Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Folder5 -- Final Fun-Boy




Folder5 was a cute Avex aidoru group that was active in the early 00s with a mixture of idol-pop and Eurobeat. In reality, they were a spin-off from a grop called Folder, which consisted of five girls and two boys. The five girls, after Folder’s disbandment, were put together in Folder5. Maybe thanks to Morning Musume.’s (モーニング娘。) success, Avex thought it was lucrative to maintain an aidoru group.

From Folder5’s singles, one that I like a lot is “Final Fun-Boy”, which was released as the group’s fifth single in June 2001. Like many of their songs, it has a light Eurobeat feel, and it’s understandable because the late 90s and early 00s experienced a heavy Eurobeat/Para Para fever, thanks to SMAP’s Takuya Kimura (木村拓哉), who danced Para Para on popular TV show SMAPxSMAP in the late 90s.

Back to “Final Fun-Boy”, I always wondered what the title meant... without much success, of course. Besides the weird title, it was fun to sing along with English lines such as “tell me why final fun boy” or “show me why final fun boy” (I can see this song as an easy choice for karaoke). In the end, it’s an infectious and energetic pop tune with a very catchy chorus.

“Final Fun-Boy” reached #14 on the Oricon charts, selling 49,410 copies. Lyrics, music and arrengement were all done by PIPELINE PROJECT.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, Marcos.

    I remember Folder since it was a group that I often saw performing on the old Fuji-TV morning kiddie program "Ponkikkies" The group reminded me of the 70s unit Finger 5.

    Oh my word....the para-para boom. There was a dance club just across the river from one of my old schools that was supposedly where that particular dance started...the Twin Star in Ichigaya.

    One of the girls from Folder 5 has gone on to bigger and better things: Hikari Mitsushima has become a well-regarded actress in movies and I believe she's currently playing a terrifying nun in one of the J-dramas right now.

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    1. Hi, J-Canuck.

      About Folder, I know one of the boys, Daichi Miura, is a very famous R&B singer nowadays. And good to know one of the girls made it big as well. I thought they just had vanished from stardom after Folder5's disbandment.

      As for Para-Para, it's hard to know where and how it started, but it was a real boom in the late 90s and early 00s. I wonder if the success of dance-oriented games was also an important factor that helped it get popular.

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