Hazbin Hotel -'Clean It Up' 🔥NIFTY'S SONG! Reaction and Song Analysis

Not sure if you noticed in her wiki, but Kimiko Glenn was also in Waitress as Dawn

The translation is basically right, but if I were going to nitpick-translate it myself (my day job) it'd be something like: -- The hotel is genuinely really wonderful (Charlie: Um) Charlie is a really kind boss I believe she'll succeed (Charlie: Can anyone understand this?) I love her a lot, always! (Charlie: Why?) Sinners are TRASH And they're ASSHOLES But I still believe in the dream! I'll clean it up! -- Some trivia: - Kimiko's Japanese pronunciation is absolutely native, I assume she must have spoken it with family growing up or else studied quite a lot. - However, she struggled with some spots because the meter of the Japanese lyrics is absolutely atrocious lol. Sam Haft has said they consulted native speakers to make sure the lyrics made sense, and I can see they at least did that, but they didn't consult anybody who knows how to write lyrics or poetry or has... listened to J-pop songs I guess lol. A couple of the words are shoved in there in a way where you can barely understand them. Personally I have a hard time even hearing "yasashii joushi [kind boss]" lol. In Japanese that's seven syllables -- "ya-sa-shi-i jo-o-shi" -- and in Japanese music it would be more likely for most or all of them to be pronounced separately. Charlie's name in spoken dialogue is four syllables. Counting the approximate number of syllables in the Japanese vs English lyrics, they were trying to fit around 17 syllables of Japanese into approximately 11 syllables worth of music in that line (ballpark counting) - potentially doable with careful pronunciation but the BPM doesn't leave much room for error lol. The "believe she'll succeed" line is rough in a similar way. - Niffty ends all her lines with the polite "desu/masu" endings, which storywise is appropriate for the occasion -- appearing on a news program in front of a bunch of strangers to talk about her employer -- but it's extremely unusual for Japanese pop music and sounds super jarring, I did a double take the first time I listened to it lol. I think if I'd been the one writing it, since *she* thinks she's talking to a "giant roach", I'd have her use the more normal informal register and avoid sounding so weird. - The word "sinners" was translated to "hanzaisha" which usually does just mean a criminal without anything especially poetic to it. The more poetic dramatic "sinner" would be "tsumibito" but that's four syllables and maybe not the easiest to sing at that breakneck pace, however... - "Tsumibito" is the translation the Japanese subs and dub use for "sinners". Between all of this stuff it's clear that nobody consulted the actual Japanese writers at all, which seems odd to me. And a shame because a lot of their writing is quite good. The dub version of Gravity was really clever, they definitely upped their game for season 2 just as the original cast and crew did. For funsies just now I went back and checked the Japanese dub version of the song since it had been a while. They used the same lyrics for the originally-in-Japanese portion of the song, but the singer has to drop back into a half-speaking mode to make them intelligible lol.

Whoo-hoo! Finally, a Niffty song! I wonder how many fans have been wishing for this... This is one of three of my favorite songs from Season 2. Piss (A Love Song) is the 2nd and the 3rd is coming up soon.

I love this song, it's so cute! And now that you've said it, I kinda wanna do a slow, jazzy cover just for fun lol! I have no idea why they put the Japanese lyrics in Kanji in the YouTube version of the song when the original on Amazon has them translated, though. I guess it's because this is supposed to be a sing-along video, but also most people trying to sing along to it probably can't read kanji? Anyway, it was a weird choice. Shame you didn't take a look at the behind the scenes video where you get to see Kimiko performing it in the vocal booth. It really adds a lot, especially when the song itself is so short.

I was so unbelievably excited for you to get to this episode. I just love the cutesy vibe with such ranchy lyrics and not to mention the idol dancing and the KAWAII ROACHES. It absolutely cracks me up that what she says in English is absolutely whack and unhelpful but what she sings in Japanese is actually praising the hotel and saying she really likes it there. This episode killed me when I saw it my first time. I JUST noticed that the wiggle dance is the dance for the Bling Bang Bang Born song from Creepy Nuts!!!