This Afflac ad starring the apparently famous all over the world Afflac duck and a cat has been running on Japanese TV a bunch since about mid August. It’s got cute music, cute dancing animals and I’m sure great information about insurance. Watch it, it’s charming.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j15ZDcXz3Ds&hl=en&fs=1&]
Turns out the “cute music” in the ad is actually a full-fledge song. And said tune currently sits at the six spot on some sort of mobile J-Pop store. It’s only one ranking on one chart I just found out existed, so this isn’t like the Crazy Frog epidemic from a few years ago. But still interesting. Here’s the full song, complete with a video so cute it makes every twee band I’ve ever posted here look like Black Flag.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq9ytQ83Bu8&hl=en&fs=1&]
First, I have to reiterate, damn that’s cute. The “quack quack quack” bit rules. Second, there is absolutely no point to talking about the artistic merit of this song because it’s an unabashed jingle – nobody disects Mac Tonight. So what to make of “Manekineko Duck No Uta?” It’s a nice little musical curiosity that has more to say with Japan’s obsession with cuteness (a very real thing) than anything about the music scene here. Though “cuteness” definitely can propel an artist up the charts, this being a very extreme example.
If nothing else, anyone who downloaded this ad jingle from a few years back shouldn’t feel so ashamed.
(Big ups to JPop Lover, a very nice blog all about J-Pop and other forms of Japanese music for posting the chart originally.)