Taeko Ohnuki -- Les aventures de TINTIN

 

As any kid would do way back when, my first exposure to newspapers was through the comic strips. There I read some stalwarts such as "Peanuts", "Hi & Lois" and "Animal Crackers", so they had their first three frames set up the premise and joke and that fourth frame delivered the punch line. But on the same page, I also saw "Little Orphan Annie" which had its run between 1924 and 2010. The video above by the way comes from Academics Today.

I never had any interest in the musical or the movies but I did waver in and out through the original comic strip, and it was fascinating because "Little Orphan Annie" never had punch lines or a definitive ending each day in its fourth frame. Annie kept going through adventure after adventure with a host of allies that came in and out separately or together such as Daddy Warbucks, The Asp and Punjab. But of course, Sandy was always there right beside Annie.

My knowledge about "The Adventures of Tintin" by Georges Hergé Remi is even sparser but I also heard that intrepid international reporter Tintin also has a steadfast dog by the name of Snowy and lots of friends to help out such as Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus. According to the Wikipedia article on the comic, it and its creator have become legendary among the fandom and later artists.

Well, apparently, one of those artists happens to be singer-songwriter Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）. The first track on her 1985 album "copine" happens to be "Les aventures de TINTIN" written and composed by her and arranged by Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）. And here I thought that Ohnuki and Sakamoto had finished their working relationship a bit earlier but it looks like the pleasingly quirky technopop stylings that the two of them had concocted earlier in the decade continued on. 

"Les aventures de TINTIN" begins with a soft and fantastical intro for about 30 seconds before things go really funky and technopoppy. And, oh that crazy bass! Plus, there are Ohnuki's very reassuring vocals. I'm not sure whether the song was actually used as a theme song for any Japanese broadcasts of the cartoon adaptation but if it hadn't, I'd say that an opportunity was lost there.