The end of today all over the sky

[koganbot]

Trying to start a conversation over on poptimists about the new IU video ("Good Day"):

http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/793519.html

By the way, what would you say are the best IU tracks? I've heard very few of them. I like the one variously translated as "MIA," "Missing Child," and "Lost Child"; and I totally love her live version of "Gee"/"Sorry, Sorry."

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

One of the problems I have with scholarly articles about Japanese culture (pop most likely), is that they use a series of concepts to examine a culture that is, at least lately, immersed in feedback with their own references, creating micro-niches and micro-variations on themes and riffs already overexploited for decades, and that those concepts are so general as to feel like empty containers or a bit like using dated slang to refer maybe the same things the younger generation are doing, but with new traditions, memes, senses, etc. (Another problem I have with them is how most of them doesn’t value at all the cultures they are talking about (skips the idols, they are empty, let’s talk about mainstream artists with real contents that I happen to like!). Oh, and another one: everyone in Japan is a pervert, so if there are examples of cultural trends that are quite extreme (like shotakon or eleven-years old gravure DVDs), everything that could be identified with those extreme examples are softer expressions of the dark truth).

There is manga, “Bakuman” about a couple of guys that want to become mangakas and each time that they are pitching a new idea, they explain how the conventions of every genre are used (like when they explain the love story that triggers all the plot the manga is going to have, like “Bakuman”). If anybody is interested on that, I can put some examples from there. If not, you only need to check some conventions from this video. I don’t really know why they do this, but when I tried to learn the writing, maybe had some glimpse of how they are accustomed to think that way (different “drawings” combine themselves to form new meanings, new words (always with the same sounds)).



I only heard once before the term burikko. It was in a quite repellent moe-oriented website that usually publishes polls about what boys hate girls doing or the reverse one. Usually they are mortifying, narrow minded and are mere excuses for quite colourful commentary about gender, the country and the rest. So one of the things guys hated was that the girl pretended to be cute, that she was burikko. Having in mind that as mentioned, that website is quite found on a very particular form of cuteness (moe), that usually derives in all sort of sexual fantasies about moe characters, maybe is a misuse of the term “burikko” and what is acceptable for them is not so much for society. The most known example of moe anime right now.





These girls are Onyanko Club. They are acting like teenagers but the lyrics are talking about having sex and taking off their school uniforms. So there is a divergence between the presentation and the contents.

[(Anonymous)]

These girls are AKB48 doing a medley from idol songs from the 80’s included the one before (the guy that write the lyrics for their songs is the same guy that wrote for Onyanko Club but I think that sex is presented in a different light in this group). With each song, they adopt the style of their original performers. You can even check some surprised faces between them when they start with the last one. My theory is that current idol groups play with the conventions of cuteness as a way of presenting themselves, not necessarily in ironic ways, but like things that they have to do because that is what their audience wants.



The same girl criticising one girl (age 23) every time that she acts as a little girl and at the end presenting herself as a cute girl (her real image is closer to the first one). When some of the main girls graduated from high-school they said that starting that day they were “cosplaying” each time they were in the group (because the school uniforms are not part of their own life anymore). So if some girl always does this cute image, is just an accepted way of presenting themselves or acting as an archetype (like the yankee one, the bad guy that has a way of walking, sitting, talking, etc.). Again, AKB48 girls going yankee for the opening credits of their own dorama “Majisuka Gakuen”.



These girls are Ebisu Muscats. Most of them are pornstars. The song obviously is mocking some ideas about innocence and idols (because you know, they are “used” and the banana is the banana and the mango is…). Funny thing, it only works because they adhere to the idol genre conventions. The thing is that they are not mocking their own cuteness in the way they present themselves (check their third single, the PV has some sort of documentary feel about it: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xft9d0_yyyyyyyy-yyyyyy-pv_music), just the excess of artificiality that comes out of nowhere. Anyway I’m going to read that article that was linked above (found a PDF copy). Like I said above, never tried to make much sense of it, because everything else in show business over there falls inside of some image container according to age, sex, etc.