Chack

February 4, 2001 9:59 PM

Chack is an artist doing stuff you've never imagined. It's sugar-coated, sappy, happy, cartoony imagery you often find in japanese logos, but the subjects are violent and sexual. Brilliantly funny and shocking. If anyone can translate or knows the story behind this person, please enlighten me. (via andrew and mrpants)
posted by mathowie (17 comments total)

I don't know what any of this stuff means, but it makes me desperately wish I had a kid. Then I could plaster these images all over her lunch box and send her to school to mindfuck all the other kids and the teachers.
posted by aaron at 10:31 PM on February 4, 2001

Dunno either - but just seeing that animated GIF of the chick with the golf club is enough to make me kinda worry about someone who wants to find out! (I'm thinkin' that we could print that on those little mylar stickers that make Jesus blink and stuff - imagine what a cool lunch box graphic THAT would make!)
posted by m.polo at 10:51 PM on February 4, 2001

Love this one.
posted by bjgeiger at 10:53 PM on February 4, 2001

Awww, so cuuute...

Are these character drawings animated somewhere? I saw a couple of the little animations, like the one with the golf club, but couldn't find much more, though it is hard to navigate through all those question marks. The reason I say that is because the line on the drawings has that kind of chewed-into look that I see on all those flash cartoons on the web.
posted by David Gaddis at 11:21 PM on February 4, 2001

I've been MeFi lurking for a couple of months now but if finally took *this* to make me register.

I just have to ask, if the site is in japanese, how come the page names are in English? Does that make any sense at all?
posted by yangwar at 11:41 PM on February 4, 2001

Hm. Either I've been exposed to a lot more stuff, or not enough, or something... Because what I saw, between the kanji, was fairly pedestrian stuff. Even by Euro-Atlantic standards, let alone Japanese.

{shrug}

posted by aurelian at 12:10 AM on February 5, 2001

From what I can read on his fairly standard bio page, he's a 28 year old from Osaka named Chisato Mori. And he's funny.
posted by (alice) at 12:13 AM on February 5, 2001

i found that page a few months ago and thought the juxtaposition between the cuteness and the violence was very trippy. i've noticed that a lot of japanese pages have the link titles and titles in english.
posted by centrs at 12:53 AM on February 5, 2001

Not that it'll give you much more in the way of enlightenment, but you could always try and run this site through Babelfish. (Just click translate, and wait for it.)
posted by crunchland at 5:59 AM on February 5, 2001

Don't know why, but babelfish only seems to work part of the time... (shrug)

Stupid technology!
posted by crunchland at 6:14 AM on February 5, 2001

The experimental moth of roaming it does,
Licking it licks? It is!
" Me, it is tasty. "

That's a mean bear.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:13 AM on February 5, 2001

Babelfish itself is often brilliantly funny and shocking.
posted by jbushnell at 12:40 PM on February 5, 2001

The caption on this page translates to: "Ouch! Ooof! Aaah! Ooow! Okay, now it's my turn!"

The boy's caption on this page translates to: "Heeeey! I'm going to be late for school!" (in a whiny voice)
posted by Neb at 12:51 PM on February 5, 2001

I think there's a lot of this sort of stuff going on in underground Japanese comics. I got Secret comics Japan a while ago and that has some interesting material in it. Bear in mind that the cutesy look is very much a part of the Japenese culture. I just assume that these artists are trying to subvert their culture in some way
posted by davidgentle at 3:07 PM on February 5, 2001

Oh yeah: saw this link on Boing Boing ages ago:
Bam-B
posted by davidgentle at 3:10 PM on February 5, 2001

Yeah, a friend and colleague who recently came back from a trip to Tokyo tells me that seemingly everything in Japan has a cute cartoon character connected to it, from your toothbrush to your cell phone. (Take a look at the cover of the 2/5 Industry Standard for an example of the latter.)
posted by kindall at 4:11 PM on February 5, 2001

Second for Bam-B. Disturbing! Like goatse.cx, only cute.
posted by rodii at 4:39 PM on February 5, 2001