My favorite Japanese CMs

This isn’t really a CM, but it’d definitely worth posting about. Every month NHK has some sort of song of the month they broadcast on a program called Minna no Uta which translates into “Everyone’s Song”.  Sometimes they’re cute like of Utada Hikaru’s Boku wa Kuma. And sometimes they may be a bit on the strange artistic side like Shiina Ringo’s Ringo no Uta. You can find a the list of past songs here on wiki.

But last month’s song was just…I can’t even put it into words.

So here’s a quick summary of what just transpired in the video. The little girl is writing a letter to her boyfriend who just happened to move away.  Let’s just assume that he went to Tokyo and she’s somewhere in the Kansai area because of her Kansai dialect ;p.  So, the girl decides to start writing a letter since she hasn’t received any word/contact since he transferred schools…after only a week. She then asks in her letter if it’s because there are cute girls over there at the school he’s at. She then flashbacks to the time when they promised to go steady and of their memories together at the aquarium and of her keepsake of the pulltab from the can of juice she got from him.  She then starts to sing about writing a letter to him like this is unforgivable and she hates the fact that if things are going the way they are now that he’ll just forget about her.  So instead she writes about a couple of boys who say who like her and tells him that he shouldn’t of been careless and ends with the phrase uchi no koto wasuretetoite which literally translates to “forget about me from now on.”

Dang. Pretty harsh emotions from probably a 1st grader. Even the youtube comments are funny. Some of them saying that after hearing this song they cried.  As for me, I felt shocked, pissed, sad, disappointed, and even thought that the melody and video itself was cute in general. But the underlying theme and message.  WOW. Seriously NHK, you want to teach kids about long distance relationships through a song like this!?  Even if it’s unintentional, just the way the song was portrayed in the video (a cute animation style with a very cute melody and adoring vocals in Kansai-ben!) is enough to influence kids who of are similar age. I know long distance relationships are tough, but portraying it like this to a younger generation who is easily influence is despicable. I showed my Japanese female friends this and they were shocked that NHK was broadcasting this.  Even my friend who works at NHK was like “WTF!?”.  So judge for yourself and tell me what you think.