(Title refers to this post, BTW.)
Some inadvertent cross-cultural comedy thanks to Japan’s Tempura Kidz– seen previously in The Rite of Spring (Onions)– who are the terrifyingly talented group who started out as the child backing dancers for autotuned über-kawaii lunatic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.
Yes, I am obsessed with J-pop. Thanks for asking. I’m so square that genuinely enjoying Japanese pop is what passes for a secret vice in my case.
Seriously, all joking and Japan-you-so-weird aside, the choreography by the surnameless Maiko for the group is great and the way the kids themselves snap through the moves is truly brilliant. You need to be really talented and work bloody hard to dance this well and still have it look like fun. Incidentally the dancer seen front and centre through most of the video below is P→★ (try pronouncing that, English speakers); he’s a boy, he definitely knows how to rock a wig and tutu, and let’s all hope he always stays that way. The girls are called (or at least go by the names of) Karin, NaNaHo, Yu-Ka and Ao.
This song is called Cider Cider and, as you could probably guess, it’s about how nice it is to have a wee drink of cider now and then. Which is true. Unfortunately cider to a British person like me is also probably best known as the illegal alcoholic drink of choice for adolescents about thirteen or fourteen years old, i.e. like the Tempura Kidz. Cider is also infamously favoured by Britain’s most abject alcoholics because super-strong, cheap ciders are easily available in large containers from supermarkets here. In Asia the beverage they call cider is an innocent soft drink that has nothing to do with sitting on the swings in the park and boozing until you’re suddenly, explosively sick on your own shoes. Nor does it conjure up to a Japanese person images of a man with hollow eyes and something you’d rather not identify stuck in his beard asking you if you’ve got 50 pence towards his so-called “bus fare”. If you’ve got as much time on your hands as some Wikipedians evidently have, you can read an extensive explanation of international differences between the various drinks that are labelled as cider.
So while you watch, please remember that the children in this video may be covered in fluorescent paint and they may be wearing the disembowelled remnants of stuffed toys like they’re in a depraved mashup of Monsters Inc and Mad Max 2, but they are not totally crunk.
Note also the total abandonment of any pretence that it matters what their voices sound like, or indeed whether they appear on the recording at all. It could be a totally synthetic vocal, like Hatsune Miku. Or a 45 year old man. Who knows?
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