June 16, 2011

The East vs. West Difference: Boy Bands

Take Off by 2PM


VS.

Bye Bye Bye by Backstreet Boys


What do you think is the difference between the themes of these videos?

As we all know Japanese and most Asian music videos for that matter don't have opposite sex characters in their music videos. American bands always try to have opposite sex characters, especially if the song deals with romance. That's because American bands want to emphasize an overt romantic connection between the song lyrics and romance. In other words, showing romantic scenes.

Asian boy bands and girl bands emphasize a different theme in their videos. Rather than showing romantic scenes, Asian bands are more about emphasizing the "burning youth" of the band members. This connects the song lyrics, even if they're about romance, to being young and having youth.

Neither style is wrong. Though in America there is a connotation that romance and love shows that a person is "grown up" and that youth is over. Being in love, in Japan, at least is connotated with burning youth and the feeling of youth. You can be young at heart, and in love. This is another reason why aging J-rock and J-pop stars still look young. They have to. (lol)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Home

Welcome to
The Otaku Reviewers



This blog, "The Otaku Reviewers", was started in February of 2010 on this very same platform, Blogger. At first, it was a venture into the informational and informal world of comics, anime, video games, and Japanese culture. In other words, just a random blog.

Over time, the founder of the blog credited with the pseudonym "RPGhero" was joined by two fellow bloggers and friends with the names "Chansu" and "Deretsun". Together the three bloggers looked up interesting Japanese culture facts, recommended new anime, talked about their own "otaku" interests, and traveled across the United States to various anime conventions.

There have been off periods when the blog ceased production of content and there have been times when there would be dozens of blog posts per week. The schedule varies depending on the lives of the people behind the alias'. However the pattern is that we always get back into the game with even newer information about Japanese culture, anime, video games, and other nerdy hobbies.

The motto of our blog is:
"A cure for your apathy and an inspiration for your dreams. ...Applies to Otaku, anime fans, J-pop junkies, and the like"

The purpose is to blog about cool stuff related solely to anime and otaku stuff. There's no other reason we're doing this.

If you like our blog, please support us in however small a way that you would like. We appreciate our readers!

Check it out on Amazon!




Read it for free on Wattpad too!!

Featured Posts