2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo - A chance for Jpop to spread ?

george1234

george1234

Moderator
Once I heard the news I immediately thought that its the perfect chance for Japanese music, anime, manga and games (esp dating sim ones) to spread further from Japan, escape from the current self-consumption. If the japanese companies do it right people will learn about these and they will be able to sell anime manga and music in more European countries and not just Germany France and UK and more countries in general (considering than the last time the OA happened in Tokyo, in 1964, anime and Jpop were barely existing) what do you think ?

(always pisses me off how people have no problem listening to latin american and african music - while they dont understand a word - but have problem with songas of other countries if they dont understand the lyrics =_=)

*already thinks of Mizuki Nana or May'n singing in the Opening ceremony :plot: *
 
Re: 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo - A chance for Jpop to sprea

not to mention Hatsune Miku might have a high chance of appearing,

My guess would be:

Nana Mizuki
Ayaka Hirahara
SCANDAL
<inset some other popular band groups here>
 
^ In this thread I am not trying to guess who is going to perform in the OP ceremony (that's just a side effect) I want to discuss the possibilities of the first paragraph.
 
George, you forgot Nagano 1998 but you can argue it was a Winter Olympic Games. My thoughts are:

Anime/Manga: It will depend on one thing - the mascot(s). For the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, they made a set of mascots (a sea bear, a sasquatch and an animal spirit) plus one "bonus" one (Muk-Muk, a marmot) and they added some animation behind it. Now, given there was a First Nation motif, the animation was somewhat associated to it. Looking back at the Nagano ones, they made four owls and I thought they were disappointing. Given the anthropomorphic nature of mascots, if they can pull it out correctly (a-la Pokemon?), it might be possible.

Games: It might be a hard sell for dating sims in some parts of the world, as people are more focused in MMORPG and action games. Don't get me wrong, in the old days, I used to play adventure games and I am seeing a rennaisance of them (though more adventure type, not dating sim type). It is a bit of a difficult call but time will tell. What I can't say for certain is the age group of people who attend the Olympic Games vs target audience of these games. How much do they intersect?

Music: If they are catchy enough, I can foresee this happening. After all, in some conventions, people like to sing the songs from their favourite anime/group.

BTW, I agree with your note about music vs lyrics. As mentioned in my intro, I don't understand all the lyrics but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying the songs. A prime example of misunderstood lyrics would be the Harlem Shake meme, as the (few) lyrics in the song used says "con los terroristas", i.e., "with the terrorists". Not necessarily a good thing to say in a public medium...
 
jpop would almost surely be spread thanks to this, but for some reason i see shokotan being more of a person to sing often (she's practically considered an ambassador now, isn't she?) but i would definitely expect nana mizuki to appear
 
Well, I remember all those Nana Mizuki concert videos where she sings suspended in air above a stadium or arena... could translate well for the Olympics.
 
@KimH: Well for all of these I dont mean them promoting them only to the visitors of Japan, but also, with the OA as a chance, to other countries too, eg some OA promoting team goes to a country, and 2-3 jpop artists follow them to perform in the country, same for manga and anime. I dont think that just showning to the visitors to Japan would be enough in order to promote (since the nuke accident will still be there in 7 years and there will be less people going than if it had never happened).

its really a pitty having radios in Greece that bombard people 23/h with latin amrican or african music, and not having not even 1 known japanese artist sell his/her work, considering that Japan is n#2 in global music production rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_indu ... by_country :cry:
 
Any chance of a certain someone...composing the music? :plot:

Although this is really a good chance for J-pop and J-anime to spread, considering it's a global stage after all.

Considering lyrics, I understand scattered Japanese and Korean words here and there but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying their music. I understand English and Mandarin well but I hardly listen to them. I think people are more attracted to words which they don't know because it's open to their imagination as to what the lyrics mean and they can fully enjoy the melody more.
 
George, I apologize if I am not as optimistic as yourself. I do understand the desire our common interest would expand; however, I will have to be a bit more realistic here. Yes, they are going to promote the heck out of it; however, I doubt it will be having J-Pop singers or similar type celebrities without some sort of relationship with the games themselves. I mean, unless somewhere hidden in Keiko's bio it says she was a gymnast (which might not necessarily be a lie, if you didn't know better!) , sending Kalafina or FJ to somewhere in Europe to promote the games might be a bit far fetched. That's why I brought the mascots. If they could make a series out of it and send them to the different embassies/consulate as part of their promo, it might be feasible to promote other mediums as well (probably with the exception of dating sims).
 
^ Well I am not focusing only to the dating sims, there's a tone of games that dont make it outside Japan, eg Senritsu no Stratos or Bravely Default: Flying Fairy wihich are both made by big companies (Konami, Square Enix) :cry:
 
I was glad that the decision was given to Tokyo! Great chance to spread the Japanese culture~!

@george As for Bravely Default: Flying Fairy, it will be released by Nintendo on 2014 for North America and Europe.
 
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