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There’s two reasons this music video by the Japanese pop band Livetune is worth looking at: first, it is one of the few music videos released by a Japanese pop group lately that’s both made entirely of anime and amazing to look at; 2) it serves as a sort of follow-up in our unofficial series on the sexual psyche of Japanese pop entertainment (see here and here).
Livetune is actually made up of only one person, simply known as KZ. KZ uses one instrument, the Hatsune Miku synthesizer. Guess the anime character Hatsune Miku is now officially an instrument. Wonder if this means we can officially sound the death knoll of traditional music.
After all, artists like P Diddy and Beyonce may use 4 or 5 different songwriters to write for them, but at least they use their own voices, auto-tuning aside. Still, And KZ’s not alone: the Hatsune Miku synthesizer has been used by several different pop groups in Japan since its release over 5 years ago. And we gotta admit, it’s also kinda catchy, in its own sort of soul-less, over-produced way. Dammit.
Also, the video for their single, “Transfer”, which comes via Crunchyroll, is pretty amazing. Utilizing the same loop of animation (in this case, a Japanese schoolgirl running to get to school on time) over and over again, we get an acid trip-like wash of colors and different styles of backgrounds that accompany her, from psychedelic to digitized and sort of Tron-like.
It’s also pervy in that traditional anime way, in that the girl looks kinda young to be providing us with so many shots of her undies. In almost every frame. If you can’t get enough of her panties, we also get a peek at some of her classmates’. Other than that, yeah. This is a great example of technology being used for relatively great entertainment, as well as further proof we will one day all be robots. Which doesn’t seem so bad now that the music is so effortless and hypnotic…
Jeff Nau – who has written 1264 posts on The Jace Hall Show.
Jeff Nau is a main contributor to the Jace Hall Show covering pop culture and music trends in the nerd community. He has contributed to San Diego City Beat, 944, and Ill Literature, amongst others, and spends his spare time working as an artist and photographer.

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