Make Believe Mailer Vol. 59: I Love You, Which Is Why I Hate Myself (or: I Watched The Sekai No Owari YouTube Documentary)
One of the big lessons to be learned from 2018 regarding music is how offering an alternative can be a boon to Japanese artists. I grazed on this in my year-end article for The Japan Times, but all of the noteworthy to make gains in the West this year -- Chai, Haru Nemuri, Mariya Takeuchi even, albeit accidentally! -- did so via a far-from-forward path that performers trying to get some shine in the English-language world have opted for. Japanese music probably can't replicate what K-pop has done (I mean...what BTS has done), but this year proved offering something different and delivering it in an unexpected way can really work. Basically, forget pained crossovers and goofy collaborations.
But who I am kidding, most big artists (everywhere!) are still going to shoot for these more traditional strategies. And this month has given the world Re: IMAGINE, a "YouTube Original" documentary focused on Sekai No Owari...creating a special comic with Marvel. But besides documenting the band turning into superheroes, it's also a pretty obvious move by them to try to reach English-language listeners as part of a bid to make inroads in the West. By "obvious," I mean "really obvious," like they straight up say it in the first episode, which you can watch for free.
Sekia No Owari is one of the biggest bands in Japan this decade, a group that really connected with younger listeners thanks to their escapist fantasy lyrics (so earnest that they were ridiculed constantly online a few years back for being overly honest) and genre-hopping tendencies. When the story of the decade gets written up next year, they'll have to be included in discussions of where J-pop went following 2010.
And, possibly because they don't have much further to go in Japan, they have been attempting a crossover into the West for the last couple of years under the name End Of The World (their Japanese name, translated). So far, I'd say it has been mostly misses save for some love from Billboard. They've worked with Adam Young, aka Owl City, well past that dude's best-of date (his peak was when Shaq showed up in a video for one of his gloopy candy apples of a song). They've played shows abroad, but not quite sure how much buzz they've really gotten. They collaborated with Epik High earlier this year...don't blame you if you missed that one (earlier, during the peak days of PC Music-mania, they even got AG Cook and Danny L Harle to remix a song, but it appears to be offline). But they persist, with a planned THREE albums coming out next year, including one presumably geared towards English-language audiences.
Re: IMAGINE stands as their biggest push to getting newfound attention, though. Because Marvel carries far more cultural power than anyone listed above...maybe a collab with Shaq could work too...and could in theory expose them to a whole new audience. It's surprising, though, just how obvious everyone involved is about this being a chance to push Sekai No Owari forward abroad. Chunks of this are big wet smooches to the comic book company, the band gushing about the power of their character designs. It goes the other way too, with Marvel editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski -- who you might know as the guy who once pretended to be Japanese -- praising the group and, in a particularly eye-rolling scene, compares the band to Marvel itself.
Here's where I'll disclose that I am getting older, and that certain beliefs I own have calcified harder. One of those is, while I know it really isn't that big a deal, I find these kind of collaborations between massive companies and musicians that so rarely actually revolve around music to be very unsettling. How 1992 of me! But, like, I'd rather Sekai No Owari just made a song for Ant-Man than indulge in a synergy exercise. But I also admit this is probably a more solid move to make advances, compared to other things they could do (such as just lean on their music).
But even if we get past grumpiness, I'm just not sure this is the way to go about getting your name out there. It's important to note this is every bit a tool to promote YouTube's premium content in Japan as it is a way to push Sekai No Owari to comic book fans. The whole thing kind of comes off as very "please clap," though, with a huge idea being how much the band wants to make it outside Japan (even check the linked Billboard interview, which starts off with a familiar "trying to do what no other Japanese group has done"). I think as all crossover bids show, this strategy doesn't work, with CL's 2014 attempt probably being the strongest case in recent memory. Just look at Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Babymetal, J-pop artists who found success in the West this decade pretty much by accident. They just let the music and visuals do the work...Babymetal's visual novel came after they developed a fanbase after all.
An even better comparison comes from a Korean group that I kinda believe inspired Sekai No Owari to give this a go in the first place. BTS' success abroad has inspired a lot of Asian artists to think bigger, and I think Sekai No Owari are actually far closer to them musically (specifically, lyrically) than a lot of others. But again, BTS came up as a surprise, and weren't (overtly) courting love from abroad. When they did a YouTube Premium show, they had made it. And more importantly, that show focused on them, not how they try to get even more shine in the States. This Sekai No Owari show's best moments come when the band is just...talking about themselves, their histories and early days. Forging a connection through that might be a better path...and make the inevitable comic book feel more earned rather than something that came from a PowerPoint presentation.
News And Views
"Plastic Love" has been taken down from YouTube. The photographer of the picture of Mariya Takeuchi featured in that upload, Alan Levenson, allegedly had it taken down. It's a complicated one to say the least -- fill in your own take on the beauty of the internet shedding light on it in the first place, but also keep in mind that part of the song's spread was visual (the pic became a meme) and Levenson probably wants credit there. It also underlines an issue that has only become bigger and bigger as (deep sigh) meme culture continues to grow, which is credit vs the spread of something. Stay tuned on this one.
Idols turning into Virtual YouTubers...the wave of 2019? Can't possibly see what could go wrong here.
Speaking of idols, this Kyodo piece on "the dark side of underground idols" is doing well on The Japan Times site, and it is a good read to catch up on how the entertainment works for more general readers. The one missed opportunity hinted at in the headline is how this perspective needs to be leveled at underground idols playing up a "we aren't like other idols" angle, because most of the time...the labor stuff does look a lot like other idols.
Hope Keyakizaki46 provides a good health plan.
Unrelated to Japanese music, but applause to The Korea Times for going with this blunt-ass headline. Japanese media has covered this story a lot too, because if there's one thing everyone can rally around in these troubled times, is outrageous airline refund policies (how did they get their money back!?!?!?)
Oricon Trail For The Week of Dec. 10, 2018 To Dec. 16, 2018
If you like surprises, well avoid the Oricon year-end results because these all could have been seen a mile away. Namie Amuro's final year in the biz also saw her dominate the charts again. This week's regular rankings are similarly easy to see, with SKE48 on the singles chart and Radwimps on the album side. Shouts out Sky-Hi, #7 on the album chart this week, for naming his latest album Japrison.
Perfume's GAME (33 1/3)
My entry in the 33 1/3 Japan series is out now! Get a copy at Bloomsbury or Amazon. Or at Kinokuniya bookstores in the US.
Look At Me!
It's year-end time, and I contributed a bunch of look-backs on 2018 for the Culture section. My look back at music -- or DA PUMP's "U.S.A.," really -- was the biggest one, but I also wrote about YouTube and TV. And next week on the blog...my favorite 50 Japanese albums of the year!
Also looked back at how celebrities used Twitter in 2018, with a little bit on how a couple of them got really political at the end of the year.
Went to Seoul last month, and wrote about how to enjoy it for the paper too.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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