Over the years I’ve kept running into the same group of 3D retro-styled characters in Japanese printed advertising and that at first reminded me of Rankin-Bass style stop motion characters but have their own original look. I was guessing they might be stop motion since they were photographed rather than drawn or rendered.
On doing some research I figured out they came from a mid 1960s series Hyokkori Hyoutan-jima (ひょっこりひょうたん島) which translates to something like “Unexpected Gourd Island” and the characters were puppets rather than animated. They have to be Japan’s most famous puppet TV show though of course the Muppets are seen all over and “Saku Saku” was trendy for a while.Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 23, 2008 in Japanese TV
This number is an oldie but a goldie: It’s the J-pop group Mini Moni (ミニモニ) performing their breakout song Minimoni Jankenpyon! (ミニモニ。ジャンケンぴょん!) from way back when in 2001. Mini Moni is a subgroup of the Morning Musume (モーニング娘) and was active until 2004 when the group disbanded.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 9, 2008 in Japanese TV
What I love about comedian Ken Shimura (志村けん) is that you don’t have to understand Japanese for him to make you laugh. This little song was sung with the J-pop group Mini Moni (ミニモニ), a subgroup of Morning Musume (モーニング娘). My Japanese is rather lacking by he song has something to do with “eye-application gymnastics” according to my Google translation of the headline.
