Surreal J-pop video
July 26, 2011 10:48 PM   Subscribe

PonPonPon (earworm alert) from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. [via]
posted by unliteral (57 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ok, Japanese speakers, does that video even make any sense?

My brain melted just trying to keep up with the visuals....
posted by jpeacock at 11:08 PM on July 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Even though I don't understand more than a couple of words of japanese, I enjoyed this pop music. Nice feel!

I didn't get the story but I think the story is about someone claiming their shit doesn't stink even if their a huge percentage more overweight.
posted by Meatafoecure at 11:08 PM on July 26, 2011


Oh my god, it's like a Lisa Frank folder come to life.
posted by cmgonzalez at 11:27 PM on July 26, 2011 [5 favorites]




Man, you can't just infect people with something like this without an antidote or earworm chaser.
posted by loquacious at 11:42 PM on July 26, 2011 [4 favorites]


I like when she pooped art.
posted by jrishel at 11:51 PM on July 26, 2011 [4 favorites]


What if everyone skipped
through that intersection
What if in the middle of the city
we held hands and looked up at the sky

What if we wanted to seize a chance
somewhere in that city
It's too early to cry more [2]
All I can do is keep going forward—I hate it I hate it [3]

Clap clap it'd be great if you put it all out there [4]
Not doing it is lame, right?
Yeah, clap! [5]
To the beat [6]
Way way! Open it, my path

Clap clap make progress with various things
Here they come, your feelings
Boy Boy throw away, who's the bad one?
Yeah yeah, good boy, ahh you make me so happy [7]

Every day clap every time is clap
like a merry go round
every day clap every time is clap
but maybe it's pointless... [8]

Clap clap it'd be great if you put it all out there
Not doing it is lame, right?

Yeah, clap!
To the beat
Way way! Open it, my path

Clap clap way way way
clap clap way clap way clap clap
way way clap clap clap
way way clap way clap way way x2

What if everyone skipped
through that intersection
What if in the middle of the city
we held hands and looked up at the sky

What if we wanted to seize a chance
somewhere in that city
It's too early to cry more
All I can do is keep going forward—I hate it I hate it

Clap clap make progress with various things
Here they come, your feelings
Boy Boy throw away, who's the bad one?
Yeah yeah, good boy, ahh you make me so happy

Every day clap every time is clap
like a merry go round
every day clap every time is clap
but maybe it's pointless...

Clap clap way way way
clap clap way clap way clap clap
way way clap clap clap
way way clap way clap way way x4


(Via)

Also, a little bit of (English) background on Kyary.
posted by Hargrimm at 12:23 AM on July 27, 2011 [8 favorites]


20 seconds in and I'm fascinated by the giant box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese on the right.
posted by JHarris at 12:24 AM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


WAY WAY PON PON PON

I can shed light on one small part of it. 'Pon' is the Japanese onomatopoeia for clapping, and 'pan' is the word for bread. So when they are clapping and slices of bread appear in time with the claps, it's a pon/pan pun. Everything else, though, fuck if I have a clue.
posted by Hargrimm at 12:28 AM on July 27, 2011 [6 favorites]


Also, it's very annoying that the link that seems to be spreading everywhere is to the grainy 480p version, when there's a great HD 720p version on the same channel. Enjoy.
posted by Hargrimm at 12:29 AM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


This reminds me of being too drunk to get up to go to bed in about 1999, and watching Rage at 3am on the lounge, just because you want to see what the next video will be, and whether it'll be a good one, then after an Alice In Chains depression special followed by obscure Britpop, you get a video like this one and fuck yeah! you've kicked the coffee table away and you're dancing like a loon.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 12:30 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


God damn it I only just got that song out after weeks of having it nestled firmly in my brain.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 1:06 AM on July 27, 2011


The song was only moderately earwormish and relatively non-irritating, but the video seems to me a near-brilliant send-up of all things Jpop and Kawaii, complete with totally cute bursts of grossness and inappropriateness. There's got to be a kitchen sink in there because they threw everything else in. Best consumed with a grain of salt larger than your head and irony that would gag a hipster.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:11 AM on July 27, 2011


'pan' is the word for bread

!? Nippo-etymologists: colonial-oid connection here to the latinate panem?

posted by progosk at 2:02 AM on July 27, 2011


Nothing 'colonial' about it ... it came from early Portuguese visitors ...
posted by woodblock100 at 2:08 AM on July 27, 2011


erm, that's the sort of colonial I meant.
posted by progosk at 2:13 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Wasn't Nagasaki a Portuguese colony?
posted by pracowity at 2:16 AM on July 27, 2011


erm ... the Portuguese were visitors, not colonists ... They brought quite a lot of new words to the Japanese language, which was (apparently) just as open to such imports then as it is now.
posted by woodblock100 at 2:17 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Holy. Shit. What.
posted by Iosephus at 3:33 AM on July 27, 2011


It puts the art in fart.

The odd black character in the pink outfit reminded me a bit of the Siamese Uncle Thomas in The King and I.

This wtf vid makes me really miss Amy Winehouse.
posted by nickyskye at 3:38 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


The big eyeball with the smaller eyeballs orbiting it reminds me of one of the bosses from Legend Of Zelda on the SNES. Actually, it's kinda like Vitreous and Arrghus.
posted by Solomon at 3:49 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


The odd black character in the pink outfit
Not black… berries.
posted by unliteral at 3:59 AM on July 27, 2011


Ha, as soon as I heard it I suspected that it was Nakata Yasutaka. If you guys like this kind of super candy pop, heavy on the vocoder, you may like some of Nakata's other productions, mentioned in Hargrimm's link above:

The producer of the song is none other than Nakata Yasutaka of Perfume/Capsule fame. The sound is definitely in the Perfume/Capsule realm, but the presentation of the video actually reminds us more of another act that Nakata has worked with – the one-and-only MEG.

In my other life as a teenage Japanese girl, I am a huge fan of Perfume and especially Capsule. Some of my favorite tracks include Macaroni (マカロニ), which somehow combines uber-J-pop with Stevie Wonder (the video is rather dull though, unless you like that plastic-y Japanese cute girl mugging for the camera incessantly thing), and Capsule's Glider (グライダー) which is just...I dunno I just love it for some reason, the video is quite funny/cute/weird/disturbing too. This track, by another Harajuku fashionista called Coltemonikha I think, is also a collaboration with Nakata. Here's his label's web site too I think, if you're interested.

I've found some Meg stuff on youtube too, but never liked it as much as his other stuff (or this crazy PonPonPon thing...woah) for some reason.

Okay, uh, I'll just be going back to being a middle-aged tattooed shaved-head white guy who listens to noise and experimental electronic music now...
posted by dubitable at 4:02 AM on July 27, 2011 [7 favorites]


If this is where we post our favourite J-pop videos, let me put in a word for this.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:19 AM on July 27, 2011 [5 favorites]


By the way, Hargrimm, that translation you linked to does seem a bit off. For example, it sounds like she's saying, rather than "clap clap make progress with various things," something like "keep clapping," (ポンポン進め) and I'm pretty sure she's saying "want to ride the merry-go-round" not "like a merry-go-round" (メリーゴーラウンド乗りたいの) and rather than "clap clap it'd be great if you put it all out there," it's more like an imperative "clap," like "put the claps out there" (ポンポン出して)...I don't have time to get through it all but, yeah, it's a bit wonky per the post...
posted by dubitable at 4:23 AM on July 27, 2011


OMG I'm hyperventilating now...PeterMcDermott for the win...
posted by dubitable at 4:27 AM on July 27, 2011


Well, it's not like the blog is called "reliabletranslationsyoupaidfor.blogspot.com".
posted by No-sword at 4:44 AM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


That skull freaks me out and I can't even really verbalise why. Maybe because whoever made it in Blender/3DSMax didn't put a texture on it so it's all rubbery-shiny and I'm thinking how horrid it would feel to touch?
posted by subbes at 5:50 AM on July 27, 2011


If this is where we post our favourite J-pop videos, let me put in a word for this.
PeterMcDermott: fishnet and denim. Your word is your bond. Attached forever.
posted by unliteral at 5:51 AM on July 27, 2011


My interpretation: The pink girl is an elder god worshipped by the faceless dancers, tormenting the girl attempting to resist falling under her influence. It works for a time, but by the end she's gone, and we're treated to the last images of her life before she's gone completely.

(No, really - see if you can catch the faceless dancers praying to her multiple times near the ending sections)
posted by flatluigi at 5:54 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


So, anyone's got any context for the video PeterMcDermott linked to?
posted by Kattullus at 6:17 AM on July 27, 2011


All I know about it is that it's a fan lipsynch video to this song created by the guy who made that great Nujabes video that was posted here ages ago,
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:34 AM on July 27, 2011


By the way, Hargrimm, that translation you linked to does seem a bit off.

I don't think you can actually call it a translation if the so-called translator doesn't understand Japanese and just guessed at how to fix a machine translation. I am too lazy to find a Japanese lyric transcription, but one of the links in this thread has a phonetic transcription. Let's just look at one line in this "translation." It supposedly says "like a merry go round." The transcription says "merry-go-round noritai no." The verb form noritai means "want to ride" and the no is a sentence ending particle that is often used by women to form a question. So it says something more like "do you want to ride the merry-go-round?"

I was surprised at how infectious this pop song was. But this kind of proves a prediction I made about 10 years ago. I said that Japan's "lost decade" of recession would drive kids to the point where they had no economic value as workers, the only thing they would have of any marketable value would be their public image.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:56 AM on July 27, 2011


Oops, dubitable beat me to it.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:57 AM on July 27, 2011


erm ... the Portuguese were visitors, not colonists ... They brought quite a lot of new words to the Japanese language, which was (apparently) just as open to such imports then as it is now.


We come in peace!

"Due to the instability during the Sengoku period, Sumitada and Jesuit leader Alexandro Valignano conceived a plan to pass administrative control over to the Society of Jesus rather than see the Catholic city taken over by a non-Catholic daimyo. Thus, for a brief period after 1580, the city of Nagasaki was a Jesuit colony...

Your move, woodblock100.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:09 AM on July 27, 2011


You know that scene where River hears a J-poppy jingle and starts beating the crap out of everyone? I'm starting to develop that urge after all J-pop. And yet, can't......stop.....watching.....
posted by nickgb at 7:13 AM on July 27, 2011


and since we've ventured slightly off into the topic of European involvement in Japan, I'd like to throw in my pitch for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob deZoet. Being entirely unversed in what was going on over there at any time before, say, mid-20th century, I found it very interesting.
posted by nickgb at 7:18 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Pretty breezy little number, I quite enjoyed it.

Lately, I've been listening to Hyadain, who's done anime and video game remixes, as well as original material.

I'm personally more a fan of his original works, which are manic, catchy, exhilarating, and seem to always brighten my mood no matter what's going on. Here's a couple samples:

1

2
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:19 AM on July 27, 2011


My move? Has this become a debate?

Look, Japan is - and has been for a couple of thousand years - a completely independent country (barring the occupation years, of course). It has never been a 'colony' of anyplace. Portuguese came in those years as traders and missionaries. Among them, I am sure there were some who would have been happy to have their home country be in a position to exert political/governmental control over this exotic far-off land. But that simply didn't happen. Those people were permitted to stay in Japan, and were penned into a very small island off the coast of Nagasaki. After some years, they were expelled completely, as we all know. To call that a 'colony' kind of stretches the concept I think ...
posted by woodblock100 at 7:20 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Oh, I've been inflicting this video on pretty much everybody I know for the last few days. It's pretty catchy and the video is oddly compelling. It's a sort of ode to the intersection of weird and cute that is kawaii culture…
posted by LMGM at 7:22 AM on July 27, 2011


My favorite part is when she, while looking completely disinterested, throws her arm out to one side to release a skull of some sort that then shoots lasers.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:31 AM on July 27, 2011


Blegh. Japan is just trying too hard now, that might as well have just been four minutes of pink and yellow static.

Antidote!

"I just want a lot of... American... BEEF!"
posted by FatherDagon at 7:59 AM on July 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


Coffee Land!!
posted by humboldt32 at 9:25 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


This video struck me as the sort of result you'd get if you ran that Owl City track through a Japanifying machine.
posted by Lucien Dark at 10:04 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


dubitable, are you me
posted by p3on at 10:26 AM on July 27, 2011


Blegh. Japan is just trying too hard now, that might as well have just been four minutes of pink and yellow static.

An older, but still effective, antidote for KAWAII can also be found here (really NSFW).
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:31 AM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


This music isn't very good, but I like the Leigh Bowery inspired fashion on that dancer in the background.
Also as far as Japanese girlpop I am more of a HALICALI fan, they also have strange and funny videos.
posted by Enigmark at 1:13 PM on July 27, 2011


Upon watching the video I hear the chorus as:

Drugs
Drugs
I take drugs
Lots and lots and lots of drugs...
posted by Godwin Interjection at 1:41 PM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Who directed the video? It's really well done. It kinda looks like a collaboration between Takeshi Murakami, The Residents and DEVO. (That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Murakami. I don't know if he's done any live-action stuff though...)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 2:48 PM on July 27, 2011


Murakami did that one video of Kirsten Dunst singing "Turning Japanese".
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:13 PM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


the video seems to me a near-brilliant send-up of all things Jpop and Kawaii, complete with totally cute bursts of grossness and inappropriateness.

Erlend & Steinjo presents: TokyoGirls: Suzuki Generation.
posted by iviken at 4:19 PM on July 27, 2011


I watched this and immediately knew that Yasutaka Nakata MUST be behind it. Indeed, he is! He is also the producer behind Capsule and Perfume.


Capsule's music videos are pretty neat sometimes.
posted by Winnemac at 4:37 PM on July 27, 2011


Needs more cowbell.
posted by kandinski at 10:30 PM on July 27, 2011


Kotoko Playmix
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:33 PM on July 27, 2011


Who directed the video? It's really well done.

Director: Jun Tamukai (caviar)
Choreography: air:man
Art director: Sebastian Masuda
Stylist: Kumiko Iijima
Producer: Yasutaka Nakata (Capsule)

Jun Tamukai is part of Caviar, alongside with Takeshi Nakamura (who directed the Towa Tei video) Yuichi Kodama, Shizuka Kurokawa, Yusuke Tanaka and Takuya Demura.
Here's their official website: www.caviar.ws

Jun Tamukai doesn't have his own page, however there is a page for tamdem, which is made up of Jun Tamukai and Takura Demuya. Maybe because this music video is the first he directed alone, I couldn't find anything else on another video he'd have directed.

(via antville)
posted by progosk at 5:56 AM on July 28, 2011


Ok, Japanese speakers, does that video even make any sense?

I don't think that's how it works over there.
posted by abcde at 5:14 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


I wonder if that video passes the epilepsy test. I'm guessing it wouldn't.
posted by TrialByMedia at 9:27 AM on July 30, 2011


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