I Bought the LOALO photo-book so you don't have to! Magazine Discussion Episode 5 - LOALO

 ちゃおっす It's Spacy! 

Today I decided to make a very impulsive decision and spend £9.08 buying the LOALO kindle photobook on Amazon. I've always held my reservations about LOALO as a magazine. I did mention in my EGG going global blogpost ' LOALO sells their magazines on amazon that can be read digitally for around 1500yen or £8, which would be a good deal....if it wasn't LOALO' but was it truly just a snide remark or is LOALO just a poor quality magazine? On Episode 5 of magazine discussions, I am going to not only discuss LOALO, including its history, models, demographics and goals, but also discuss whether its worth spending money for their photobook.

Now, I'm going to make myself very clear right here right now.

Yes I did say you could digitally purchase their magazine off amazon in the intro, thats not true (mistake on my part my bad), you can only digitally purchase their photobook, so for a magazine discussion today, this is the first time I've never been able to read the actual contents of the magazine, but do not fret, since I purchased the photobook.

'Wait you're gonna do a magazine discussion without actually reading the magazine' In any other cases this sounds like bullshit, but although LOALO is technically a magazine, LOALO as a group is simply more then it's magazine, so yk, don't doubt me.

Now that I cleared that up, what is LOALO magazine?

LOALO magazine is a magazine created to promote tanning, not simply promoting tanning in gyaru communities, but tanning overall. The magazine is distributed for free in select tanning salons in Japan, but can also be digitally purchased for 1500 yen or around £8 on their website. The magazine published quarter-annually (every 3 months, 4 times a year) and currently has 6 volumes published with the 7th volume supposedly scheduled for release in February but oh look its March no volume 7. LOALO is mainly a gravure magazine, lots of beach and bikini shots, think of it as all year summer, bikini shoots in may, august and December.

The name LOALO actually derives from the Hawaiian word for Hibiscus, Aloala (all according to them I don't know much about Hawaii i'm british ok). LOALO kicked due to the resurgence of Y2K into mainstream media, their goal being to revive the tanning boom of the 2000's and bring back that beautiful tanned glow those gal models had back in the day 🤩.

As a magazine, LOALO was first announced in may 2022, with their first volume being published that same month. Their first few models were Model, producer and artist Sora Fujiki, Former Black Diamond leader and the legend herself, Harutamu, Model and Lounge owner, Asami Okano, Former Black Diamond from 2000 member Sakura Tekuno/Maachirin, newcomer Pacha, charming model Runa, and everyones favourite Reiwa yankee gal and boxer Yuuramomo. Sora Fujiki serves as LOALO's main model, and Yuuramomo seemingly doesn't model for LOALO anymore.

Ever since their first volume, they've also added more models, like popular gal influencer, Tanaka Fuki, former EGG model Fujichi, and other models, but let me save u some time and tell you, LOALO has a lot more models/affiliates then you think, so it may not be worth your while trying to find them all 😭.

Time for some criticisms (oh no so negative) but rather this is not hate, but simply criticism. LOALO is a bit of a mess, like I said, they have a lot more models/affiliates then you would think, but thats because LOALO doesn't really make the distincion between their models and people who seemingly pop up on their page once every blue moon for an event or something like Shiochamo as an example. On their website aswell, it doesn't state her as a model, even though she participated in LOALO events and appeared in their XOXO gal ver mv? Theres also a possibility she's not affiliated with LOALO anymore, but you would never know that unless you're keeping up with these models, because even I didn't notice that Yuuramomo wasn't a LOALO model anymore... until TODAY? This is because LOALO doesn't do graduations like EGG or Ageha does, so I didn't notice Yuuramomo wasn't modelling for LOALO until I was sniffing around and realised she didn't follow the LOALO page anymore nor did they follow her on Instagram, but overall, LOALO definitely feels like the project magazine it is. I mean, their website still has the wordpress Logo on their browser icon, and as someone who has dabbled in website hosting, it's definitely changeable to make your webpage look more professional. Overall, LOALO definitely isn't a professionally managed magazine like the other magazines we've seen, irregular publishing despite having a clearly stated schedule, but to be honest, for a magazine like LOALO, that doesn't shock me, nor do I think it's something we need to bully for them.

Most of the girls on LOALO don't even do modelling as a full time job per se like the way e-girls will. Most of them do other ventures, some are party gals, who attend parties and that kind of stuff, some do lots of social media influencing, some models kinda do whatever, A few former Black Diamond members like Yayo san (Kuroyayo) and Achamu  and some models will do work in the sex industries, such as erotic AV clubs, or do digital sex work as such, other models will also own clothing brands/lines, really just a bunch of random things really.

But enough about the models themselves, let's talk about their photobook and what I think of it b4 i knock my own socks off

The main photographer for LOALO is RYU, A photographer who also worked with Black Diamond from 2000, heres an interview with him from Papillon magazine.

Like i said before, LOALO is a gravure magazine, so when I purchased their photobook, I wasn't expecting fashion or make stuff like a normal magazine, 1, because photobooks aren't magazines, they don't usually contain words, and LOALO doesn't seem like that kind of magazine anyway? Ya know? But anyway. I was pretty excited to see what was there, but honestly, the LOALO photobook is honestly sort of disappointing :( 

It's not the contents themselves, rather its the quality of the photos, for some reason, the photos have this weird looking filter, some photos even look like they could've been AI generated (obviously they weren't though). But lots of the pics look like they had that weird AI enhancing filter over them that's used to enhance low quality photos, heres an example

Just looks a bit strange, but other then that, the photobook is pretty nice, it has a good mix between gravure and other photos, but all in all, the weird quality of some of the photos really puts me off to the point where I'd say it probably isn't worth the price of £9.08 that I paid. Actually, the photo quality really did shock me, So I wonder if this is because of the way it was digitally processed, and that the physical photobook has better image quality, or if they added a strange filter that makes it look funky, but as an overall review, I was a bit let down, but since I did pay for the photobook, I wanna show some of the photos I liked the most 

But at the end of the day, photobooks, magazines, and everything aside, let's not forget what LOALO are the queens off an thats music!

LOALO very quickly ventured into making music, starting with Summer on My mind in 2022, the same year as the magazines release. The same year also, LOALO released their biggest hit yet, XOXO GAL version, which is actually a remix of the popular dj group that all gals love, XOXO by Repezen Foxx. This song got really popular, with 700k streams on spotify, and also got them noticed by Repezen Foxx, leading them to do a few collabs with them as well, boosting the popularity of LOALO overall. In 2023, they released their song GOLD with Dave rodgers, Sunkissed Girl, and MR. Stick. LOALO's offspring group, LOALOCO also released their song called Hyper-jam, meaning all together, LOALO has as many singles as they do published magazine volumes. And honestly, despite LOALO models having the world's best music, I don't see them stopping making music anytime soon, and honestly, their music isn't half bad.

This is now the end of this magazine discussion. To be honest, I kind of WANT to upload the full photobook somewhere, but to be honest, I feel like i'm gonna get sued if I do so, sorry I'm not gal revo im a chicken 😓. Overall, LOALO is a magazine that you can easily forget is actually a magazine, mainly because they don't do the kind of reiwa promoting EGG or NUTS or AGEHA does, nor are they as formal or professional as them, but I'd love to get my paws on a LOALO magazine one day, as unfortunately like EGG, you need to live in Japan to purchase a volume, or pick one up because they are distributed free at tanning salons. But thank you for reading

-Bye Bye! Spacy