CHORUS 1
SHANRANRANRAN
sora o tonde kono machi o miwatasu no
minna to iru to chigatte mieru
kitto wasurerannai
OH MY FRIEND
VERSE
FUTAFUTA mayotchatte okuresou na no gomen ne
ikou to omotteta omise teikyuubi datta mitai na no
mata doji shichatta naa
konna atashi dakedo
tomodachi de ite kurete
hontou ni arigato
CHORUS 2
SHANRANRANRAN
sora o tonde kono machi o miwatasu no
minna to iru to chigatte mieru fushigi na kurai ni
TOPPINGU SUPAISHII na
mahou de KARAFURU na mainichi
chotto kawatteru kurai ga ii ESSENSU
kitto wasurerannai
OH MY FRIEND
VERSE 1
uragiri no yuuyake
yakkai ni karamitsuku ase o
kirisaku you ni shite
MASHIN wa sakebu utau you ni
BLOW UP LOUDER
mukuchi na yousei wa soko ni iru
BLOW UP LOUDER
tsugunai wa kudaketa ai no kakera
CHORUS 1
aa asahi wa noboru
BIRU no tanima
ima shinjireba kawaru no sa
muimi ja nai ano ashita
aa asahi wa noboru
yami o nukete
ima kanjireba mieru no sa
muimi ja nai ano yume o
aa OREtachi ni wa mieteru MONO ga aru
kitto dare ni mo ubawarenai MONO
muimi ja nai ano ito ga
CHORUS 2
aa asahi wa noboru
suiheisen
ima shinjireba kawaru no sa
muimi ja nai ano hikari
Just a friendly reminder that The Masked Singer comes on tonight at 9 p.m. EST on Fox. Six new celebrities will compete disguised as The Rabbit, The Pineapple, The Alien, The Raven, The Bee, and The Poodle. Want a head start on figuring out their identities? Here are some clues. (Remember: their costumes could be hints, too.)
The Hero And His Elf Bride Open A Pizza Parlor In Another World.
Here’s another one: What Do You Do At The End Of The World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?
And one more: My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy.
These aren’t Amazon product descriptions or lines of dialogue. They’re the actual titles of these series. Google “long anime titles” and you’ll find even more mouthfuls like these.
Some of them areevenlonger in Japanese. For example, the original name of the “romantic comedy” series is Ore No Nounai Sentakushi Ga, Gakuen Rabu Kome O Zenryoku De Jama Shiteiru. Yikes. Even though I know some Japanese, my brain still hurts. I can’t imagine how that sentence looks to someone who doesn’t know a single word! (If that’s you, sorry. 😅)
I feel sorry for this graphic designer. At least they handled it well.
Why, Japan? Why are you doing this? Is every story creator competing for a Guinness World Record?
Most of the titles really are just descriptions of the series. It’s like the creators didn’t even try to name them! Here’s another example: A Boring World Where The Concept Of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist. I’m not kidding. That’s the title.
First of all, I’m sure some of these series are great. I haven’t watched or read any of the ones I’ve mentioned, so I can’t judge them on story quality. But their pointlessly-long names make them sound silly or pretentious (if they didn’t already).
Second, an overly-informative title is like a spoiler. It cheats the audience out of discovering things through the story itself. Imagine if My Hero Academia were called A Boy Who Wasn’t Born With Superpowers Tries To Become A Hero In A Society Where Superheroes Are Accepted. We learn all this in the first episode, so what would have been the point of telling us in the title?
Let’s throw Winx Club into this (since I’m obsessively familiar with it). Can you imagine if Iginio Straffi had named it A Girl Who Thought She Was A Human Finds Out She’s Really A Fairy And Travels To A Magical World Where She Forms A Club With Other Fairies? That’s the first two episodes! We don’t need that much information up front!
Third, you don’t need a lot of words to convey an idea. Keywords are…key. A Boring World Where The Concept Of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist (*sigh* 🙄) could be changed to A Boring World Without Dirty Jokes or Was That A Dirty Joke? It depends on what the writer was trying to highlight: the boring world, the dirty jokes, or both.
Fourth, shouldn’t a title be more creative? Let’s look at Winx Club again. (I know it’s not Japanese, but who cares?) Mr. Straffi took the English word “wings” and replaced the “gs” with an “x” shaped like fairy wings. The word “club” hints that the show has multiple lead characters. There you go: Winx Club. Quoting Bloom, “Simple, yet catchy.”
Which has more calories: the pizza or this title?
With a little more effort, I’m sure the writers of these series could have come up with catchy titles, too. I read the description for the “pizza parlor” series, and apparently the main character is known as a “High-Calorie Hero.” Why didn’t the writer make that the title? It’s funny, and it’s even alliterative (at least in English). Plus, it makes you curious. Eating a lot of calories is bad for you, so how is this guy a hero?
Fnally — as I said in the title of this post — why use a long title if you know that your audience is gonna abbreviate it? The Japanese do this all the time. That’s why we call those monsters you catch in balls “Pokémon”, because even Nintendo didn’t wanna say “Pocket Monsters” (Poketto Monsutaa) every time, even though it’s short already.
Two of the first three series I mentioned also have portmanteau nicknames. The “romantic comedy” series is known as “NouCome”, and the “end of the world” series is “SukaSuka” in Japan and “WorldEnd” in North America. Even that “boring world” series has a nickname: “ShimoSeka” in Japan and “Shimoneta” in North America. Aren’t those names a lot easier to say?
Bottom line: I hope the laundry-list title craze dies soon. It’s cheesy and unnecessary. Just come up with something shorter, and save the extra details for the back cover.
This was my favorite performance of the night. I’ve rewatched it several times already. A lot of people think The Peacock is Donny Osmond. Who do you think it is? (If you know any secret information, please don’t tell me. I’d rather find out myself!)
You may have heard about Fox’s new reality competition The Masked Singer. Based on the South Koreanhit King of Mask Singer, the show features celebrities in costumes singing in front of a panel of judges and a live audience. The costumes from week one included a glamorous golden lion, a hippo in stereotypical rapper garb, and a monster that looked like the love child of Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc.
Critics haven’t been too kind to the show. They’ve called it “bonkers”, “silly”, “a spellbinding train wreck”, and “a hellish nightmare” but “great content for furries”. Seriously? Furries?
Let me say first that I’ve never seen a full episode of King of Mask Singer. But from reading about it, watching some clips, and watching our version, I think these critics seriously missed the point. Especially since they’re drawing to a link to furries. (No, seriously — furries?)
If you get too caught up on the over-the-top costumes and occasionally-bad singing, it’s easy to write off The Masked Singer as stupid. Sure, not all the contestants can sing well, and some of the costumes look like rejected mascots. But there’s more to this show than that.
Oh, look. A costume that’s not an animal. Plenty more where that came from in the South Korean version.
In the original show, the costumes aren’t even as elaborate. They’re still silly-looking, but the mask is the main feature. There aren’t any background dancers, either. The contestants just stand there and sing, accompanied by a live orchestra.
Of course, America would take this concept and turn it into something that looks like a Vegas audition. Let’s face it: our reality shows have to be dramatic. We expect it.
But no one is watching The Masked Singer because they’ve dreamed of seeing a hippo in sunglasses sing “My Prerogative” and end it with a dab. (Yes, that happened. So what?)
At their cores, The Masked Singer and King of Mask Singer are just guessing games. The fun is figuring out who’s behind the mask. Do I know that voice? (Who cares if it’s off-key?) Have I seen those dance moves before? Can I tell who they are by how they walk? How they stand? How they how they interact with the audience?
It’s all about using your pop culture knowledge and detective skills. What’s so silly about that?
Also, have you thought about why someone would wanna strut around stage in a mask? When no one knows who you are, you can be whoever you wanna be. Think of how freeing that would be for a celebrity who’s always been defined by what the public thinks of them. A mask is like a colorful blank slate.
“The Lion” said it best on Wednesday:
This is my chance for people to see me perform without any preconceived notions of who I am….So here I am behind this mask, and I’m going to show my true self for the very first time.
Now, I really wanna know who she is! (Spoiler: she said she’s “Hollywood royalty”.)
The Masked Singer may be a lot flashier than the original, but the concept is still the same. It’s a “Whosungit”, as host Nick Cannon put it. Who doesn’t love a good mystery?
Apparently a lot of people do. The Masked Singer was the highest-rated show Wednesday night with 9.4 million viewers and a 3.0 Nielsen rating among adults 18-49. According to The Wrap, it was the strongest debut for an unscripted TV show in more than seven years.
Hang on to your antlers, critics and furries. This show could be around for a while. Time will tell.
Did you watch the debut of The Masked Singer? What do you think are the singers’ true identities?
ONE TWO THREE FOUR
WE ARE CELLS AT WORK
ONE TWO THREE FOUR
WE ARE hataraku fuu
VERSE 1
kyou mo hakobu yo sanso sanso
karadajuu no sumi kara sumi e
dakedo hirokute maigo maigo
tedasuke sareteru hataraku saibou
saa ikou
hataraku zo hataraku zo
mainichi mainichi shugyouchu OOH
VERSE 2
kyou mo zakkin haijo haijo
saikin UIRUSU dete koi ya
zettai nigasu na yuusou yuusou
PUROFESSHONARU na hataraku saibou
saa ikou
hataraku zo hataraku zo
mainichi mainichi senjou
san juu nana chouko no hitori
tsugi ni aeru no wa itsuka na
CHORUS
dareka no tame ni dareka no tame ni
isshou kenmei isshou kenmei
anata mo watashi mo hisshi ni hataraiteru
minna no tame ni minna no tame ni
inochigake da zo inochigake da zo
PURAIDO motte ken kou dai ichi
