Prior to the influx of anime on television in the United States of America, Japanese music did not have a platform to reach the general American public. However, the rise of popularity of anime led to greater exposure of Japanese pop and rock music, known as J-Pop and J-Rock respectively. One particular J-rock band, UVERworld, experienced a phoenix-like rise in popularity directly due to song placement in two popular anime programs. By studying the career of UVERworld, trends in global flows in popular music can be better understood. Japanese animated shows known as anime began regularly appearing in the United States of America throughout the 80’s on popular Saturday morning cartoon blocks. However, it wasn’t until the 90’s with shows like …show more content…
Critics argue anime was chiefly successful because while the content was originally Japanese, it was edited to fit a more American consciousness and was dubbed into English. However, as time progressed content was changed less and most anime’s maintained their Japanese opening and ending theme songs. The more popular the shows were, the more popular the songs became. Fans took to the internet to make videos in which they subtitled these opening and closing segments to include English, the Japanese Kanji, and Romanised Japanese. It soon became common for fans with little to no background in Japanese to buy CDs and merchandise for their favourite artists. This content was largely inaccessible to audiences outside of Japan in the early days of anime and was namely found at conventions and specialty stores. Yet as J-Pop/Rock continued to grow in marketability, more stores started to include these albums in their world music sections or with anime …show more content…
Unlike other similar bands, UVERworld doesn’t lean into the idea of being “cute” however the label is applied to them simply due to the Japanese heritage. Japan as a whole is viewed as an exporter of “kawaii” or “cute” objects, and consequently everything that is Japanese gets slapped with this label. Looking at the highly stylized members of UVERworld and the techno-color masterpieces that serve as their videos, it’s not surprising they fall under this label. Kelt describes this cuteness as more than something you love, but as something you want to protect (Tiffany). This pairs with Adorno’s theories on popular