#benilore

[ilovejosukehigashikata]

May you recommend the people 5 songs you've been enjoying lately? :3

i DO like shoving my music preferences in people's faces!! Thanks for asking!!!

OS by Rinse and Repeat has been a near-daily listen to me since the day it came out (on Josuke's birthday!!). It coincided with me throwing out Josuke and making up Gent, and helped me figure out which of my HC parts of him (the moral OCD and bit of a god complex) to really play up with Gent. Since it's a really good Spamton animation that introduced me to Rinse & Repeat, I wonder why nobody's done animatics with more of their songs.

Grindhouse by Machine Girl is the one I'm really hooked on right now. I got into Machine Girl 2 years ago because it was really cathartic to listen to when I was having my whole thing about Billy Kametz passing away and Josuke getting character assassinated. Now I crave this band like I crave spicy food!!

Also 'catharsis' is the second word in Locals (Girls like us) by underscores. I'm still new to this group, but this song scratches a really specific itch I've had in my head since I was a kid listening to Kesha. I've been on a big 2000s nostalgia kick, looking at stuff like indie sleaze and Frutiger Aero a lot. Class of '09 was very fun to experience blind a few months ago (and honestly Flipside wasn't that bad you guys you just gotta ignore the idiot creator and take it as a silly spin-off)

A very different flavor of 2000s nostalgia is in this band I've only gotten into recently for its very strong Gent flavors, Malice Mizer. Right now the song of theirs on rotation is Ma Chérie ~ Itoshii kimi e ~. It's cheesy and melodramatic and pink but in a fancy princey way, and I'm on the verge of saying it inspires Gent about the same way Prince inspired my idea of Josuke. Getting a clear idea of what kind of story to really put that guy into will FIX ME, I SWEAR!!!!!

This one I saved for last because I wanna pack in a bunch of silly OC explanation. There's four versions of this one song from the '80s that I think are an uncanny little representation of my whole story with the Josuwife OC who remains near and dear to my heart to this day, Beni. I'm gonna put that under a read-more because it gets kind of Long.

To sum it up, she was friends with Josuke for like one semester in middle school and was his Cool Exotic Friend (she grew up in New Orleans before this because her family was CAST OUT BY THE KAKYOIN FAMILY it's a very funny story she was the Kakyoin cousin years before Ryoko was a thing). This was all in like 1995 so the '90s cute Japanese pop rendition of this song fits it perfectly. Give Me Up by BaBe!

Then she moved away to go to a Catholic school FULL of Stand-wielding nuns and met this girl who was gonna be a pro wrestler (Oku's her biggest fan btw) and Beni became her VALET!! And DURING that she began a symbiotic possession thing with a ghost in a pilot helmet and that ghost is this dweeby 80s-loving Disco Dan type whose name is actually Daniel, and THEN i found the original version of Give Me Up was this really fun Italodisco song! So Give Me Up by Michael Fortunati would be something he bonds with Beni about.

So then we fast forward to 2003 or so, after the whole thing where Joseph met Pilot and was like "oh my god that's the guy who tried to kill my and lisa lisa's favorite student why are you a ghost and camping out in my son's girlfriend's brain" and Beni has a whole Mopey Arc about it before manifesting her awesome fun Stand and getting married to Josuke and starting their little spa together. There's a really distinct 2000s J-pop sound I associate with the spa era (which is still going today they're in their happily ever after and I left them like that don't disturb them please), your Capsules, your Seikou Nagaokas, your Megs. Turns out the second-most modern version of Give Me Up is that exact flavor and the SINGER IS NAMED BENI???????????????????????? So that's really cool. Give Me Up by Beni Arashiro!!

And FINALLY this is the song that actually introduced me to this whole Give Me Up Cinematic Universe, the Night Tempo Showa Groove remix of BaBe's Give Me Up. It's a flavor of future funk that I was listening to nonstop in like, 2017-2020 that I'm sick to death of now... but that means it's a little dated now in the way that really suits the Josubeni kid, Jove!! She's not very developed, but I'd say her closest comparison is Lilo from Lilo & Stitch. Give Me Up's Night Tempo Showa Groove remix makes it feel like Beni and Josuke's lives came full-circle in a very cute way and I wish them the best now that I'm working with their Jojo-divorced versions.