Japanese beverage manufacturer Suntory has a new pop drink out called Lucky Cider. The commercial for the drink is full on Engrish (or Japlish)… but done on purpose for effect, with the Lucky Cider girl Nozomi Sasaki singing katakana-ized lyrics with a heavy Japanese accent. This is a new self-conscious twist on inadvertent Japanese Engrish commercials and advertisements that are still pretty common.
This commercial is doubly awesome because it was all done in one take… which means it took 26 takes over 5 hours to get it right. (The 3’3″ video on the right is the making of video.)
So, there’s a new Kimura Takuya (like the popularest SMAP dude) Gatsby deodorant ad that’s totally metrosexual (this is not surprising considering that’s what many Japanese women prefer anyways) but rather homoerotic no matter how you take it. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say 😛 )
But this product’s targeting young men. I know women like to look at other beautiful women (can’t blame ’em). But I thought that even in Japan, half naked Kimutaku would attract women more than men, but somewhere in Tokyo a Mandom (the maker of Gatsby products) advertising exec must’ve thought differently. Is it just my North American trained mind playing tricks on what I see in Japan?