Asian Culture, Lifestyle and Entertainment
Japanese MV for Hello, Shooting Star by pop duo moumoon, released in February 2015. It’s an ending song for popular anime series Assassination Classroom.
I was a fan of moumoon’s Sunshine Girl in 2010. Haven’t heard much from the band since then, but they are probably doing well in their home country. Many Japanese commercials, movies and TV shows have used their songs over the years.
[Read more…] about Moumoon, Shooting Star, Assassination Classroom
Japanese model Moe Oshikiri is the cover girl for the last issue (December 2016) of AneCan Magazine. The fashion magazine will suspend its publication after running for a decade because of business reasons. Poor sales, to put it boldly.
Oshikiri was also the cover girl for the first issue of AneCan in 2007. So it’s fitting that she’s the one who brings down the curtain on the magazine.
AneCan targeted women in mid to late twenties who have “graduated” from reading CanCam, its sister magazine for younger women and college students.
CanCam is still running after 35 years though (first published in November 1981.) It’s an amazing feat but the future looks grim for fashion magazines worldwide, with the shift of interest and competition from internet publications etc.
To survive, the magazines have to build a strong branding with solid online presence and to venture globally. The later is something the Japanese media have fallen behind in the past decade, it’s so difficult for non-Japanese to reach their contents.
Trailer video for the 2016 World Cosplay Summit which will be held on July 30 to August 7 in Japan. The video shows some history of the convention, plus clips from the cosplay competition (presumably from 2015), parade and side events.
The WCS is held over a one week period where representatives from different countries visit various parts of Japan, including Akihabara, Kyoto and Sendai, to promote the Japanese youth culture and its ability to connect internationally. The finale is usually held in Nagoya on the first weekend of August.
Teaser for Japanese movie Shin Godzilla (シン・ゴジラ), in theatres in Japan this summer. The film is co-directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. It’s the 31st instalment in the Godzilla franchise and the third reboot by Toho Pictures.
The Shin is a play of words which can mean a few things. Officially it’s RESURGENCE in English title, some Asian teasers go with TRUE, social media seems to like it as GOD, while I prefer the simpler NEW instead. It all seems to fit though.
[Read more…] about Shin Godzilla (2016) Japanese movie trailer
ZARD Forever Best 25th Anniversary medley video. A compilation album in memory of Izumi Sakai, the lead vocal of Japanese pop band Zard who died in 2007.
Izumi Sakai was the only permanent member of Zard until her death. And thus, Zard is synonymous with Sakai. The band has sold over 37 million records to date, making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time in Japan.
Sakai released 42 singles in her lifetime. The extra songs in this compilation are either posthumous release, or songs written by her and performed by other artists.
Some of the clips in this video are quite precious and hardly found online. After all, Zard was most famous in the 1990’s when internet was not a thing yet.