Tracks found on the second album of the Japanese video game planning unit Serani Poji ‘one-room survival,’ such as ‘pipo pipo’ and ‘where is smiley?’ are becoming trending topics around the world! The tracks were actually released on November 21, 2002.
Serani Poji was a planning unit created in order to make music for the Dreamcast videogame ‘ROOMMANIA#203’.
Tomoko Sasaki, a sound designer at Sega at the time of the release, created the lyrics and music, while production was led by Yukihiro Fukutomi. Mr. Fukutomi acts as a producer for famous artists in Japan and has created remixes for overseas artists like Jazzanova、London Elektricity, and The Realm&V. The album is colorful and cute with a rich mix of sounds like lounge, house, bossa, and techno.
In October 2023, when online distribution of the album began, the tracks ‘pipo pipo’ and ‘where is smiley?’ began to go viral on short video platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram, particularly overseas. ‘pipo pipo’ was played 400,000,000 times on TikTok and ‘where is smiley?’ was played more than 650,000,000 times, with both tracks combined achieving more than 1.05 billion plays in approximately three months. They continue to show this momentum even today.
In particular, the song ‘where is smiley?’, as the title suggests, features a jaunty rhythm and has lent itself to a vast number of uploads expressing friendship or love and leveraging anime, videos of animals, and photographs.
This same track, in January 2024, charted on the Billboard TikTok charts in America for three consecutive weeks. Moreover, having charted on Spotify’s Viral Top 50 in a wealth of countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia it is a Japanese track that is very popular around the world.
・Serani Poji 「one-room survival」
Music streaming links：https://lnk.to/oneroomsurvival
Info about the physical release: https://www.hmv.co.jp/en/product/detail/14531184
・Official Website： https://www.seranipoji.com/
・Official TikTok Account： https://www.tiktok.com/@seranipoji_official
