American Dad (Series)

The other day I was watching "American Dad" episodes before work. American Dad is an American adult cartoon series that follows a government agent on wild adventures at work at the CIA, at home with his family and live-in space alien, and more.

The particular episode I was watching was titled "Wheels and the Legman, the case of of grandpa's key." In that episode, one of the main characters, a fish named Klaus enters himself into a cutest pet competition website. When he does a photograph montage in his attempt to be cute, they play Yuko Ogura's "Vitamin Love" song as the montage music. Klaus fails in his attempt to be cute, however the music itself is very cutesie and helps him try his hardest to appear as adorable as he could be in various outfits. This is an example of how integrated American pop culture and Japanese pop music is becoming.

Yuko Ogura's song has been on the internet for at least a couple of years. She is not well known in America for her music, however her song and music video for "Vitamin Love" has been floating around the internet for a few years, so people who have spent enough time on youtube looking for Japan-related things have probably stumbled across this video at least once.

I did a little research and her wikipedia page is here. 

Yuko Ogura's Vitamin Love

Although I am not sure I have stated this before, I will write it here just in case.

Another American Dad episode titled "May the Best Stan Win" also utilizes more current Japanese pop music. In this episode, Francine is on a date on Valentine's Day with her husband Stan's future cyborg self. While they are driving, Cyborg Stan attempts to loosen Francine up and get her to relax around him by playing "Japanese Funk from the future." The song is actually Monochrome Effect" by Perfume. The song "Monochrome Effect" was originally produced in 2004 to BEE HIVE Records.  

I think that it is important to notice that scenes like these are becoming more commonplace within American media and are prime examples of American culture merging with (albeit slightly outdated Jpop music) Japanese pop culture as well. What this merging of American adult cartoons might be encouraging is more adults to engage with Japanese pop culture, especially anime, as animation is typically seen in America as a thing for children. By combining American adult cartoons with semi-subtle Jpop culture, shows like American Dad are helping more people become accustomed to a quickly growing shift in American pop cultural norms. American pop culture isn't as "American" as it seems anymore.

Thank you for reading~!

Ps, sorry I couldn't find exact scene shots involving these songs. Apparently youtube has been good at cracking down on these things, or there isn't a high enough interest in these thoughts yet.


Also, if this isn't coherent enough or if readers want me to do a little bit more digging around on these videos and series, please let me know. ^^