"Meow" by Anamanaguchi is one of those songs that, when the shuffle ends up playing it, you fall in a mental trip for the few minutes it lasts. It starts really strong, and somehow ends even more so. It's one of those pieces that only the true Internet music connoisseurs can even just begin to appreciate; and, maybe, this details is not casual.

The lyrics, for better or worse, are the simplest they could be: "meow", as the title of the song suggests. This is obviously not a bad thing for those of us who can appreciate some fire chiptune, but even if your music taste is less crazy I think you can still hear how good, sparkly, energetic the meowing is... And yet, while this song already has an easy time standing by itself, the music video brings it to a level honestly never seen before, even 12 years later as I'm writing this.

Indeed, I can't really say what shocked me the most when I first discovered the official music video on YouTube; if the images themselves, and the atmosphere they bring to life working along with the music, or the immediate discovery that the song is much older than I initially thought. For some reason, to me it seemed like it was from 2019 or so, but it's actually from 2013... and what a time that was, honestly.

The story is simple enough: these friends go for a night out to an arcade, where the most improbabile playing groups form and the most impossible of things happen. To be fair, the arcade itself is strange, and something I never saw around where I live; given, I'm quite young, and was mostly able to experience these places only during my childhood, but yet I've never seen sports and go-karts in the same place as videogames and laser tag.

The place where all of this and even more happens is called DaddZ Fun Zone, as is prominently shown at the entrace. The name doesn't say much to me — especially because it doesn't even seem to exist in reality — but the mascot for this place, an ominous cat, is recurring in the videoclip (not to mention, the lyrics are probably all sung by it), and mainly it is the source of all the craziness.

While the humans in this situation enter the building with absolute style, we are graced with slight details of the place, and activities immediately begin. Go-karts are played by the Misfit Racers, where someone vomits due to all the action, while someone else gets his head cut off due to a misfitly-placed metal wire. L4z3r R4v3rz (Laser Ravers) simply play tag, and seem to overall be the most normal ones. Then there's the Sports group, trying to look badass, with tough activities and cheerleaders and all, while it has the most boring, normal-ass names of the four (which I can't believe it wasn't done on purpose, at this point); but at the end they burn someone's face off with acid, so that's fun. And finally, there's the Dark Moon Goths, which basically do absolutely nothing besides being goth and doing drugs.

After exactly the band's members are destroyed and passed out, the four get astrally projected to what seems to be the alternate dimension of the creepy cat (which, at this point, it really is). In this parallel world, where pixel art and glitch art morph to become one and the same, the cat also morphs — into various alt-pop culture characters — while the guys stay still in front of it, after being abruptly awakened by the eerie force of the cat in this virtual place; and, after all that trip, they appear playing their music in the same arcade for a big crowd of people.

This, then, is where the song really peaks and gets engrained in your brain. While Anamanaguchi plays, and the song reaches the point of no return, Japanese text is flashed on two strips of flashing colors at the top and bottom of the view, probably to make the entire experience only more magical. While I wasn't able to decipher this — not that I could for the various other Japanese words that appear for the entire video leading to this point — commenters say that it's just a copypaste of the band's Wikipedia article, which I do believe seeing the occasional [number] in brackets.

To conclude, the song is a really appreciated omage to the vibes of the 80s and 90s, mixed with elements that feel even more modern and futuristic than they actually are. In this sense, the video contains a lot of references to pop culture of the years gone the band anchors their music around, and to the Internet culture from the times it was released — even moot, 4chan's founder, randomly appears at the end of the video... hinting at the fact that the cat was actually him the whole time, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing.

References

• https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3856120/watch-this-4chan-moot-makes-guest-appearance-anamanaguchi-music-video
• https://earmilk.com/2013/01/10/anamanaguchi-meow/
• https://explosionofthemind.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/song-of-the-day-anamanaguchi-meow/
• https://www.vice.com/en/article/anamanaguchi-let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-with-meow/
• https://thesinglesjukebox.com/anamanaguchi-meow/
• https://www.tastemakersmag.com/blog/new-anamanaguchi-single-meow-49sj7
• https://theneedledrop.com/2013-01-anamanaguchi-meow-loved/