If any of you grew up in Indonesia in the 1990s, you might remember the Japanese cartoon “Chibi Maruko-chan”. Although not quite as well-known here as other Japanese kid shows like Doraemon, many ‘90s Indonesian kids still hold a special place in their heart for the animated tale of 3rd-grader Maruko and its weird Japanese sense of humor.
https://youtu.be/kWXxlQlz9TM
But clearly few remembered, or had ever seen, this utterly bizarre clip from the 1992 “Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song” movie. It was recently dug up by the avant-garde meme masterminds behind the Ｓｅｍｉｏｔｉｋａ ａｄｉｌｕｈｕｎｇ １９４５ Facebook page – they’ve made it (if the Vimeo video player below isn’t loading for you then you can watch it here).
The clip shows Maruko asking one of her classmates, Kazuhiko Hanawa, about his love of Indonesian dangdut music, which leads to a very trippy music video sequence complete with floating heads, Barongsai masks and a lot of random Indonesian imagery (much of it Balinese).
Part of the humor behind Ｓｅｍｉｏｔｉｋａ ａｄｉｌｕｈｕｎｇ １９４５ page is posting things without any context, but due to demand they linked to the original song used in the clip, “Dangdut Reggae”, which was released by the musical duo Campur DKI in 1990.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34az9vsvdQs.
It’s kind of hard to believe that this bizarre confluence of Indonesian dangdut, Jamaican Reggae and children’s cartoon could exist in a kid’s movie from 1992. But then, the Japanese are known for their weirdly brilliant senses of humor. And we think it’s totally time for a dangdut reggae revival in Indonesia.
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