What do you think of TV commercials in Japan? Seen any that impressed you over the years?

Favourite Japanese commercials are the Kenmeri Skyline series from the early 70s. Love the theme song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ2XZHF4o2I&t=13s

I did like the Boss Coffee commercials because Tommy Lee Jones was in them! The rest are mostly crappy!

Yeah, the ANA commercial with comedian Baka Rizumu wearing that funky "gaijin" nose.

Definitely, one of my favorites.

"My city, my gas" was Charlie Sheen's career high point.

Cant comment cause NHK wants to charge me so I pulled the tuner off, use the TV as a display device for my PC and watch anything I want from the internet.

Nissin Cup Noodle commercials are usually a hoot.

Given the importance in Japan of 'reading the air', the complete lack of subtlety in Japanese advertising is a surprise.

I liked a pocky one and an Auris one. I dislike Disney but their anime ad was one of the better ones. That's not a high bar though.

Artistic laziness/low budgets evident with too many talking dogs, too much female flesh, and nowhere near enough quality anime. I saw a Fanta Zero one that was a bit disturbing.

Memo to advertisers (globally): If your advert is cheap and tacky, we assume your product is too.

Interesting to see Bruce Willis expressing his enthusiastic passion for Daihatsu.

Regardless of the product, anything with Aya Ueto or G46/8 idols is OK by me.

This is clever. A bit stalkery, but clever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EGdARx_1Cc&t=199s

Shinkansencaboose:

Pukey, try Adblock plus. I never get commercials on YouTube.

Turns out I had them installed on my browser a long long time ago but I never got to switch them on properly and forgot about them. Now turned on properly and it works a treat. You're not just a pretty name, are you?

The only problem is that I still have that annoying Base jingo by Katori Shingo in my head. Or Yonekura Ryoko screaming out 'takasugiru!'. Also, no need to watch 15 seconds of teeth implants on Daily Motion. Thank you.

Far, far too many are insanely infantile!

@Pukey2,

Mate,I absolutely abhor those two commercials as well.

Video games and anime commericals are top notch.

The Belle ad advertising the minibus was cute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWRBBW3P45I

Agree with all of the comments thus far -- The AC Japan Ad Council commercials were quite creative, if I recall correctly (but I cannot remember one specific scene)...were they by chance aimed at careless smokers disposing of their cigarettes?

Going back some time, but I found the Regain ads funny with the Japanese Businessman song.

Example (perhaps not the best one):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sXpALhlEgU

loved the Umatase Commercials of 20 years ago with the talking horse and the salonpas ones too

Tommy Lee Jones and the Boss commercials!

TV commercial time is the time to put the kettle on, let the dogs out, etc.

Normally I prefer to prerecord programmes and skip through the commercials during play-back.

I did use to enjoy the early Softbank ads, with the white dog Otohsan. They seem to have gone a bit weird recently, though. And they never persuaded me to switch providers, so I suppose as adverts they didn't do what they were supposed to do. Entertaining, mind.

Invalid CSRF

Eye and intellectual cancer all of them.

Unadulterated garbage, the lot of them.

Screeching, overacting, infantile dancing and a head turn to the camera with "Eh?".

And what's the deal with a woman leaning forward, puttin one hand genteely to the side of her mouth like she's letting us in on some kind of secret?

The last decent advert I saw here was Yuri Ebihara getting a sweat on running through a jungle in some kind of animal hide bikini. I don't know what it was advertising, but it didn't half get my juices flowing.

99% of ads are total dross. Cup Noodle ones are usually the best, going way back through the "Hungry? Cup Noodle!" animations to the classic one with James Brown rehashing "Sex Machine" into "Misoppa!"

As a learner of Japanese, "go-ran" and "jisshichuu" mystified me for years. I heard them on TV all the time but could never find them in my dictionaries.

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1q5wl9/japanese_tv_rant/

visiting an establishment and shamelessly advertising.

And 99% of the establishments they visit are nothing special whatsoever!

LIke, literally, a ramen shop with a slightly different broth, or a fried chicken place with a slightly different batter. It's so mundane. But they'll have orgasms over it here.

Commercials? Do you mean 80% of all the TV channels' shows here, where there is about 2-3 minutes of the show itself in the break and then the rest is all commercials?

All the ads here are loud, screaming, following the same script. You've seen one painkiller commercial, and you've seen all the future ones.

If it's a dinner-related commercial, then mostly the family sits at the table, smiling convulsively. If it's a commercial for a painkiller or a nasal decongestant, then there's bound to be a person spreading their arms and the wind is against them. In the case of detergents, people in white coats.

Most of the advertisements for various support and stimulants here promise miraculous effects, despite that being complete nonsense. In Europe, many advertisements with false content or information would have already resulted in a hefty fine for the television station.

And we haven't even gotten to those shows where the advertising is hidden and spread throughout the show - visiting an establishment and shamelessly advertising.

Agreed @Attilathehungry 9:44am but Tommy Lee Jones AND Bruce Willis have been “phoning it in” with ALL of their ‘performances’, (both commercials and films), lately. - Filmed on a U.S. soundstage in front of green screens, their Boss Coffee and SoftBank characters (Bruce in a white T-shirt, blue hoodie and a bell as ‘Doraemon’) are ‘added in post’ and dubbed in Japanese with the local ‘talent(?)’.

AttilathehungryToday  09:44 am JST

Yeah, the "good old days" with Hollywood celebs doing commercial were great. The stars would sneak over to Japan in the days before the internet, and make some quick cash by appearing in a usually embarrassing and infantile ad for some useless product. All confident that the people 'back home' would never see it. There was a website called Japander that had many of them. I remember James Coburn and Pierce Brosnan advertising Lark cigarettes, Brad Pitt doing jeans, Stallone advertising ham, Sean Connery advertising Japanese whisky..... 

If you have ever seen the movie 'Lost in Translation' you would know what I mean.

Tommy Lee Jones still does the Boss coffee ads. I guess he's too old to care.

Mariah Carey and Ewan McGregor used to do Aeon (or was it Geos?) eikawa ads back in the late 90s as well.

Generally awful. It seems that the best way to get people to buy something in Japan is to have a tarento advertise it, a voiceover shout at you, or for those companies with a big budget, have a tarento shout at you, coupled with a stupid song and/or dance.

Mr Sparkle was pretty good though.

Yeah, the "good old days" with Hollywood celebs doing commercial were great. The stars would sneak over to Japan in the days before the internet, and make some quick cash by appearing in a usually embarrassing and infantile ad for some useless product. All confident that the people 'back home' would never see it. There was a website called Japander that had many of them. I remember James Coburn and Pierce Brosnan advertising Lark cigarettes, Brad Pitt doing jeans, Stallone advertising ham, Sean Connery advertising Japanese whisky.....

If you have ever seen the movie 'Lost in Translation' you would know what I mean.

Kid you NOT: FujiTV just advertised during Tokudane! that @7pm tonite, they will make their exclusion to the same major warehouse store! This will be FOUR different networks ‘advertising’ the SAME sponsor in FOUR different segments this week.

*-@snowymountainhell 7:49am**: “Devoid of originality & creativity: 3 shows on 3 separate networks 3 nights in row this week took ‘stars(?)’ for excursions to the same major warehouse store.” - *

Pukey, try Adblock plus. I never get commercials on YouTube.

Japanese TV commercials are actually quite humorous. 10 seconds long so not to bore you, and have six per minute. At least they don’t change the demographics in order to look PC Woke as they do on US TV.

I don't have a TV because there's nothing interesting, but I am sick and tired of the ads on Youtube. People screeching, like that woman advertising cheap mobile phone rates, or prats like Katori Shingo in that ad for Base. If it's not those, then it's these right-wing Japanese ads appearing out of nowhere.

Arnie lobbing a fridge full of Magnum Dry and Nicholas Cage obsessed by pachinko stand out in my memory. Haven’t watched tv for years so don’t know any new ones.

Typing with just one hand is very slow :)

Ha ha, I actually "mono typed" that.

full of stereo typing

Typing with just one hand is very slow :)

Too much synchronised singing and dancing, far too much emphasis on all things kawaii.

I did like those Pocky ads from a long time back “Anata mo watashi mo Pocky!”

Hell, ALL Japanese TV is continual advertising.

Most Showa families still insist at least one TV remain “on” throughout the day, less they miss something that could easily be streamed to various devices.

Devoid of originality & creativity: 3 shows on 3 separate networks 3 nights in row this week took ‘stars(?)’ for excursions to the same major warehouse store.

Plus, there is the continual scrolling of every attached sponsor’s name and logo scrolling along the bottom of the screen during the beginning and ending segments of comedies, dramas and movies.

Annoyingly, they often show they same commercial back-to-back, at least twice, during commercial “breaks”.

"TV commercials"? So you mean 90% of Japanese TV "programs" then?

Heavily relying on famous faces, full of stereo typing and zero creativity.