Smells Like Biyo Spirit

Tsubaki Factory – “Idol Tenshoku Ondo”

As with Tsubaki Factory’s previous song, it’s taken over a week for me to review the final track from their latest single — which might as well be a year with the speed at which pop culture moves in 2022 — but the reason for this delay is different from the last. Whereas “Yowasa ja nai yo, Koi wa” left me searching for an angle to tackle a song that moved me little in any direction, “Idol Tenshoku Ondo” leaves me feeling entirely unqualified to write anything at all. Songs that are heavily dependent on understanding the language they’re written in leave non-speakers kind of rudderless with regards to anything beyond the music itself. Still, I’ve yet to miss a release this year, and I’m keen to continue the streak, so I shall soldier on.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that “Idol Tenshoku Ondo” is the first TF song since “Uruwashi no Camellia” from their major debut to go all-in on J-idol FUN. Their sophomore single came close, but both “Shuukatsu Sensation” and “Waratte” are conventionally structured modern H!P songs, while “Idol Tenshoku Ondo” goes full-on theatrical Japanese festival, which is a genre that Hello! Project has excelled at for over 20 years, dating back to 2001’s “Dancing! Natsu Matsuri” from the shuffle group 10nin Matsuri. Composer Hoshibe Sho in particular has proven adept at writing theatrical pop songs that feature traditional Japanese scales, melodies and sounds, so it’s no surprise that this song sounds suspiciously like the group for which Hoshibe is the primary composer: Beyooooonds. Stating this undeniable fact apparently annoys some harowota, but facts is facts, and that’s the fact, Jack.

There’s nothing wrong with sounding like Biyo, though, and there’s a lot right with “Idol Tenshoku Ondo.” Kaoru Okubo’s arrangement deftly integrates modern pop instruments into a traditional Japanese soundscape, and Hoshibe’s lively composition likewise works traditional Asian pentatonic melodies across contemporary pop key changes in a way that smoothly ensures that the traditional is given both deference and proper respect. The mood is light and cheeky throughout, though, and the members are more comfortable with it than you might expect based on TF’s past output. Musically speaking, this is a winner.

The single-set video is suuuper cheap — seemingly by design — but it’s mostly fun, with TF members performing a play on what looks like a small school/community theater stage to an audience of themselves. The over-acting from both sides, like the cheap theater set, is a feature as opposed to a bug, but there is one thing I find curious: I would expect the on-stage members to be in some sort of traditional dress, yet they are sporting Asian-tinged modern fashions, and this seems so obviously off that I have to be missing something in the lyrics and on-screen text that explains it. While the music and theatrical concept (and the leaf blowers!) very much channel the spirit of Beyooooonds, the purposely modest scale of the overall package is practically their antithesis.

It’s also the antithesis of what we’ve known Tsubaki Factory to be up until now, and this along with “Adrenaline Dame” suggests that Up Front is as unsure of where TF is heading as we are. There is one aspect of “Idol Tenshoku Ondo” that returns TF to their roots, though, and that’s the return of Kiki Asakura to the center position after two songs back with the pack. I’d have pegged “Yowasa ja nai yo, Koi wa” as the track to feature Kiki more, but I’m just a dumb gaijin on the internet, and such odd decisions seem befitting of a group that is in kind of an odd place at the moment.