SEKAI NO OWARI -- Habit

 

I have to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the long-running band SEKAI NO OWARI although up to now, there have been three songs put up about them on the blog. They have appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen before, and from their tunes such as "Sazanka"（サザンカ）, my impression was that they have been a fairly down-to-earth folksy pop group.

But then they showed up for their most recent appearance on NHK's annual New Year's Eve special, and Fukase and company gave a song-and-dance performance that had me thinking more along the lines of a Johnny's Entertainment clan! The intro before SEKAI NO OWARI performed the comically urgent "Habit" was that the choreography on its music video was one of the big pop culture meme moments for 2022 with folks trying their hand at it.

As SEKAI NO OWARI's 18th single (including both indies and major) released in April or June 2022, "Habit" has got a rapid-fire delivery telling folks not to categorize themselves and fall into supposed habits or traditions. Basically the message is you just go ahead and do your thing while I go ahead and do my different thing and that's OK and that's our own beeswax. The video antics in that school struck me as the band doing the "Glee" or "Fame" thing while filtering itself through a Weird Al Yankovic sieve.

Lyrics were by Fukase with fellow member Nakajin handling the music. "Habit" was also used as the theme song for the live-action version of the original manga "XXXHOLiC". The song went Gold on the download charts while hitting No. 4 as a CD on Oricon and No. 1 on streaming. It won the Grand Prize at the Japan Record Awards.

As one example of how popular the habit-forming dance was (yep, I was being cute just now), here is one video by *nakisuna.

SEKAI NO OWARI -- Snow Magic Fantasy（スノーマジックファンタジー）

 

Up to this point, I've had just two SEKAI NO OWARI articles up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus": "RAIN" which was the eclectic band's 2017 11th single and a theme song for an anime movie, and "Sazanka"（サザンカ）, their follow-up from 2018 which became the official theme song for NHK's broadcast of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

I guess that I'll now be bringing back SEKAI NO OWARI for the Xmas season since one of their songs was on one of the many J-Xmas compilation YouTube videos where I found "Snow Magic Fantasy". In fact, this goes back quite a few years in their history, being their 5th single as a major act from January 2014. 

Yes, you did read that correctly. "Snow Magic Fantasy" came out almost a month following Christmas Day 2013, so perhaps the song really wasn't meant to be an Xmas tune (or maybe it was meant to be an extremely early Xmas tune) but generally more for winter. Indeed, it was used as the theme for Japan Railways' annual ski resort campaign. Still, I did find it on that J-Xmas video and with those jingle bells and the upbeat feeling, heck, I can at least make it an honourary Yuletide number.

Vocalist Fukase and percussionist Nakajin were behind "Snow Magic Fantasy" which comes out as SEKAI NO OWARI's own version of a particularly beefy toy march. What further makes the argument for its inclusion in the annals of J-Xmas tunes is that video of the band members dressed up as old-fashioned soldiers or old-fashioned Salvation Army employees and that mixture of Lewis Carroll and Hallmark greeting card design. 

Mind you, with the title and the song's usage for the ski industry, isn't that just the title you would want to show off the wonders of the various ski resorts such as Naeba or Gala Yuzawa? Anyways, "Snow Magic Fantasy" was SEKAI NO OWARI's first No. 1 hit as it went Gold. It would become the 49th-ranked single of 2014, and its source (sophomore as a major act) album "TREE" released in January 2015 would also become their first top-ranking album, ending the year as the 8th-ranked release.

Well, how about that? This is now Article No. 999 for 2021.

SEKAI NO OWARI -- Sazanka（サザンカ）

As is usually the case with TV Japan during an Olympics, due to copyright issues and the like, any NHK Olympics coverage in North America is heavily curtailed and limited to 2~3 5-minute reports a day. Now, it's not so bad with the Winter Olympics since it seems the Canadian, American and Japanese media generally focus on the same events together as opposed to the Summer Olympics. So, I was able to find out live this morning on CBC that Japan's Sara Takanashi（高梨沙羅）got a Bronze medal in the ski jump. Happy about that and of course, Canada has been hauling in the medals early as they currently occupy 2nd place behind Norway in the medal count.

Of course, with Olympics coverage in Japan, that automatically means campaign songs for each of the networks covering the Games in Pyeongchang. And for NHK, the Olympics song is "Sazanka" (Camellia sasanqua) by SEKAI NO OWARI. It is also the band's 12th single that has yet to be released (February 28th is the date).

Written and composed by members Fukase, Saori and Takajin, the brief excerpts of "Sazanka" that I've heard on the NHK highlight broadcasts and the first half of the song from the video had me thinking that this was a pretty subtle ballad for something as grand as the Games but of course watching the video of the older brother supporting his younger brother (through the simple acts of cooking) as he struggles to become a successful artist finally did send the message along with the rise in the music halfway through. Yes, inspiration and encouragement through food.

This was such a heartwarming video that I think it could be chopped into separate segments to create commercials selling the separate dishes. It was also heartbreaking to see such good tonkatsu go to waste like that but the artist was going through some major angst, so understandable (to a certain extent). Still, it was nice of him to apologize through that final art piece.

Well, Canada has a big early morning tomorrow with the Mixed Doubles Curling Gold Medal match between us and Switzerland.

SEKAI NO OWARI -- RAIN

I've been hearing about and seeing the band SEKAI NO OWARI for the past few years but have yet to really get into them. I believe they've been on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen at least a couple of times and musically, they come across as something of an alternative folky pop-rock group. They certainly stand out for their name and for the fact that one of their members, DJ Love, perpetually wears a clown mask (the band is currently on its second DJ Love as of this writing).

As for the name which means "The End of the World", Wikipedia didn't bother explaining it but there is one for the J-Wiki entry. Apparently, vocalist Fukase was the one who came up with it as he stated that during a time when it felt like the whole world was ending around them and the band felt like it was just them and their music remaining, they just figured to start from that end. That's quite the war story.

The other night on "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, SEKAI NO OWARI appeared on location as guests for the weekly NHK show, and that location happened to be in the middle of a massive industrial complex. The intro was that currently, tourist tours of industrial complexes at night was a big niche hobby. As someone who has visited such a complex way west of Tokyo once to teach a class, I can say that it's a typically Japanese pop cultural thing whose time has come. It was terrifying and awesome approaching this petroleum megaplex that looked like a Borg cube or a scene from "Blade Runner".

In any case, the band was dropped into one such complex to perform their most recent single which just came out a few days ago. "RAIN" actually touched a nice nerve within me; it sounded hopeful and adorable at the same. So perhaps it's not that surprising to find out that the band's 11th single has been slated to be the theme song for an animated motion picture coming out tomorrow titled "Mary to Majo no Hana"（メアリと魔女の花...Mary and the Witch's Flower）by Studio Ponoc about a girl named Mary who becomes a witch for a night. I guess there really is something about Mary (cough, cough).

Fukase and keyboardist Saori wrote the lyrics and composed the music with bespectacled percussionist Nakajin. I have pegged the members with their instruments but it looks like all of them are very well cross-trained including vocals.

Perhaps the irony of the band's latest title worked all too well. SEKAI NO OWARI was supposed to have performed "RAIN" live on "Uta Kon" but as a lot of Japan watchers know this week, there have been some major poundings of precipitation scouring the nation. They actually had to tape the performance some minutes beforehand when things were still logistically manageable and the band members looked like they were barely hanging onto the deck when they were being interviewed live. Maybe at that point, Fukase and company were thinking that it was truly the sekai no owari.