5572320 (Go Go Nana Ni San Ni Rei) is Back with a Surreal Video!

A few months ago I wrote about a group of eight junior high school girls in a rock band that featured five guitarists and three drummers. Coconut Sable, a snack here in Japan, is behind the group, but that doesn't make the music any less interesting. And thanks to "the buzz" their video got over 1.8 million views in the first week alone!

Well, they're back with their new single, and the video is pretty awesome.

As I mentioned, 5572320 (spoken digit by digit in Japanese, so "Go Go Nana Ni San Ni Rei") is a junior high school band, with girls from Ebisu Private Junior High School. Their latest single is titled Ponpara Pecorna Papiyotta, and is about the young teens transitioning toward adulthood. They are trying to figure out whether to embrace or resist the change, and the resulting video is, well, surreal.

 It all starts when you sit in the dark in a giant empty room at a school desk with hair that covers your eyes, eating a Japanese snack.

 Then, you find yourself on a planet of fire facing an eclipse!

 Before long, the poor girls are transported back to a 1980s Devo music video.

 This animated "sculpture" head was really awesome.

 Let's all dance with giant crackers. (Those are Coconut Sable crackers, and I think they're pretty good. And no I wasn't paid to say that.)

 The sculpture head opens to reveal more sculpture heads.

 Then, in a dessert, giant streamers erupt from your head which attack a giant cracker in the sky. And everybody has seizures.

 It's time to rock in giant marshmallow costumes!

 You have brought forth magma demons...

The giant rock school girl will save us all!

Seriously, the video was something I had to watch a couple times. It's amazing what happens inside of a junior high school girl's head when she eats a cracker, huh?

While most of you who normally read this blog don't know very much about Japanese music production, there are a bunch of "big" names attached: Yoko Kanno, an award-winning producer of anime and commercial music; KenKen, from RIZE; Hideki Aoyama, a drummer who was a part of (the totally awesome) Babymetal; Tsuneo Imahori, a guitarist; and director Sojiro Kamatani, who has been a part of other big commercials here.

Happy listening! 5572320's official website is here, and I believe if you have a Japanese iTunes account you can find the song there. I'm a bit behind on posting this, so by the time this post goes live it looks like the new video (seen above) will have already passed one million views.

This reminds me that I really want to go see a J-Pop performance live...