Keeping big secrets can be really hard, and I imagine that this is especially true in the entertainment industry, as there’s always someone who wants to blab that they know the “truth” behind something. This is why I find it amazing that Japanese pop duo ClariS has always been able to keep their true identities a secret since their debut, which happened exactly ten years ago!
That all changed on the morning of October 21st, when both of the current members of the group revealed their faces for the very first time!
The big reveal happened during a live-streamed concert event during the performance of a new song titled “Precious,” off their ‘Greatest Hits’ album. The album, coincidentally, is available now as a special double album (both albums are entitled “Green Star” and “Pink Moon” respectively).
Starting a decade ago, the duo was originally comprised of two junior high school girls from Hokkaido known as Clara and Alice, who were uploading anime theme song covers to Nico Nico starting in 2009. Within a couple of years, the duo was attracting quite a bit of attention and were eventually signed to SME Records before releasing their first official single “Irony” which was used for the theme song to the anime series OreImo.
The duo would continue to release hit single after hit single before one member, Alice, would leave the group around the middle of the decade. Her departure from the group has never been explained, and it likely will continue to be a mystery for many years to come. Alice was, however, eventually replaced with another high school girl known as Karen, and ClariS continued to release music throughout the rest of the decade while never once revealing their actual faces.
Why ClariS decided to literally pull their masks off and reveal themselves now after ten years is also something that we might never get an explanation for, but I’m certainly not going to complain about seeing the faces that belong to the beautiful voices that have provided me with some of my all-time favorite theme songs of the last decade!
