Make Believe Mailer 09: Oricon Slayer
"Homura" marks the end point of 2020
To understand Japanese pop in the 2010s, you had to keep tabs on an array of rankings. The Oricon Charts, long the standard for measuring popularity, became a relic as it spent most of the decade sticking to a physical-sales-only approach. That could still shed light on what people gravitated to — but had to be supplemented by the Billboard Hot 100, YouTube metrics, iTunes downloads and eventually subscription streaming data. By the end of this period, short-form video apps like MixChannel and TikTok only complicated matters more, adding another platform one had to turn to in order to divine the hits songs of the day. Daoko and Kenshi Yonezu’s “Uchiage Hanabi” was the biggest song of 2017, but it never came close to the top of Oricon. DA PUMP’s “U.S.A.” can thank YouTube and TikTok for turning it into a titanic jam, not traditional ranking organizations.
As 2020 settled in, it wasn’t hard to deduce what music stood as the most popular in Japan — you just had to check and cross reference between at least a half dozen places to figure it out. It felt like the monolithic hit of yesteryear — the sort of song that dominates every corner of not just music media, but media period — was fading away. Welcome pure fragmentation.
Enter “Homura.”
“Homura” marks the end point of J-pop in 2020. Before the theme to the Demon Slayer* movie arrived, this year had teased multiple routes that Japan’s music industry could explore heading into the new decade. Not to reveal future newsletter content so early, but I count four songs in particular pointing to four different ways the country could venture moving forward. The last 12 months were an intersection. Then LiSA, a once unheralded anime singer turned household name, stumbled into something not just rare for Japan but the whole world in modern times — a hit song touching everything.
“Homura” has 50 million YouTube views a month after being uploaded, and it will only go up. “Homura” dominated the Billboard charts for multiple weeks. “Homura'“ sits at number one on subscription streaming service rankings, having brushed aside hits both domestic and global with ease. Usually, songs that perform well digitally fail to leave an impression on Oricon, which still puts a priority on physical units sold. Yet wait for it…“Homura” topped the physical-only chart (not to mention the all-sales-considered list) for three weeks straight. No artist in Japan has done that in nearly 13 years — literally, the last time this happened was in 2007, when SMAP managed it. Adjusted for inflation, “Homura” might as well be Thriller.
Ahhhh, but here comes additional context to take this to the next level. I buried the lede — “Homura” functions as the theme song to the year’s highest-grossing Japanese movie, while also being a record-setting film currently sitting as the fifth highest-grossing flick in Japanese history. Seeing as it is tied to a cinema phenomenon, it shouldn’t be too surprising to find out “Homura” is everywhere. It plays behind news reports about the Demon Slayer movie on TV. It appears thousands upon thousands of times on TikTok. On YouTube…dear god, on YouTube. Everyone is reacting to or covering “Homura.” The First Take** take of “Homura” boasts numbers a lot of bands signed to major labels can only fantasize about. GACKT took time out of living an extravagant life in Malaysia to give it a shot, above.
What I keep thinking is — dear god, how are the ALTs of Japan coping with this? Because “Homura” must be playing on a near constant loop based on how it has managed to touch on every corner of Japanese media this year.
Even VTubers!
OK, actually what I keep thinking is…what does this even compare to? The fragmentation of all media over the past ten years means that mono-culture-ish works (in this case, truly hitting every medium in a country) should be near impossible to achieve. I’ve been struggling to think of what the last hit like this in Japan was. Given the anime and film connection, my mind instantly turns to Your Name, the prior feature in the country to be so big. While RADWIMPS’ soundtrack performed well and lead single “Zenzenzense” topped the Hot 100 and became a TV background staple, it never went to number one on Oricon and never enjoyed widespread meme-ability (“Uchiage Hanabi,” meanwhile technically served as the theme song to an anime movie…but said film is totally lost to time, with the musical number towering way above it). “Homura” somehow sold thousands upon thousands of physical CDs…in 2020!…to do something only J-pop idols and K-pop groups manage here. It’s way bigger than that.
The closest comparison I can think of to “Homura” is “Let It Go,” the standout sing-a-long anthem from the Disney film Frozen. That’s a global smash that was particularly sticky in Japan — I was an ALT at the time, and this was a lunch-time selection and English study tool for two years — that managed to be more than just a song, but a social phenomenon tied to an even bigger film hit. But this fails too…“Let It Go” didn’t manage as much success on the charts as “Homura.” I have no doubt it would have slayed on subscription streaming and TikTok, but there’s no way to know — whereas “Homura” truly dominates on all of them.
(Second to “Let It Go?” I guess…”See You Again?” It wasn’t that big in Japan, but is somehow one of the defining hits of the 21st century if you decide that by online stats. Vin Diesel should definitely do a The First Take, though.)
If this whole newsletter feels like me gawking at “Homura,” slack-jawed and declaring “look at this fucking thing!”…well, it is, because it’s wild that something so big-tent exists in Japan (anywhere???) in 2020. This isn’t how Japanese music functions, right?! The nation of AKB48 and handshake events and lol CD sales. Brush these lazy observations aside though, and you still find a country shifting towards pop cultural fragmentation over unity. And yet! Here is a true rarity — a massive hit that isn’t just a musical success story, but part of a larger pop culture moment helping to offer something resembling togetherness in a year defined by isolation.***
I don’t think there are a lot of “Homuras” on the horizon. The way people consume music and the way most media uses music…I think this is a rarity meant to be savored, almost as an old-world treasure. “Homura” has nothing to do with 2020 as we know it, either in Japan or elsewhere, but rather as an oddity of togetherness, something a whole nation gravitates to and connects to in their own way.
*I’ve watched five and a half episodes of Demon Slayer at time of writing, and feel that’s clearly enough exposure for me to answer the question on every generalist journalist’s mind…why is this so popular? Welp, I’m going to go ahead and say…trauma, it works because it’s about trauma. Keep in mind my knowledge of anime extends to Hamtaro, a few seasons of Pokemon and Pop Team Epic.
**Japanese music gets criticized for being behind the times, and rightfully so…but The First Take ever increasingly feels like a genius move towards engaging with foreign markets for the Japanese industry. Without sharing too many of the scribbles I’ve put down in my “Future End Of Year Hot Takes” notebook, this channel pinpoints a unique way forward for J-pop — to get reductive about it, if K-pop has excellent dancing and trippy backdrops, The First Take helps establish Japanese pop as a place for authentic singer-songwriter types to show their craft in a raw manner celebrating the artist.
***Though, let’s also be clear…“Homura” being an undeniable super hit really reflects the central place of anime in Japanese pop culture. Sorry to all the Twitter folks crusading against “weebs,” but the Prime Minister is quoting this movie, and no pop cultural offering comes close to matching the reach of Demon Slayer. Turns out cartoons really are popular (aided by a pandemic that nudged many to binge the anime series)! It’s also the peak for anime music, which has always been possible, but has reached a new height thanks to LiSA. Like, plenty of people know Linked Horizon for their Attack On Titan theme, but they were never this ever present.