Furu Anime Panikku

In other words, Radwimps. Somehow, the band managed to come up with such a name by putting 2 unrelated English words together. Japanese band names never cease to amuse me, and neither do the quality of the music of such bands with weird names.

For the past 2 months, this band’s music has been looping continuously on my playlist, be it on winamp, my portable media player, or even my handphone now. Yes, I’m using my handphone for music on the go now because my portable media player broke down after serving its overlord for a good two years and six months.

It’s been a long time since I posted specifically on a music artiste, but it’s not that anyone really reads my music posts anyway. This time, I’ll shall talk less and let the music talk more. 2 of my favourite Radwimps PVs with translations right after the break.

愛し（かなし）

Although this song’s name is supposed to be read as Itoshi, the reading is actually Kanashi, which happens to be the old reading of the kanji. A really nice touch to the meaning of the song, if you actually look a little deeper into the lyrics.

有心論（ゆうしんろん）

This was the first Radwimps song I heard, and also the song which got me hooked onto their music. The rap in the middle of the song about 人間洗浄器 (Human laundry machine) was quite unexpected on my first hearing, but that added a unique flavour to the song.

Although Radwimps has been around for quite a number of years, with 4 full albums released, I only came to know about them during the karaoke party with the Japanese exchange college students back in March this year. Some guy was singing Yuushinron at that time, and the tune was so catchy that I couldn’t resist finding out more about the band performing the song. This led to a chain effect and effectively resulting in me growing to be quite a fan of Radwimps.

However, not everything about their music is good. For one, I find that there’s a little excessive usage of English lyrics in their songs. English isn’t their native language, so around 50% of the lyrics either end up containing vulgarities or making no sense. Still, for some of these songs, the background instrumentals make up for the flaws. Although their English lyrics have somewhat improved now, I would still hope for them to write more Japanese lyrics. After all, if I wanted to listen to songs with English lyrics, I would be tuning in to artistes from America instead.

If you have been a frequent reader of my blog for quite some time, you would know that I’m quite a fan of some Japanese bands, namely Bump of Chicken, Asian Kungfu Generation, Tsubaki and 9mm Parabellum Bullet. It was only until recently when Radwimps was added to this list. If I had to rank the 5 bands in their various fields, Bump of Chicken would top in the lyrical field, 9mm for the X factor due to their crazy energy-filled live performances, and Radwimps would top in the tune category.

If you were reading through this entire post trying to find out what link Radwimps has to the otaku culture, the answer is a definite “Nothing”. My apologies for wasting a couple of minutes of your life. Still, if your love for Japanese pop defies the boundaries of Moe voices and cutesy tunes, and you enjoyed the 2 PVs above, you might want to try this band’s music out. I assure you, you won’t regret it.