Metalchicks concert review, part 2: Kiiiiiii

Kiiiiiii is almost the perfect opposite of nisen’nen mondai. Composed of two Japanese girls in colorful outfits with a relationship self-described as being like that of DJ & Kimmy from Full House, Kiiiiiii doesn’t just tolerate the audience, or even merely love them. Kiiiiiii has a full blown, 13-year old, hormones raging, pimple popping crush on the crowd, and they’re not too proud to beg or plead for the slightest crumb of our attention. S--- says that their act seemed like a high school skit, but Jackson-Pollack-like, that no one else is doing what they’re doing is more than enough to earn them international fame, never mind if someone else could do it.

(:title Metalchicks concert review, part 2: Kiiiiiii:)

(:title Metalchicks concert review:)

Review of Metalchicks concert, second part in a series

8月25日 (水ー木) 1:15 am JST

Kiiiiiii is almost the perfect opposite of nisen’nen mondai. Composed of two Japanese girls in colorful outfits with a relationship self-described as being like that of DJ & Kimmy from Full House, Kiiiiiii doesn’t just tolerate the audience, or even merely love them. Kiiiiiii has a full blown, 13-year old, hormones raging, pimple popping crush on the crowd, and they’re not too proud to beg or plead for the slightest crumb of our attention. S--- says that their act seemed like a high school skit, but Jackson-Pollack-like, that no one else is doing what they’re doing is more than enough to earn them international fame, never mind if someone else could do it.

What exactly they’re doing is standing in front of the audience and doing sort of performance art, a cappella covers of children songs and drum accompanied original compositions. If nothing else, it takes courage to just stand in front of everyone clapping your hands and shouting, “Kiiiiiii,” at a group of strangers. It takes more courage to shout out English songs with a handful of foreigners in the audience, and using beautiful Japanese English that they must never allow to be corrupted by traveling abroad or speaking to natives.

A lot of times, Japan is accused of aping the West without really understanding its culture. And sure enough, Kiiiiiii is a kind of fun house mirror of American pop. But! American culture is not just American culture. American culture is also American-culture-in-Japan, and Kiiiiiii understands American-culture-in-Japan. Kiiiiiii grew up with this culture as much as I grew up with mine, so any claim I try to make for the exclusivity of my understanding of The Meaning of Pop is junk, since I don’t and can’t know all my roots either. The thing is, we’re all shallow in our understandings, since depth has no end. But Kiiiiiii is in deep, and they understand their waters.

If you judge Kiiiiiii by the standard of “how close is it to Western expectations,” then Kiiiiiii is a failure. If you judge Kiiiiiii by “are they doing what they set out to do” then I believe they are a success.

What did they set out to do?

Kiiiiiii set out to stomp and clap and holler up a love letter to us, the audience. It’s one of those long, drawn out things that you write when you’re your young and infatuated, and you want to show off everything you know. Everything they’re doing, they’re doing to impress us, to steal just a single drop of affection from our cynical hearts.

I say, it mostly worked at least for one show, though in the end, it is hard to truly love someone who loves you too much, as all crush junkies eventually learn.