I’m seriously slipping as a Kyary blogger. This came out more than two weeks ago! It has now glided past 1.5 million views.
The words:
Blogger Super Happy Awesome does the honors here, with commentary and translation of the lyrics, given in English, Japanese, and romanized Japanese, respectively. I’ll go out on a limb and translate the song title as “The Begin-ring-ring of the Dream.” This is typical Kyaryan wordplay, combining hajimari (beginning) and ring ring: hajimarinrin.
The music:
On first listen, the music rated a bit low for me on the Kyaryan spectrum, coming off as kinda thin. On second listening, it acquitted itself, maybe not overwhelmingly, but enough. The trick was that I needed earphones to pick up the bottom half. The arrangement is surprisingly conventional, with little trace of songwriter Yasutaka Nakata’s trademark technopop. There is lots of piano, carrying on from where Mottai Nightland left off. The piano pounding creates a kind of driving, Elton John type anthem vibe. So, the thinness that I thought I was hearing was in fact Kyary’s voice, which is more than usually naked and unaugmented here. But that’s part of the plan . . .
The visuals:
The Kyaryan vision is not just up to par but develops a substantial and interesting new twist. This is “meta” level Kyary: she is openly, almost systematically referencing all of her previous videos (well, at least most of them, and certainly the important ones) as well as her modelling career. The visuals (and lyrics) deal with graduating, saying goodbye to previous incarnations, and looking ahead to something new.
It is probably no coincidence that Kyary is also majorly cute in this video, and cute in a womanly and much less girlish way. So, is Kyary growing up, moving past the perpetual arrested childhood of her established musical persona? Is she pivoting in an entirely different direction? As with all other things Kyary, we’ll just have to wait and see.
What Do You Do for an Encore? 