Poseidon Ishikawa -- Ninjya Re Bang Bang (にんじゃりばんばん)/Me Gumi no Hito （め組のひと）

 

Happy Monday! I remember when I first heard about singer-songwriter Junk Fujiyama（ジャンクフジヤマ）when his sublime "Hoshikuzu no Pipeline"（星屑のパイプライン）made its presence known at the end of one of the few mundane episodes for the otherwise wild-and-crazy anime "Space Dandy" back in 2014. It was literally a Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）classic that had never been sung or created by Tatsuro Yamashita, and pretty soon, folks were getting rather lit about it, especially because of Junk's arrangement and vocals which emulated the Tats esthetic.

Last Saturday, Rocket Brown of "Come Along Radio" informed me of another fellow who took things a bit further in the late 2010s. Singer and musician Poseidon Ishikawa not only went full-bore into the way of the Tats in terms of singing and arrangement, but he also even dressed up like his hero in music. Born Daisuke Imamura（今村大祐）in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1982, he apparently took up the geino mantle of Poseidon Ishikawa sometime in the mid-2010s and has given tongue-in-cheek but respectful performances in the Tatsuro style, considering himself a City Pop comedian.

Although Ishikawa has released a few albums with original tracks, Rocket led me to one of his short parodies on YouTube that were put up in 2019. Basically, they are established pop hits by other artists but given the Tats style. One is Ishikawa's City Pop take on technopop musician Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's（きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ）2013 single, "Ninjya Re Bang Bang".

Along with "Ninjya Re Bang Bang", Ishikawa also gave his version of Rats & Star's（ラッツ&スター）big hit "Me Gumi no Hito" from 1983 which seems to have some influence from Yamashita's "Bomber". One quirk about the singer according to J-Wiki is that he hasn't referred to his hero by name, preferring to go with a polite ano kata（あの方）or "that guy" or "him".