13-year-old Nakata Yasutaka waking tf up when the Technodon CD in his Walkman hits this track

「Candy Cutie」

“I thought the dress I designed (since I couldn’t find the type of clothes I had in mind) turned out so well that I used a photo of it for the single’s cover art. I did the animation in the music video too; the video and the cover art match with the pink and black-and-white color scheme. The video’s concept was a store for girls that has a white interior and sells cosmetics alongside other goods.” – Nakata Yasutaka

(Song descriptions by Nakata Yasutaka)

Candy Cutie While I was making this song I thought to myself: “I’m glad I was born in the era of electricity and computers.” It's cute and sounds like it's blasting through the streets at full speed.

call me call me I wanted to try making party breakbeats. 1.2.3.4 yay

Candy Cutie (Monkey Party mix) remixed by KOFTA KOFTA (a music unit consisting of PINE*am’s Takashi Tsugumi and Readymade Records’ Arai Toshiya) did this remix. It’s stimulating and funky. I think it’ll be popular in the club.

Candy Cutie (no----Nashville mix) remixed by Plus-Tech Squeeze Box If there was some kind of world competition for cut-up/sampling pop, this remix by PSB would without a doubt win the championship.

After Kyary's announcement, we should definitely expect less activities and music from her (anyway she no longer sells musically), given her due should be late this year or early next year. How do you think it's gonna impact Nakata on the other hand?

Full retirement from music to focus on the family is what I've normally (read: not always, but usually) seen happen over there when female entertainers have kids so...idk. Also feels highly likely to me she'll become a momfluencer.

I'm not sure what you mean by impact but her release schedule has been slowing down for a while now (so has Perfume's). There could be an album this year, she's up to three digital singles.

Man I really don't want a picture of a giant baby foot on this blog so I'm just gonna say Kyary announced her pregnancy lol

Ad for capsule's Sugarless GiRL on the back of FRUiTS No.117

who do you think is doing the background vocals on Stay With You? The Liar Game version has the clean bg vox at the end, kinda sounds like Ram Rider based off the accent (but then I dont think ive ever heard nakata speaking english lol)

Like 99% sure it was Ram lmao, he was asked about it a million years ago on Twitter and just replied kind of coyly.

Plastic Girl ↑ Title font “Ice Cream” designed by Nakata Yasutaka 2002/11/20 Release

The keywords for this release are “high-speed lounge pop” and “cuteness,” with a more refined sound and a series of cute and “pop” phrases in the lyrics

“The idea I had in mind for this single was definitely ‘cute.’ Well, actually, the first image that popped into my head was that of a ‘cute plastic robot girl.’ But this plastic girl isn’t a heroine, she’s just a humanoid robot who wants to be stylish, fall in love, and become a real person.” – Nakata Yasutaka

With their fastest tempo yet and a bombastic sound at a five-minute runtime, “Plastic Girl” is bursting with party energy.

<Keeping in with previous releases, the jacket cover and all other artwork were designed entirely by Nakata Yasutaka>

“This concept’s primary color was ‘retro yellow.’ The jacket, music video, and artist photo are all in retro yellow and black-and-white. And by the way, the yellow dress that Koshijima is wearing in our artist picture is the same one the plastic girl wears on the single’s cover.” – Nakata Yasutaka

Forgive me in advance for the weird question, but given that Nakata's career seems to be winding down, what, in the end, do you feel his legacy was/has been/will be? And perfume's legacy/impact, if any? Do you know anything about how/if perfume had a role "gakkyoku-ha" idol phenomenon (e.g. the rise of other genre-dols like bis, babymetal, maison book girl, sora tob sakana, etc.)?

Perfume definitely helped usher in the genre-dol trend of the 2010s -- down to being the template for Babymetal (also from Amuse). Though I want to emphasize that Perfume aren't underground idols, which usually have a lot of overlap with gakkyoku-ha...I think. I'm not a big J-idol otaku, lol.

Legacy/impact questions are very complicated to answer even though they're things I've thought about a lot over the past four years, and it gets more confusing when you're talking about Perfume and Nakata as separate entities because there's some overlap there... Like his legacy -- and Perfume's by proxy -- in Japanese pop culture is predominantly going to be a Valentine's Day song and sometimes Polyrhythm. I think it'd be disingenuous to claim he hasn't inspired any younger musicians in Japan (though I often think they didn't study him hard enough), but it's equally misleading to act like he was some sort of boon to the music industry; looking at the way things are now, I believe ultimately his impact on J-pop was quite weak. He was an early adopter of the "bedroom producer" format (though he never made music in his room that I'm aware of lol) and it's likely that amateur laptop-based producers in Japan are more aware of him for that, but his do-it-yourself approach and aesthetic hallmarks are definitely not followed through in mainstream acts. If anything, pop music in Japan has become more inward-facing over the last ten years; Nakata started out looking elsewhere.

On a global level -- because we still have to separate the self-imposed petri dish that Japan tends to be from the rest of the world (namely the monolithic west, though on the flipside they ignore practically everything that happens in Japan that doesn't fit into neat and tidy fictitious genres like "city pop" and "Shibuya-kei" or that isn't anime/videogaming; this is a separate rant lmao) -- I do get the impression that his music may have helped precipitate what became "hyperpop" and that his influence on the style Sophie developed is the biggest measurable impact he's had, because Sophie wound up becoming a much more known artist in the world of electronic music. In terms of Perfume I've wondered if they had a bigger effect on the maturation of K-pop than I give them credit for, as K-pop took its early cues from J-pop; K-pop fans tend to namedrop them as their token Japanese music at any rate, so I'm not hallucinating the similarities in appeal.

I could probably talk myself in circles about this all day so I'm curious what other people think on this topic. Definitely not weird questions, they're actually the most thoughtful ones I've gotten in a long time, thank you.

Man capsule was so f*cking cool back in the day, I don't care what anyone says, I will always wish there were more people in the creative world with the means (and interest) to design their own clothes, edit their own music videos, make their own album covers, just put your entire vision up on display

Dithyrambos (2006)

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - OEDOEDO (Instrumental)

Nakata Yasutaka promoting Liar Game with actor Matsuda Shota (mini magazine, 2010 April)

capsule promoting 花火 (2001)

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - OEDOEDO