Chantmonkee

Relaunched in 2019 with an all-new line-up, BiS — Japan's most notorious "anti-idol" group — spends a year and a half being knocked down and getting back up. Director Hiroki Iwabuchi follows Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee, Neo Trees and Toggy from the summer stage of Tokyo Idol Festival 2019 and a relay race against label-mates CARRY LOOSE, through the day COVID-19 wipes out every date of the HEART-SHAPED BiS TOUR, to the run that finally puts them back on the road: the KiLLiNG IDOLS TOUR, ten cities from Sendai GIGS on 17 January 2021 to Zepp Sapporo on 14 February. Filming inside the tour bus, the dressing rooms and the hotel twin rooms, he gives their unguarded small talk the same weight as the detonation on stage. Narrated by Yumecchi of the comedy trio 3-ji no Heroine, the film was carried on the Blu-ray of BiS's second major single, TOUCH ME / LOVE.

On 18 December 2020 BiS closed out a year upended by the pandemic with The DANGER OF MiXiNG BiS, a sold-out one-man show at LINE CUBE SHIBUYA in Tokyo. It was the finale of a national run that had already taken the group through Aichi, Sapporo, Kyoto, Sendai and Fukuoka. The third-generation quartet — Toggy, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee and Neo Trees — perform on a mock-townhouse set whose brick facade spells out SEX, FUCK, PRETTY and BiTCH, tearing through twenty-one songs from "STUPiD" to "TOUCH ME" before returning for an encore that ends on "CURTAiN CALL". Seated at half capacity and forbidden to cheer, the audience answers with raised hands alone; everyone locked out by the instant sell-out watched a one-night-only pay-per-view stream, and the show closes with a Christmas card to the people on the other side of it.

On 3 February 2020 BiS closed their first nationwide tour at LIQUIDROOM in Ebisu, Tokyo, and this is the whole of that final night. “LIVE DAM Ai” presents STAND BY BiS had opened in Sendai on 4 January and worked through eight cities and nine sold-out dates before arriving here. The third-generation line-up — Toggy, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee and Neo Trees — take the stage in mismatched camouflage and military surplus and start running with “LET'S GO Doumo”, barely pausing through “FOOL PROOF”, “KiSS MY ASS” and “TRAP”. Twenty-three songs and a little over two hours later, after encores of “BASKET BOX” and “BiS -Douyara Zombie no Odemashi-”, Toggy tells the packed floor that third-period BiS will stand at Budokan. The concert was carried live and exclusively on niconico that night, and was issued on Blu-ray six months later as the bonus disc of the first-press limited edition of BiS's major-label debut EP ANTi CONFORMiST SUPERSTAR.

On 15 November 2020 BiS played two shows in a single day at ROHM Theatre Kyoto under the title KiLL YOur WiNTerxxx -WAiTiNG SUMMER-, the third stop on an autumn one-man tour that had opened in Nagoya on 18 October and would close in Fukuoka on 6 December. What is captured here is the evening performance, the 19:00 show, which was the only one of the two carried on that night's paid livestream. The four members of BiS's third generation — Toggy, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee and Neo Trees — work a two-thousand-seat proscenium theatre for an hour and a half, in the patchwork costumes of the tour's key visual, before an audience that the group's own site had already warned would be seated at no more than half capacity. Masks were compulsory and cheering was banned, so the room answers with raised hands and applause and nothing else.

In 2021 the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of ARABAKI ROCK FEST.20th×21, and with it the Tohoku club tour ARABAKI×BiS GiP! -GREAT iDOL PURiTANS- that Japanese idol group BiS had been booked to play. Rather than let the slot pass in silence, the four members gathered at F.A.D Yokohama, performed their planned festival set to an empty room and sent the footage to promoter GIP as a thank-you. That summer the postponed shows finally happened. Backed for the first time in the group's history by a live rock band — ARABAKI 20th CENTURY STUPiD BOYS, uniting Toru Hidaka of THE STARBEMS, Noriaki Tsuda of KEMURI and RONZI of BRAHMAN — BiS tore through four venues across Tohoku, from Sendai GIGS on 30 July to small clubs in Ishinomaki and Miyako, towns still marked by the 2011 tsunami. This document follows the road, the rehearsals and the roar, and closes on the empty festival field.

On 6 December 2020 BiS brought their autumn tour KiLL YOur WiNTerxxx to a close at the Fukuoka Sun Palace, a 2,300-seat civic hall on the Hakata waterfront. The run had opened in Nagoya on 18 October and passed through Sapporo, Kyoto and Sendai, each date carrying its own joke subtitle; the last one was -THANK YOU I LOVE SUMMER-. BiS played twice that Sunday, and what is captured here is the 19:00 evening show, the only one of the two carried on that night's pay-per-view stream. The four members of the group's third generation — Toggy, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee and Neo Trees — open with "STUPiD" and work through seventeen songs to "TOUCH ME" before returning for an encore that gives over its first eleven minutes to talk and then closes on "BiS -Douyara Zombie no Odemashi-" and "CURTAiN CALL". Ending the tour in Fukuoka meant ending it in Chantmonkee's home prefecture.

On 23 October 2021 BiS played the biggest headline show the group's third incarnation had yet attempted, filling Tokyo's Nakano Sunplaza Hall with some two thousand "researchers" - the name BiS gives its fans - on a bill that sold out the moment it went on sale. The stage was built as a Stone Age ruin, its blocks carved with the BiS logo and with BiTCH, FUCK, SEX and PRETTY, the four words the members wear on their backs. After an opening film that hurls the room back to 30,000 BC, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee, Neo Trees and Toggy kick their way out through the rock wall and tear into "LET'S GO Doumo". Twenty-two songs follow, from "STUPiD" and "FUCKiNG OUT" to the fragile "Tsuyogari-san", interrupted by a squat contest staged mid-set. Toggy ends the encore by repeating the promise the group had been carrying for two years: BiS will stand on the Budokan stage, and it will take its researchers there.

On the evening of 28 November 2020 BiS played Denryoku Hall, a thousand-seat room on the seventh floor of an office block in central Sendai, on the fourth of the five dates of their KiLL YOur WiNTerxxx tour. The run had opened in Nagoya in October and passed through Sapporo and Kyoto, each date carrying its own joke subtitle; this one was -Sorry!! I don't feel.-. The group played twice that Saturday, and what is captured here is the 19:00 show, the only one of the two carried on that night's pay-per-view stream. The four members of the group's third generation - Toggy, Ito Musensiteebu, Chantmonkee and Neo Trees - open with "STUPiD" and drive through seventeen songs to "TOUCH ME" without much pause. The encore is where the night turns personal: each of the four takes the microphone alone, in turn, before the group returns for "BiS -Douyara Zombie no Odemashi-" and "CURTAiN CALL". Pandemic rules shape the room, and the film shows them plainly.