dancing kitties, bondage & the wacky world of Japanese flash
May 26, 2003 8:23 AM   Subscribe

OK, I admit it. I'm a junkie for inscrutable Japanese flash clips. This rousing one has a stylish and powerful use of type and this one, a fun combo of music & ascii art. But what's this - bondage love and a dramatic international rescue? Or this militaristic call-to-action with a decidedly anti-bush tone, should DHS be worried? And this seems a cautionary tale on substance abuse, perhaps the result of attending too many kitty raves?? At least this sweet tale of found love seems familiar. Can anyone elucidate me?
posted by madamjujujive (26 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I assume these were all done by the same artist.
posted by nyxxxx at 8:45 AM on May 26, 2003


Someday soon, Chinese water torture will be replaced with Japanese Flash animation torture.
posted by debralee at 8:49 AM on May 26, 2003


madamjujujive, you rock.
posted by divrsional at 9:12 AM on May 26, 2003


two words :

girona cathedral !
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:34 AM on May 26, 2003


Very cool. But it's a bit of a stretch to call it "ASCII art" when it includes Cyrillic and Hirigana :-)
posted by Nelson at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2003


How absolutely lovely to have you back, Juju! It was quite a stretch round here without your whimsical, quizzical, lackadaisical, fantastical posts. :)

The kitties' giko dance is, as far as I can tell, a precise reenactment of...

*zing!*
*thud!*
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:47 AM on May 26, 2003


Thanks a lot, MJJJ. I love this stuff. In the same vain, but really silly, Kikkoman. And, this is probably only losely related, but I've been opsessed with Xiao Xiao lately.
posted by TurkishGolds at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2003


After looking at these links, I thought, WHO finds this stuff? Then I saw madamjujujive, of course!! How does she do it?
posted by sparky at 10:41 AM on May 26, 2003


You've left out what's probably the most popular (and sweetest) clip with these cat characters.
posted by SenshiNeko at 12:26 PM on May 26, 2003


awww... so sad! does anyone know what the japanese on the box means?
posted by zerolucid at 12:31 PM on May 26, 2003


The first one I came across was the (not office safe) wanking song.

Slightly offtopic, anyone still got a link to the flash animation (also japanese) of a singing raindrop?
posted by gdav at 12:40 PM on May 26, 2003


Here's another version of the sweet clip. Click on the top right letters. I have no idea what's going on.
posted by donth at 1:47 PM on May 26, 2003


nyxxxx, I don't think they were all done by the same people, tho many use the same characters, We need planetkyoto - he could probably help shed some light here!

Nelson, thanks for the clarification - I didn't know what else to call it but of course ascii isn't right, and I just didn't glom on to the presence of Cyrillic.

TurkishGolds, SenshiNeko, gdav and donth - thanks for adding yet more clips. Gdav, I had seen the wanking song but I referred to it as "the giant dickhead" song myself, ha. And has anyone on MeFi actually tried the product Kikkoman is selling, some type of fish sauce?

OK, here's an antidote to sweet that uses all the old familiar characters but they seem to be under the influence of a hallucinogenic mushroom.
(aw shucks, divrsional, miguel, sparky - thanks!)
posted by madamjujujive at 2:22 PM on May 26, 2003


english translation of the dickhead song

I tried babelfish on some of the pages but the results were mostly incomprehensible. The Playtown/5524 person is 18 years old though.
posted by donth at 2:57 PM on May 26, 2003


The kitten is the mascot for a popular Japanese portal so these flash things are tributes by this character fans.

This kitten is hard to avoid in Japan. Email often has this ASCII kitten or other cutesy animals as signatures.

I'm so out of touch I thought the sender was drawing them, which led to me getting dumped by this very high-minded, beautiful girl who thought I was a total loser because I once replied to her cutesy ASCII pictures with my own hastily drawn crappy ASCII picture. She never wrote back.

The first link is kind of funny though. It’s about your period being late and the relief when it finally comes.
posted by dydecker at 4:19 PM on May 26, 2003


zerolucid: The writing on the crate says "Mona Beer".
posted by dydecker at 4:27 PM on May 26, 2003


Dydecker - thank heavens we have a Tokyo connection to help us to understand these things! The fact that they are submitted by fans must account for the style differences. And that's hilarious about the first one. I thought it might be an ad or a promo, but I'd never have guessed it was about periods.

And donth, thanks for going to the trouble of getting a translation - you certainly were correct when you termed it a wanking song!

I suppose we have more than our share of wacky and inscrutable pop culture things to people who don't speak the language.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:16 PM on May 26, 2003


(^o^)//".
posted by pekar wood at 8:25 PM on May 26, 2003


The Mecca of weirdness in Nippon is Nichanneru, or Channel 2 in English. (Sorry, there's no English there). That's where most of these wild Flash animations are posted and many of them pay homage to the 2ch universe in their contents. Imagine a country where every move you make in public follows strict social rules (if you are ethnic Japanese, that is) and you might feel stifled. 2ch is where good girls can laugh at dirty jokes and underpaid, overworked "salarymen" can make Flash semi-pornographic animations of cats. It has a huge fan base and has incensed corporate bigwigs who have been targets of scathing criticism. 2ch recently got tagged with a ¥4million judgment for libel in such a case. I think the big breakthrough for 2ch was when a guy taped his call to the customer service department of Toshiba about a busted VCR in 1999, in which he was abused most colorfully, posted it on 2ch, and the heads did roll.
posted by planetkyoto at 1:52 AM on May 27, 2003


An article in the Japan Times about 2ch.
posted by planetkyoto at 3:02 AM on May 27, 2003


Sazae-san, the Cleaver family of Japan, as zombies.
posted by planetkyoto at 3:07 AM on May 27, 2003


Oh, dydecker already got the 2ch connection. Sorry. The "Mona" he refers to is "Omaemona", or Mona for short. Omaemona is something of a pun, and is rough language for "Same to you, pal" which I've heard is how you respond to jabs on the 2ch BBS.

Last link from me
posted by planetkyoto at 3:16 AM on May 27, 2003


I lied. Here are 99 more from Blogjam.com, who seems to be an aficionado of the chinko arts. viaGeisha Asobi, yappari, which is where I should have gone first.
posted by planetkyoto at 4:54 AM on May 27, 2003


Afficianado, eh? Thanks, but I'm really only guessing. Apologies for the self-promotion, but this is what I've learnt.
posted by Cobbler at 12:18 PM on May 27, 2003


man, i really enjoyed all of those. THANKS!
posted by Peter H at 12:36 PM on May 27, 2003


Thanks so much planetkyoto, Cobbler & dydecker! And to everyone who added links or info. Wow, this is great - I finally have a clue now. This is far more info than I ever expected. And Cobbler, see what happens when I miss Blogjam for a week? You have amassed a fabulous collection of info and links, you arguably have the best english-language 2ch info anywhere. This will be a cautionary tale for me - get that daily blogjam fix! And now that we've ferreted you out, I hope we might see you here more often?

And from Cobbler's info, 2ch is a message board that gets about a million posts a day! Run by a 26 -year old. Man oh man, I can't even keep up with MeFi posts.

Here's an interesting article talking about the lawsuits and outraged corporate citizens who feel they have been smeared by 2ch, and the potential implications for privacy or attempted regulations.

posted by madamjujujive at 1:10 PM on May 27, 2003


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