIMI is able to rack up on retweets and favorites on Twitter. In fact AIMI’s Twitter account has been the only real source for any information concerning the singer for about a year, and if you can’t read Japanese then you’re out of luck.

Her Twitter posts have been a mixture of cats, inspirational messages, and the occasional vague progress report; but that is not to say that information cannot indicate where AIMI’s solo career will be headed in the coming year.

The first real sign of life for AIMI was a photo-shoot for her future solo career in March of 2013, in fact one of these pictures is currently the icon picture for AIMI’s official Twitter account. Another can be found on the poster for the SALT&PEPPER live that she took part in last year. It is doubtful that the photo-shoot consisted of only two photos, so there are definitely plenty of photos that aren’t being seen. Next was a live organized by AIMI herself at Shibuya HOME, where she announced that she would be a ladies’ model for Fender and an accompanying autograph event. The pictures taken by Fender have only been used as promotion for their products and have not been used elsewhere. Finally was a performance at Rock Bitch’s 1st single release live after which she left Tokyo for Okinawa.

During her time in Okinawa she participated in two lives both of which were free of charge, so one can assume she wasn’t ready to fully resume activities. More notably her Twitter account went inactive for two months save one tweet. This tweet was specifically addressed at her lack of Twitter activity where she explained “She is in the middle of training voluntarily”. After that period of inactivity she resumed occasionally tweeting, often using words associated with positive change (Power-up, reborn, shedding her skin, cutting her topknot). More importantly she took part in the two lives previously mentioned, based on pictures and a few accounts of the lives AIMI leaned more to the acoustic side during all her lives.

In February she returned to Tokyo and with that return came more frequent Twitter posts. Interestingly if one notices in most of the images she posts she is very careful to cover her face, whether this is intentional is not indicated. In March her tweets became more poignant, yet still very mysterious. She has posted various pictures of herself in the studio with a support band and holding an electric guitar as opposed to her activities prior. In addition she posted her most puzzling message which contained intentional blank spaces: “Today a lot of things happened, 3/13 became the beloved ______’s _______ day”. Next she posted a message claiming she had gone to Saitama and was going to Okinawa using the vague phrase “For a reason”. Once again contrary to prior posts, she posted a picture of herself with her face not hidden at a “Candy Stripper” exhibition, accompanied with the comment that she was “looking forward to Spring”. Finally, she posted a message on her Twitter account saying she was attending a meeting pertaining to “the future” and recently she posted a tweet of a photo-shoot along with the message “It starts from here”

In March alone, she has posted a number of cryptic yet significant tweets. Are these vague updates AIMI just being cute or a very intentional and intricate attempt to create interest? Most recently the former “AIMI_official” account has changed name to “AIMI_staff” and AIMI has announced that she “will be able to” make an announcement in April, and given the recent activity, there is a good chance this will be a big announcement.