Weekly moe: Denpa-kei

December 4, 2007

Denpa-kei is a certain genre of music, used in anime, hentai and games. It’s often very cute, explicit and sometimes a bit off-putting, depending on who you ask. All in all, it’s very very moe! ☆
Artists include Cotton Panties, IOSYS, KIRIKO and KOTOKO.

The music often uses squeaky female voices that have sometimes been pitch-shifted to sound more anime-like. Some of the voice actors actually can make those strange childish voices without the technology, which is quite amazing.

The beat is mostly of electronic type, and I’m not really sure how they do live shows (oh, they have live shows!) but it must be some kind of playback. Now, since the music is featured in hentai and hentai games, it’s also explicit. That includes lyrics about sex, taboos and, uh, cotton panties. The thing is though, the music has to stay on a certain level of innocence, since it’s targeted against the moe audience. References to school uniforms and other things associated with minors are many times used to make that connection.

Denpa-kei can also be quite funny, if you get all the references. Take IOSYS for an example.
IOSYS often makes music with and about the different Touhou characters, including their quirks, their fans and the things that happen in the games and that people recognize. This is all very funny for those that understands the references, but can be quite confusing for those that are not into Touhou.

What I like about denpa-kei are the videos that the fans make. Here is one example, “Miko Miku Nasu”:
http://moemania.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/mikomiko.swf

If you still are wondering what denpa-kei is, just listen to this that I mixed with love:

Here’s also a video with music from KOTOKO:

☆Related posts☆

• Boomchickaboom
• Weekly moe: The fang
• denpa-kei: Swedish music, French video?
• Weekly moe: Os-tan
• You are not supposed to be able to play this!

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