It's springtime. And when you say "spring" in Japan, images of cherry blossoms and picnics leap to mind.
Screw that. You should be thinking about illuminated, dancing robot girls.
Japanese pop group Perfume, whom Kotaku has featured before, is releasing a new single called "Spring of Life". The video turns the leggy trio into dancing androids.
The video shoot took 27 hours, and the actual video seems reminiscent of the recent Kara demo—though, much happier and upbeat!
In Japan, there's a long, proud history of pop songs about spring. Back in the 1970s, Candies, who Perfume echoes in multiple ways, recorded "Haru Ichiban" (First Storm of Spring) in the 1976. That song has become the spring song in Japan.
Many spring pop songs use cherry blossoms to evoke the season—something that Perfume sidesteps entirely with robots and lights. Yet, the tune still feels very spring-like.
What's also cool is that Perfume, as TechInAsia pointed out, even released its motion capture data set on social coding site Github, enabling people to take it and make all sorts of interesting and odd animations—such as macho Pikachus, dancing Honda's Asimo, and the inevitable Hatsune Miku version.
Dancing robots and macho Pikachus. Good things have come from this video so far. Very good.
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