Friday, November 17, 2023

Houshou Marine & Gawr Gura -- SHINKIRO

 

OK, I had a little too much time on my hands so I tried out one of those AI art generator sites that fortunately didn't have any computer viruses. All I did was punch in "80s Aidoru" and asked for it to be done anime style, and I ended up with the above. The lass is striking to be sure but I don't think it's the right decade. I'm taking offers on what to call her.

Anyways, veteran commenter Gen Kanai told me about this duet between two VTubers that has also been getting the City Pop vote out. I don't know very much about virtual YouTubers aside from the fact that they are different from Vocaloids but the two lasses here are Houshou Marine(宝鐘マリン)and Gawr Gura(がうる・ぐら), both from Hololive Production, an agency specializing in VTubers. You can check the links above to find out about the characters at "TV Tropes".

I gotta say that their duet "SHINKIRO", which means "Mirage" in Japanese, and the accompanying video are quite the accomplishment. The song itself, written by Takeshi Matsumoto(松本武史)and composed by Kanke(カンケ), has got so much City Pop-phase Tatsuro Yamashita(山下達郎)goodness imbued into the arrangement that my scalp suddenly sprouted long scraggly hair and my knees broke inwards. The love affair video above has also brought back a wonderful nostalgic summery style and I've got a feeling that there may be lectures at universities around the world about what that ending was about. The song premiered just a few days ago on November 12th.

6 comments:

  1. I hear a "Yume no Tsuzuki" sound in it.

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  2. Kayo-chan! The new mascot of this website :-)

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    1. OK, that's a lock then. All hail Kayo-chan! Thanks, Daemonskald.

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  3. I think I am ran across virtual YouTubers before, but I did not know what they were called.

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    1. It's something new to me as well. The senior weathercaster on Japan's "Weathernews Live" has had a running gag with it for years.

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