Your Favorite Goofy Engrish?

[Suiko Eiji]

This is sort of a multi-purpose thread. I am attempting to prepare convention panel events and one of the fun events I thought of running this year would be a panel of anime songs or themes that feature goofy, awkward or down-right ironic portrayals of the English language. The problem is, I am having some issues coming up with more than a few songs here and there when I know there have to be more than what I am thinking of.

While it is technically a convention topic, I think it would get more traffic and more expertise from people who visit the AGM forum more often. I am planning the panel to last an hour, and given transitions and introductions, I'd say somewhere around the 50 minute mark needs to be actual music where I shut up.

The parameters:

A song, whether an opening, ending or insert/image song that must be featured in an anime. I'm down with J-Pop songs, so long as it's one from an anime. What I am not looking for is Gakt and Hamasaki Ayumi, both of whom have songs in some anime, doing a horribly mis-pronounced rendition of Silent Night (see below).

It must feature a phrase or line of ridiculous English phrasing, henceforth known as Engrish. I'd like to avoid heavily accented Engrish as I think it's just mean to make fun of an accent.

I'd like to keep this limited to Modern Anime, so anything 1960s to present will be fine.

YouTube links are always appreciated. :)

Last and certainly not least, have fun with it. The panel is supposed to be a quick bit of fun for the attendees who are in and out of "serious business" panels, events or what-not.

So, what I have so far ... are the Opening from Genesis Climber Mospeada and a large number of Hokuto no Ken (and HnK 2) and am going through other anime in my personal collection to add. I will update the thread with whatever more I find, but Suiko needs some help.

[SonRyu]

I don't know if this qualifies, and while I hate to say it, one of Hajime no Ippo's OP songs has some funky english in it.... that would be "Under Star" by Shocking Lemon.

lyrics (http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/hajimenoippo/understar.htm)

vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfySNmk6Jr8&feature=PlayList&p=FC01FCF4A926A882&playnext=1&index=5)

[tenshi_a]

It's an album-only version of the song, not sure if it counts, but... Gundam Wing: Rhythm Emotion (International version) by Two-Mix is about my favourite because it's got nonsensical new lyrics integrated with old nonsense from the original version... but it's kind of understandable... because it's so vapid. They could have translated the original lyrics, but no, they have this instead.

Lyrics: http://www.animelyrics.com/jpop/twomix/reinternational.htm
Youtube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=d4_AsL-6O8o

It came from an album where one disc is all songs in Japanese, and the other disc is the "international version" where it's all in English. This is the stand-out track for me, though. You'd think with an entire album to record they would hire a professional translator, but... it doesn't seem like they did.

...

what else? Hmm....

Lots of examples in various songs from JAM Project; there's a Gravion Zwei song (Gasshin! God Gravion) where it builds up to the words "ALMOST DANGER!!!" which cracks me up because, well, it's a bit small scale. I mean, it's not even actual danger.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-SihE1dXEi8

Mazinkaiser OVA opening song: "FIRE WARS"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lCNUutxZRyg
http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/mazinkaiser/firewars.htm
It starts off "Don't wanna know why, everybody ready get it on!" and goes from there. Many of the lines end with inexplicable words or phrases in English. ("Let's vibration!")

Their "Crush Gear Turbo" opening theme: "Crush Gear Fight" is fun too:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=soLhESMzrnY
http://www.lyricstime.com/jam-project-crush-gear-fight-lyrics.html
lots of random English in there. "Crush alright! Crush on hippy! Crush gear fight!"

There's also stuff like "SKILL" : http://lyricwiki.org/JAM_Project:SKILL but that's from a Super Robot Wars game so you're probably not interested...

The Tenjou Tenge OP theme "Bomb A Head! Returns!" starts with some random English lyrics and then goes "Bomb a head - A bullseye!". But then, a lot of rap music in English doesn't sound like English to me...
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9TOwP--G5YU

One that's very very series specific and I guess could be spoilerific-ish, maybe... "Keiichi Ooishi no Uwasa Jiken Bo ABC" which is an image song between two characters from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6-biOAe7o
The chorus goes "Do you know Oyashiro-sama? Yes, Hinamizawa. I kill you, you kill me. No. Hinamizawa.", which sums up the whole of the first season of the series. :P

If you just want some more random phrases, there's the Nadesico opening "YOU GET TO BURNING" which, aside from the title, ends with the line "Going your days. Grow up!"

Lyrics: http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/nadesico/msnygtb.htm

There's the Dancougar song that goes "I JUST KEEP BURNING LOVE" as well...

Those are the first examples I thought of.... there are hundreds more....

[Meggles]

"Under Star" by Shocking Lemon.

Lol, its like this band's sole purpose is to write songs with amazing engrish. ;)

[Victory]

Red Fraction by Mell (Black Lagoon OP)

I only found out the song was 100% in English after I looked at the lyrics

You absolutely absolutely need to put Initial D songs in there
I recommend
Speedy the speed boy
Night of fire
Space boy
No one sleep in Tokyo (ALL NIGHT PUSHING THE SOMETHING)

Row Row Fight the Power! from Gurren Lagann sounds kind of funny, but I don't remember if it's actually engrish

However I think none of these are that funny unless you have a screen up showing what the singer is saying just because it's so unrecognizable in most cases.

Ah another funny thing you can do is pick a song and subtitle it with misheard lyrics. The classic one is the duck tales swedish opening or something. But there are lots of these online (空耳).

[fujyoshi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo7T0-Hnn48

:'D

[tenshi_a]

You absolutely absolutely need to put Initial D songs in there

I was thinking that too, Inital D songs have some classic bad English. But then, a lot of the artists have non-Japanese names, I was thinking "maybe these lyrics were written by mainland europeans" as there's that Eurobeat sound. We had a lot of amusingly bad English in dance tracks through the 1990s from mainland Europe.

That still ok with you, Suiko Eiji?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_IZyH3A4cxo

I always like the Seki Tomokazu version of "Don't Stop The Music" ^_^ (his version is not in that video)

Ah. Have the ending theme to s.CRY.ed : "Drastic My Soul"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyhmhj6vkYQ
just because it's a really good song (I like it lots more than the Initial D songs!). It's not quite as hilarious as the others but I believe in drastic my soul.

[Suiko Eiji]

I don't know if this qualifies, and while I hate to say it, one of Hajime no Ippo's OP songs has some funky english in it.... that would be "Under Star" by Shocking Lemon.

lyrics (http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/hajimenoippo/understar.htm)

vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfySNmk6Jr8&feature=PlayList&p=FC01FCF4A926A882&playnext=1&index=5)

Yes, this would be something I can use! Sweet!

there's the Nadesico opening "YOU GET TO BURNING" which, aside from the title, ends with the line "Going your days. Grow up!"

Gah, and I was even trying to make a mental note about the Nadesico theme last week. And I'd forgotten Dancougar!

It's an album-only version of the song, not sure if it counts, but... Gundam Wing: Rhythm Emotion (International version) by Two-Mix is about my favourite because it's got nonsensical new lyrics integrated with old nonsense from the original version... but it's kind of understandable... because it's so vapid. They could have translated the original lyrics, but no, they have this instead.

Forgotten about this song, too... though I'm hesitant to use it because it's an album-only song. There could be a way I could swing it in though.

Those are the first examples I thought of.... there are hundreds more....

maor plox.

Seriously, thanks for the contributions, I'll be keeping up with this thread and going through all the responses.

[tenshi_a]

Forgotten about this song, too... though I'm hesitant to use it because it's an album-only song. There could be a way I could swing it in though.

Well, even the regular version of Rhythm Emotion starts with "I just feel rhythm emotion", if that's supposed to make any sense...

BTW if you were counting songs that sound funny because of the pronunciation, which I know you aren't, there's a Transformers Beast Wars song:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/1986/songs/hateshinai.html
http://blog-imgs-27.fc2.com/t/o/k/tokkablog/play.html?id=sm1556604
"Oh beast wars" sounds exactly like "obese wars" chanted over and over and over again. :lol:

Oh and if you were doing tokusatsu, I'd suggest this Kamen Rider Skyrider song:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I-MqG7H5Ay4
or
http://blog-imgs-27.fc2.com/t/o/k/tokkablog/play.html?id=nm5756880
:D

Though it's not unusual for people to count in English, use English colour names, and use "kick" and "punch" as though they were magic words in hero songs... it's a good 30 seconds before you hear any Japanese in the song and it's just the way that they're almost using English as some mythical arcane language. I dunno, maybe they're just trying to teach children English numbers while counting their Kamen Riders?

======================================== ==================

EDIT: Cat's Eye

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9i-6xZ05jrA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V079fmpc5_4
http://www.geneworld.net/lyrics-credits-letter-e-868-signe-cat-s-eye-1st-opening-cat-s-eye.html

"Magic play is dancing.
...
We get you, mysterious girl."

And then there's the exercise routine bit... :unsure:

I'm not sure, maybe the same person wrote the theme for the Space Adventure Cobra TV series:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o7qFzvGS90U
"Only few memories after you". There's some French in there too. I always thought the last few words were "Peace and love" in that song, ILA fansubs seem to disagree....

[Tomoe]

No, no, I don't agree about Cobra. The lyrics are very nice there.
Everyone forgot about Gundam Z's "Toki o Koete":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tfHTR50pY8
There we have "I wanna have a pure time, everyone's a noble mind" and "believin' a sign of Z, beyond the hard times from now". :P

[Gibb]

Love Slave - UNDER17 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdtMTHbjzdU)

This has always been a bizarre song, but I just recently found this video and realized the lyrics go: "Hold your hand, touch and feel, gnaw and taste, through the night." I thought it said "Night and day" not "gnaw and taste", haha.

Suppuration -Core- - KOTOKO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQXbdTRMt4)

The song talks about puss flowing out and such... truly bizarre.