Watashitachiha aisuru mishiranu hitode wa arimasen

May 26, 2022 6:00 PM

Never Gonna Give You Up, the Magical Girl Theme (SLTwitter).

"For anyone curious for why this works so well, it's because never gonna give you up has the EXACT same chord progression as most anime songs."

Rick Astley is a Magical Girl.

posted by MollyRealized (12 comments total)

Wow, that entire thread and its replies are gold. Mariachi Card Captor Sakura is amazing.
posted by simmering octagon at 6:32 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

FYI, the Twitter post is just a screen recording of someone else's Tumblr post. I won't deny that the anime GIF adds something though.
posted by a car full of lions at 8:09 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, if you slow down magical girl themes do you get new Rick Astley songs? I'm going to try this and report back.
posted by a car full of lions at 8:12 PM on May 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

To repurpose my own retweet of this:

Everything old is new again: Back at the time in the UK there was a very persistent joke/rumor/urban legend that Rick Astley's voice was Kylie Minogue -- another Stock/Aitken/Waterman-produced artist -- slowed down.

Is it just me that remembers this? I think in a way it was another reaction to the perceived mismatch between Astley's voice and appearence: it was such an incongruous thing that "of course S/A/W manufactured his voice" didn't seem entirely impossible.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:36 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

if memory serves, there was a concert where one of them briefly sang the other's song, back when people talked about how they sounded similar if sped up/slowed down
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:23 PM on May 26, 2022

I've thought the sneaky good Level 42 song "Something About You" was very anime sounding. Besides the bouncy bass and 80s-ness of it... Looking at tab, I guess it's sort of hitting that anime progression kinda pretending it's in G for the refrain/hook.

(Its video is also sneaky good too imho)
posted by fleacircus at 2:12 AM on May 27, 2022

IIRC, Stock Aitken Waterman did target the Japanese market for a while. I think they had some of their artists (Bananarama, for one) record Japanese translations of some of their songs, to the point where a late-80s SAW-parodying novelty record had the artist phonetically singing a Japanese translation of the lyrics on the B-side.
posted by acb at 4:25 AM on May 27, 2022

Went to Tumblr to favorite the original post, turns out I had already favorited it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But always here for some Card Captor Sakura.
posted by subdee at 4:30 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

The other way to think of this is that Rick Astley himself is a magical girl who is simply moving very slowly.
posted by mhoye at 6:46 AM on May 27, 2022 [9 favorites]

This morning I said,

Also, if you slow down magical girl themes do you get new Rick Astley songs? I'm going to try this and report back.

Not sure I'm totally happy with the results, but here you go.
posted by a car full of lions at 8:38 AM on May 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

A car full of lions, you are doing the lord’s work.
posted by mhoye at 9:06 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

hi I am here to say that thanks to this thread I have discovered Mariachi Card Captor Sakura and IT IS INDEED AMAZING. Also there is a full version on YouTube and it is also amazing.
posted by chrominance at 9:07 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]