UlasanAnime.com – While not a grand declaration of return from a lengthy hiatus, I have some thoughts that feel necessary to share. Therefore, here’s a brief piece.
Mrs. Green Apple performed the opening song for the most recent season of the Frieren TV anime. For some of us, they are a relatively new entity, having ridden the wave of major label marketing until the depths of the COVID pause, only to make a powerful comeback. In recent years, Mrs. Green Apple has been a consistent presence in the Japanese pop top ten, and their influence even extends to charts filtered for the United States only. With that in mind, I present to you this graph, which I hope will allow you to infer the full extent of my thoughts.
The line on this graph represents the total views on YouTube Music, categorized by artist handle. This means it encompasses both music videos and content specifically within YouTube Music. It’s unclear if Content ID tags are factored in. The upward trending line? That signifies Frieren! That is exclusively Frieren’s performance.
My next thought was to explore how other artists fare under these same analytical filters, now that we’ve seen a mainstream pop artist’s performance.
First, let’s examine a consistent indicator of “weeb” interest. Perhaps she’s a bit dated now? I understand the sentiment, Ms. Hatsune.
For those who are perpetually online, whether they are internet trolls or dedicated fans, the latest iteration of this trend appears as follows:
And also:
It’s difficult to articulate a definitive conclusion. The only question that comes to mind is why Bandai Namco Entertainment hasn’t released Gakumas for the EN/global market. The answer to this question seems to be intrinsically linked to the question itself.
A true Japanese pop star’s performance metrics might look more like this:
It’s evident that these trends are still significantly influenced by what American audiences are consuming. This is entirely logical, as these are the US charts for Japanese artists, after all.
P.S. I have showcased the artist Miku Hatsune, but not music where her persona is enhanced by producers utilizing her voice. This is also the reason why it’s challenging to find accurate view counts for character songs (for example, most of IDOLM@STER, excluding Gakumas and perhaps Valiv). These songs are often tagged by character as the artist, necessitating manual aggregation to collect data on a brand level. In Miku’s case, she sometimes functions more like an instrument.
