J-Pop America Fun Time Now

I was furious the first time I saw this skit on SNL, so this last weekend when I saw it brought back, you can imagine I was livid.  The skit follows two anime/Japanese culture fans in their attempt to put on a show via campus television at Michigan State.  That in itself isn't so bad, but they take J-Pop and a little bit of J-Rock attributes and twist them horribly.  The two barely speak a word of real Japanese and at best their impressions can be likened to the Speed Racer cartoon of old.  The worst part is, they sing songs which have very little resemblance to anything J-Pop or J-Rock.  Through the whole thing their professor is adamant about how they are horrible students and are reflecting only a tiny fraction of Japanese culture.  The end result is the watchers are left with the impression that anyone who enjoys J-Pop and J-Rock fits those descriptions. 

       J-Pop and J-Rock music has been one of my great pastimes over the last 10 years, since I began watching anime.  There is something unique in the opening, ending and insert songs that go with anime in that they are often pulled from or paired with popular music.  I found some of my favorite bands because they had one song that I loved, I went searching for more and I found it.  Heck, Access, a band made up of two men, a singer and a composer/instrumentalist, has been around since 1992 and the composer/instrumentalist, Daisuke Asakura, has had a hand in producing countless artists during that time.  I do not run around like some sort of fool, pretending that I am Japanese.  Yes, I do sing along when rocking out to various songs that are entirely in Japanese, but I also do not limit myself to Japanese songs.  There is one artist whose songs have English, Japanese, Russian and even some Latin all in the same song.  There is a beauty to the human voice as an instrument that tends to be hidden because you know what the lyrics mean.  Yes the lyrics are important and come from the heart of the artist, but when you remove that understanding you realize how much more there is underneath.  Now, since I started listening I have learned a lot more Japanese, but it hasn't really overshadowed the voice as an instrument like it used to.  There is also a much heavier techno-rock presence in J-Rock than anything you can really get here in the US.  So it is not just the voice as an instrument but innovative uses of instruments and even singers.  While there are some prominent rock bands with female lead singers here in the USA, it is not the same as how Japanese bands use them.  For instance, High and Mighty Color, which has now broken up, made fantastic use of both a female singer and male singer with very different styles, but they complimented each other so well.  You can see it to a lesser extent with Maximum the Hormone.  Most people only ever hear the two songs from the anime "Death Note" but if you branch out to the rest of their music, you discover that their drummer, a woman, has a beautiful voice and the juxtaposition with her brother who does some singing and their main singer, a male, is fantastic and a unique experience that I have never seen, anywhere, ever.

This is the deep love and understanding I have for this "tiny aspect of Japanese culture" and this skit just ripped it apart and took a big steaming shit on it.