#janku

The livestream starts with a whole minute of nothing but clicking. Jin and Inpine’s avatars have some... modifications on them. An indication that this episode will be just a lot of fooling around. It always is, but this time it’s on purpose.

Inpine suddenly starts singing and Jin can’t hold back a laugh. Yes, they’re doing a skit again and they just ruined the surprise.

Inpine: Strolling is so fun! The air’s so good in the countryside! Aah! Such nice weather! Haaah! Oh? There’s a yellow video tape lying around in the middle of nowhere! *high-pitched screaming* Must be some pervert’s tape! Guess I’m gonna watch it using my uncle’s VCR! Now, now, now, video tape goes in! Clank, clank, clank! Press plaaay!

[some weird-ass noise effects]

Inpine: Transformation!! (T/N: the word used for “transformation” here is “henshin”, which is the title of Jin’s latest song at the time of this livestream)

[background music blasts on]

Jin: *clears throat with the most monstrous, alien-sounding voice filter ever* All right! Guess Imma go around doing evil stuff for one more day! *villain laughter*

Inpine: Ah! There you are! Sea monster Jin! Your days of wrongdoing are over!

Jin: Who’re you?!

Inpine: Ora, ora, ora! I’m a hero of justice, Inpine!

Jin: “Inpine”, you say?! Come at me with all you have!!

Inpine: Gimme back my pervy tape! Take this! Inpine puuunch!!

Jin: Stop! That hurts! S-Stop!!

Inpine: Inpine Kick!!

Jin: He got meee!

[music stops]

Inpine: Jin, Hatsune Miku. “Henshin”. You can listen to it on YouTube and NicoNico Douga—

Jin: Pffft!

Inpine: It’s out right now. Please support us.

As the skit ends, Jin does the usual greeting and introduces himself, then passes the baton to Inpine and does a little bit of promo for his song and its MV. Inpine feigns ignorance to the fact that the MV was also out, even though he was literally the one who made it along with Sayuki. Jin then announces the guests of this episode: the bassist Natsume Yuuki and the drummer Janku (Junk), who played as support musicians for “Henshin”. Jin adds that he’d also wanted to invite Saiyuki for this one, but admits that he and Inpine wouldn’t have been able to handle more than two guests at once. The figurines on Jin and Inpine’s avatars represent Natsume and Janku.

They’ll be discussing music this time around. Jin starts it out by talking about “Henshin”, giving some fun facts about its conception:

Jin had already worked with Natsume before, but this was his first time working with Janku

Jin and Natsume are actually quite close and Jin calls him “Nacchi”

It was the peak of summer when he received the proposal to write the song, so he didn’t want to do it at first (as mentioned in the previous livestream, the rainy season and summer are the worst times of the year for him)

He reconsidered it, because summer is also a time of the year when he feels like listening to fast-beat songs

He jokes that when he contacted Inpine about it, the latter “emerged from the shadows” asking, “Mister, Mister, I’m sniffing the smell of a new song in the air. You called?”

By then, Jin had already decided that he wanted insects to be the theme (specifically, insects that are omnipresent during Japanese summer, such as cicadas and moths)

After this, Jin personally contacted Natsume and Janku to play with him

Now, Jin knows that the listeners might be at loss about the guests, as it’s their first time there, so he also gives some trivia about how he met them. He got to know both of them through a common friend and they first met through an app. The name of the app was not revealed, but it’s used by musicians for remote music sessions.

Jin then asks the guests to talk about what they’d been working on recently. Natsume was doing usual bassist work. He plays for all sorts of artists and even does livestream concerts. He also makes clothes as a hobby. The first time he played with Jin was during his livestream with Peanuts-kun.

Janku’s work life is pretty much the same as Natsume’s, the only difference being the instrument he plays. He uploads his performances to social media every now and then.

Jin explains that the reason why he wanted to work with them for “Henshin” was that they were very loud players and the beat of their sound was exceptional. He describes it as a “pang-pang” kind of sound and jokes that he made the request by asking them, “Please lend me your pang-pang!”, to which they replied with, “Guess we got no choice”.

Back to the topic of the song itself, Jin dives into the production:

The making of this song was different from usual in many aspects, starting with the fact that they didn’t have lots of meetings to decide on things

No studio was used for the demo

The composition was made entirely without recordings

The sessions were held at Natsume’s and Janku’s homes

In order to test out what kind of sound would fit the song best, Janku spent a whole day on a call with Jin, playing the drum for him to listen

Once they reached the intensity that Jin wanted, Janku started working on the base melody by himself, sending samples for Jin to listen to and approve

Janku was very worried about whether or not he’d manage to make the melody sound “Jin-like”, but Jin was pretty satisfied with the result

When Jin asks Janku how he felt while working on the song, Janku says he had a lot of fun and that the sound felt rather nostalgic to him, for some reason – even though it was a newly produced melody, it felt like something he had already heard somewhere before

Jin asks Natsume the same question and he answers that, although he’s taken part in the songs of so many people, there was never one that he felt so much like playing, and asserts that that there’s something inherently grotesque about it, which Jin agrees with (because of course he would)

When Jin and Natsume listened to Janku’s drums, it was like a wake-up call for them – they realized that they were lagging behind him, and went all-out in order to catch up

Jin comments that Natsume did some pretty nasty stuff with his bass and thanked him for it (this is obviously meant to sound ambiguous because Jin just Be Like That, but he’s referring to the sound that Natsume produced with his bass, not... anything else)

Natsume played in a way that didn’t match the drums at all, on purpose

He took the liberty to do that without receiving any instructions for it, and instead of feeling disrespected, Jin thinks it was a genius move

The only thing Jin asked him to do was to “make it gross”

Jin believed that Natsume was confident he could take on the job, but in reality, Natsume was at a loss back then

When he asked Jin what he wanted specifically, all he got as an answer was a “Pleeease!”

After he got samples of Natsume’s “gross play”, Jin sent it to Inpine, who replied on LINE, “Wow! This sounds so disgusting! It’s the best thing ever!”

Finally came the time to add the guitar to the demo, but even on the previous night, Jin was very much at a loss as to how to go on about it, so he texted Natsume about it

Natsume says the message looked like Jin was saying his last words, as he decided to start out with a totally unsuspecting and not at all dramatic “It is time for me to go”

Jin explains he had no choice but give his utmost after the other two had delivered such fine performances

On the day he was supposed to play, he announced that he would do it without any clothes on, “I can’t give my all with clothes on. Sorry. It was wrong of me to try to do that before. Sorry for trying to wear clothes. I’m gonna do this butt-naked.”

Up to this point, he had been playing while seated on a chair, but this time, he “had to stand up” and began playing after screaming, “TAKE THIS!!”

While playing, he accidentally hit his guitar against the wall... thrice

This was a brand-new guitar and that was his first time using it

When he got to the outro, he went batshit without hesitation

He wanted to have recorded himself playing naked, so that he could send it to his mother with the caption, “This is the work you’ve made”

After listening to this demo, Inpine got the idea of doing a rewind in the MV

He did that before the song itself was ready, and the rewind just so happened to match it perfectly

Jin didn’t want this to be a “good” song, so to speak – he wanted the listeners to feel uncomfortable and sickened by it

He requested the sound engineers to add a “pang-pang” beat to the finished product

Jin says he really did something terrible in making that song and laughs at the fact that he hasn’t offered a single word of praise to it

Inpine jokes that even “Hatsune-san” would find the song repulsive (yes, this is meant as a compliment)

Jin writes a lot of songs in the summer because it’s “a season in which not everything is all beauty”

Inpine says that the refreshing summer that everyone has in their minds only happens for a couple hours in early morning, while the rest of the day is all about fighting against a scorching heat under the dark, dark shadows cast from the overwhelming sunlight – that’s why he decided to make the MV’s color palette jewel-toned and somber

Jin bought all sorts of effectors to produce the sound he wanted for the song, which cost him 30K yen in total, and he was in shock when checking on how much he had spent

He hoped everyone listening to the livestream would go watch the MV, as it cost him a whole lot of money

He wanted “Henshin” to sound like a time slip back to one’s old self

 (T/N: This doesn’t really translate in summary format, but when they were talking about the song, there was an endless number of jokes involving the “pang-pang” thingy.)

At this point, Jin realizes that they’d been talking about music for the near entirety of the livestream. It was expected, since the two were the first musician guests of the channel, and as such, Jin was aware that it'd be fine to just talk about music, but he also wanted to have a lighthearted chit-chat. He asked Janku the day before about ideas for topics, which they couldn't decide on, so they decided to roll the dice. What they got as a result was something that, according to Janku, would’ve turned the livestream into a broadcast disaster. Jin then asks the others if they had any topics they wanted to discuss and Inpine says that’s the scariest way possible to pass the baton.

Natsume decides to answer the question first and Inpine is thankful that he’s able to take it forward from there, saying that Natsume “really is very capable”. Jin asks if he can go ahead and “eat the squid”, implying that they have snacks with them, and everyone agrees that they should eat first. While Natsume talks, there are sounds of plastic bags being ripped open in the background. These guys are a mess.

Natsume talks about a time not so long ago where he was sick and had to lie down in bed for days. He was bored out of his mind because he was allowed to do nothing but rest, so he decided to binge some anime. He wanted to watch something long and that he had never watched before, and as if on cue, he saw that Togashi Yoshihiro had created a Twitter account. This reminded him that he had actually never watched HunterxHunter, so he’d been binging it, and the day that the “Henshin” MV came out was exactly the day that he began the chimera ant arc. He felt that this was fate at work. When he saw the MV, he was like, “Whoa! That’s chimera ants right there! Inpine-san!?”

Inpine is a little embarrassed at this, because he had the feeling that they’d been making “Henshin” together all the way. He really thought that he’d been sharing with them the whole process of the video making, but in fact, the musicians were in the dark about most of it.

On the topic of the MV, Inpine admits that he doesn’t like insects and that he was put-off when finding out that insects would be the theme. He confesses that, because of this, he kind of avoided the insect element in the video, up till the latter half of it. He says that, back when he was making the video, he was driving down the street one night and had to open the window to see what was ahead of him. Turns out that what was blocking his vision was a swarm of moths. According to him, the swarm was covering the road for about 200 meters, and he couldn’t close the window in time. About three moths got inside the car, which had him shrieking like a little girl, “Nooo! Why does this kinda thing always happen to me!?”

Jin: And then you got bitten by a radioactive moth!

Inpine: Yeah, yeah, yeah! And then “Henshin”! I transformed!

Inpine says the moths were dead on his dashboard the next morning. He decided to observe them, which helped him finally grasp the concept and the feel of “Henshin”. He says that this, in a way, was his chimera ant arc. Natsume jokes that the experience might as well have broken him.

Jin says that, when writing the lyrics of “Henshin”, he thought about his kindergarten years a lot. “Henshin” is a song about the things people deem beautiful and the things they deem disgusting. People usually have weird tastes when they’re still little kids, and when Jin was in kindergarten, he was even weirder. There was a corner for hanging coats at his nursery school, and he used to sit there the whole day, just playing with the keyboard harmonica. Everyone could tell that he was one hell of a weirdo. He adds that Inpine, his first-ever friend, was just as weird. After all, he used to draw nothing but cars all the time. Jin says that this thing they used to do, throwing away their concern with what people would think of them, was his inspiration for making “Henshin”. A representation of early childhood summer, much like everything else Jin has ever made.

It is here that, at long freaking last, Jin decides to talk about the wallpaper for this livestream. He says he and Inpine made it together and everyone agrees that it’s “too damn gross”. It’s pretty obvious that it was made exclusively for that one livestream, since Natsume’s picture has moth antennas.

The group suddenly sobers up when Jin says that making this song with them was very fun and he hopes to make more with them in the future. Both Natsume and Janku are very flattered and agree to it on the spot. This heartwarming moment only lasts for a little bit, until Natsume remembers a good thing that happened recently. He starts talking about his experience going to a sauna, where he felt so refreshed that it was almost like the air he’d been breathing up to that point wasn’t real air. After he was done, he went outside, threw himself on a sunlounger and “entrusted his body to the sunlight”. According to him, it was the best feeling ever and everyone should go to a sauna at least once. The other three joke that maybe Natsume is actually an insect. Inpine says he likes sleeping inside his car in the parking lot after going to the sauna, affirming that it’s “the best way to wake up”.

The topic turns into what to do in the next livestreams, and Jin says once again that he wants to play games in the upcoming episodes. Janku says he’s pretty good at Gartic Phone and Natsume agrees that playing it with him is pretty funny. Jin says he’s seen Janku playing the game before – he saw him drawing a playground slide, except he also drew both himself and Jin sliding down on it. Natsume and Inpine lose it. Jin says he’d love to play with the three of them, plus Saiyuki. All of them agree that Saiyuki would be the strongest at it.

Time comes for them to end the livestream. Jin once again talks about making songs with these members in the future. He also talks about keeping eyes open to announcements on Twitter and asks the listeners to tell everyone they can about “Henshin”, even people sitting next to them at train stations.

The way they say goodbye in this episode is a tad... different from usual.

Jin: This has been Jin...

Inpine: ...Inpine, whose favorite food is beef tongue...

Natsume: ...Natsume Yuuki, whose f-favorite drink is Gogo no Koucha Oishii Mutou... (T/N: That’s the actual name of a bottled tea brand.)

Janku: ...and Janku, whose favorite drink is Boss’s café au lait.

Jin: That’s it!