Voice actress idol unit i☆Ris will end its activities at the close of 2027, its 15th anniversary year
The five-member group behind years of PriPara songs and anime themes announced on October 11 that 2027 will be its last year, with a 14th anniversary concert at Yokohama Arena on November 3 still ahead.
Fifteen years is where i☆Ris has decided to stop. A notice published on the group's homepage on October 11 confirmed that the five singers, every one of them also a working voice actress, will close the unit down when 2027 is over - the same year it turns fifteen - and the management team apologized for springing the news so abruptly.
Nobody rushed this. The notice explains that conversations about where the group was heading, and where each member wanted to go personally, first came up around its tenth birthday in 2022, and the five women sat down with management again and again over the last twelve months before agreeing that the fifteenth year was the natural finish line. Japanese outlet Oricon headlined its report with spring 2027; the official announcement specifies the end of the year.
Each of them - leader Saki Yamakita alongside Yuu Serizawa, Himika Akaneya, Yuki Wakai and Miyu Kubota - added a few words of her own. Yamakita admitted there is unfinished business, above all filling every seat of Yokohama Arena for a headline show. Kubota confessed it made her a little happy that people were upset, because their sadness proved the five of them had mattered.
Dates still ahead
There is plenty left before the curtain falls. A concert celebrating fourteen years takes over that same Yokohama venue on November 3, and on November 22 Yamakita, Akaneya and Wakai are booked as guests of Nyanpokora Fes! vol.3, hosted by fellow idol group Wasuta. After that comes one last full year.
How it started
i☆Ris was assembled in July 2012 from finalists of the Anison Vocal Audition and placed on DIVE II Entertainment, an imprint jointly operated by Avex and 81 Produce; its first single, Color, followed four months later. Since all five act as well as sing, the group became the musical face of much of the PriPara franchise, and the 10th Seiyuu Awards honored its singing in March 2016.
Outside PriPara, its opening and ending credits include Wise Man's Grandchild, Twin Star Exorcists, Magical Sempai, Magical Girl Site, Kakegurui Twin and, latest of all, Flaming Dodgeball Girl Danko. A theatrical feature about the unit, i☆Ris the Movie: Full Energy!!, reached Japanese screens in May 2024 for its tenth anniversary, and a few months later i☆Ris was the final act on opening night of Animelo Summer Live 2024 -Stargazer-.
