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Zutomayo is a Japanese Indie Rock Band releasing formed back in 2018 until present day. It is unclear as to how many actual members there are due to the veil of secrecy Zutomaya had regularly maintained throughout their lifetime, aside from their main Vocalist ACA-NE, and despite all credits being attributed to the YouTube Descriptions.



There is always a level of intrigue when it comes to J-POP, it has a sound of its own, and is often appealing to crowds both eastern and western, and it isn’t hard to see why! I think when compared to its other counterparts such as the ever infamous K-POP or the mainstream esque ringings of C-POP, It isn’t hard to see why J-POP would appeal to this many people, aside from its correlation with ever beloved anime.



Speaking of anime, the main reason why I wanted to feature Zutomayo is largely thanks to both it’s audio and visual fluency and choreography! You’re not only given the amazing vocal work and instrumentation presented by the band, most of the tracks also come with a MV that is sure to satiate anyone’s curiosity or imagination with their beautifully and purposefully animated MVs, with animations that I’d love to talk about later on.



Of course, the visual must be credited where due, but the meat is within the music - how does it stand out? A lot, surprisingly! The music composed by Zutomayo are oftentimes very stylistic with memorable leitmotifs or bridges that can really spice up the entire track. “STUDY ME” is a great example of such an aspect, not only with a great MV to show, but also great instrumentation and lyrics to boot, making it literally one of their most viewed MVs out of their library.



This is not to say where some of their tracks may certainly fall flat and sound like generic J-POP, but all things considered, I find them to be quite intriguing in terms of their musical bravado - despite their lack of initiative on creating more interesting audios with a more unconventional range of instrumentation.



Despite their lack of instrumentation shift, I believe that this is partially made up by the different genres that they would potential compose. Every now and then, Funky tracks like “MILABO” will pop up and give everyone something fresh to listen to. Though unremarkable, it’s a good thing to know the entire band is putting effort into creating music that makes them stand out as a J-POP band, amongst many.



A treat to your eyes and honey for your ears, Zutomayo is a J-POP band that I believe to be worth taking a look into. With a wealthy library and 2 Albums, I’m sure you’ll find something nice to listen to for the next few months.

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Boy o boy, this is a bloody wild ride, at first I wanted this part to mainly focus on the lyrics, but damn, my mind changed the instant I tried to approach this from a pure visual standpoint. Don’t get me wrong, the vocal works and lyrics in ZutoMayo’s music are beautiful, but heck, the visuals in the mv forced ‘em to take a backseat.



In the previous posts I’ve praised Tophamat, Ujico and Caravan Place for their mvs, but holy crap, did Zutomayo outshine them in terms of pure visual works. From all of his mvs starting from “Obenkyo” onwards, there is a fixed artstyle, it’s unique enough to be called original, simple enough that it can be animated without being too much of a hassle, and this really shows later on.



In his mvs like “Obenkyo”, “Darken”, “Hunch Gray” and “Neko reset”, the animation is fluid, with the sakugan part looking like something straight out of mob psycho, quality wise and vfx wise, all while being able to retain their artstyle without compromising too much on quality of the drawings. The transitions in the mvs as well, when they want to, jesus christ, do they remind you of Edgar Wright’s transitions in films like “Hot Fuzz” and “Scott Pilgrim”, I won’t say it’s fully seamless, but it is creative nonetheless, I’ll list them down later.



Of course, Zuto’s works aint all style and no substances, look at “Darken”, it tells a story of a cyborg raising a child set in a post apocalyptic backdrop, it’s a nice story paired with vocals and lyrics that fits it perfectly, a song that works on the first and second half of the music video, albeit using 90% of the same lyrics, singing perfectly about how a cyborg is developing human like feelings and maternal instinct for a child, and as for the latter, how the child developed into a full fledge human, although being a mutant looking like demon girl.

I later found out that Darken is actually a song written for a manga adaptation which is “The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window”, which is something that is good to know, and explains the triangles scattered across the music video.





Here’s the stuff I talked about just now.



My favourite animations from his mv:

youtu.be/Sfz5TpCRSiI?t=203



youtu.be/ugpywe34_30?t=61





Beautiful transitions:

youtu.be/ugpywe34_30?t=75



youtu.be/dcOwj-QE_ZE?t=78



youtu.be/dcOwj-QE_ZE?t=190





Really makes the film maker/ critic inside of me go wild.