Take Your Hand to Hell

 The past week's been a bit hectic for me so I'm unwinding with another listening activity. This is the final boss theme for Postal: Brain Damaged, a game I played over spring break. I wasn't expecting to hear any Japanese, so it was really funny to realize I was listening to sarcastic nonsense while fighting for my life. It appealed to both my middle school nostalgia and my adult shut-in sensibilities.

Because it is standard for anime songs to have random English, there are a few phrases like, "Let's go!" and "My heart!" which for some reason I couldn't tell were English until I listened a few times. It could be because of the accent, or maybe it's just that my brain only expects to hear Japanese. As for the rest of the lyrics, I was surprised that I could understand the majority of it without help. The casual masculine form is difficult for me since we haven't studied it much, but I knew enough vocabulary to fill in a lot of the gaps. Lines such as 「日本語は分からないさ」and 「頭痛い毎日。夢見て眠り浅い」popped out to me on my first listen, as while I struggled with 浅い and the なさい ending, I could confidently translate "Don't understand Japanese" and "My head hurts everyday." Usually while listening to songs I doubt whether I understood correctly until I check a dictionary, but this time it was more casual - as if I were listening to a song in a different dialect of English. It helps that most of the lyrics are just nonsense with no deeper meaning (unless "shiritori, squirrel, watermelon" is actually Woolf-level stream of consciousness highlighting how overstimulating and superficial modern entertainment has become). Additionally, I used the dictionary to learn a few new words, such as "tax return" (確定申告) and "Milky Way" (天の川). I'm sure at least one of these will come in handy later.

Mostly, I loved finding this song by complete accident. Usually I only find Japanese songs when I specifically look for them, but this one came out of left field. It was fun being in on a sort of inside joke, since many players (and even the developers) are not expected to understand Japanese. If I found this song back in middle school when my Japanese was much worse, I'd probably think it sounded really cool and inspirational. It sounds a lot like the kind of J-rock that would be used for a Naruto opening.