Make Believe Mailer #172: Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island Soundtrack

It’s the summer of Chiikawa in Japan. The first feature film in the series, Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island, has been a box office bonanza in the country, on the verge of crossing the ¥100 billion mark and being one of the top three-grossing films of the year in the country. Just as importantly it has generated discourse, with the deceptively cute characters fronting this franchise — the name roughly translates to “Something Small and Cute” — hiding from far heavier themes in the film, which has nudged many to check it out. Having special giveaways like stickers and, starting this weekend, retro-style car toys helps too.

Its success is so vast this summer its spilling over to other art mediums entirely. This past week, the soundtrack to The Secret of Mermaid Island topped the Billboard Japan Albums Chart, becoming the first movie soundtrack to do so since 2019’s Weathering With You, helmed by RADWIMPS.

You’d expect an established J-rock band with existing cinematic credentials to lead a movie soundtrack to the top of the charts. In the case of Chiikawa, though, the driving musical force is a critical darling whose closest commercial success before this point was the outskirts of the Oricon Charts. Even more beautiful, though, is that he’s done so while letting his own artistry shine through…alongside the antics of assorted cuddly critters.

Shugo Tokumaru was a Japanese dandy for Western music media. His 2004 debut Night Piece charmed critics from the get-go, offering a change of pace for what tended to get praise from the big names of the time. “Though Japanese names in Pitchfork pages most often point to experimental Powerbook artists or psych-rock freakouts, Shugo Tokumaru offers a wonderfully structured indie pop record, dense and infinitely considered: No note seems unnecessary, and everything is in its right place.,” goes the deck for Nick Sylvester’s positive review of the album.

Subsequent full-lengths…particularly L.S.T and Exit…received similar praise, placing Tokumaru in the rare space of being a Japanese artist embraced by non-Japanese listeners, leading to tours abroad and a surprising amount of coverage at a time when Japanese music give or take Boris was completely under the radar. He appeared on a Take Away Show and recorded a Daytrotter Session…those words might mean nothing to younger readers, but to a millenial of a certain age, these were signs of making it in the blog-centric indie space. He was one of the few Japanese artists I knew relatively well before coming here in 2009.

Which doesn’t mean Tokumaru was unknown in his home country. Thanks to his music and the bounce-back help of getting love in the West, he was on the rise by the time of 2010’s Port Entropy. I was actually in Japan for the release of that one, and can distinctly remember “Rum Hee” playing in the Lawson near my apartment in suburban Mie Prefecture. His fourth full-length offering proved to be his biggest commercial hit ever…entering the Oricon Charts at #33. I’m not sure how much he moved in the first week, but I have a feeling it was more impressive than what it takes to get to the same position on the charts today1.

I set all this up because it was in this context — of a bedroom tinkerer splitting his sound between delicate folk and playroom kaleidoscopes somehow breaking into the charts — I first interviewed Tokumaru for The Japan Times in 2012. My framing was “he’s getting mainstream attention, he makes music for commercials, he’s in a Tower Records poster! But he isn’t changing his style of doing everything in his bedroom.”

What sticks with me revisiting this piece about In Focus? are the bits about the tension underneath the whizzbang songwriting. He talked about how the title came from the very question of what he was doing had focus…underlying an anxiety beneath a generally zippy set of songs featuring xylophones and kitchen appliances. He seemed like a very private…and at the time tired…person, open to putting himself out there but most happy playing around at the comfort of home, though even that doesn’t sound as particularly playful.

“I trapped myself in a dark room, with all of my windows closed,” Tokumaru said. “That kind of depressing atmosphere made me want to write material that was positive, vast and expressive.”

In retrospect, he was perfect for Chiikawa.

Note the kazoo-tastic and generally playroom-ready sound here, about a character who is a bit of an alcoholic.

The world of Chiikawa is generally bright and colorful and borderline surreal. Calling it “dystopian” can feel like a bit of hyperbole when you watch a hyperactive rabbit play on giant pudding. Yet there is something a touch darker lurking beneath it all, which I explored for The Japan Times as the movie starting gaining traction.

What the series does in every form is a combination of nodding to kind of downer parts of our own reality (the easy reference here…the gig economy, which is central to the land Chiikawa and pals live in) along with heavier themes that can genuinely blindside those experiencing it. It puts a shadow around everything, but critically it never smacks you over the head with anything declaring “like our bad world, right2!?!?” It’s there causing bumps…but everyone still gets up to goofy fun all the same.

Since an anime adaptation of the original online manga started airing earlier this decade, Tokumaru has been handling the bulk of the music for Chiikawa (save for detours into idol pop and a few other lanes). The soundtrack to these shorts is minimal, at times feeling more like the bonus CD that came with In Focus? that was like six second snippets of every instrument used on the proper album…though other times coming closer to the more stripped-down compositions of Night Piece. It might be just a few guitar plucks or glockenspiel notes or bell rings, but they are undeniably from Tokumaru’s musical chest. And like his solo work, the bulk of it puts you in a great mood, or makes you think of brightly colored cartoon worlds to get lost in.

Yet sometimes…like when the sorta lush character comes in and the music gets tipsy or a monster appears to make the mood a touch scarier, the familiar glee turns to something more unsettling…without getting too creepy

That carries over to the most fleshed-out work in the Chiikawa musical overture, The Secret of Mermaid Island soundtrack.

Western reviews of Port Entropy felt very “mehhh” at the time of its release. The connecting criticism — it was all a bit too bright and cheery and perhaps childlike in its glee3. Consequence Of Sound called some of it “tooth-grindingly sweet” and compared it to a “ride,” while Tiny Mix Tapes knocked him for “creating his own cozy womb of sugar-rush melodies and sonic wonderment.” Pitchfork said “prolonged exposure to Tokumaru's flights of fancy grows tiresome at first and then, eventually, slightly creepy” and…kind of on to something4.

The Secret of Mermaid Island soundtrack — featuring contributions from Chikari Uemizutaru and the voice actors from the film — is never as dizzying as, say, a “Lahaha” but the same sonic palette appears, and in an often similar deployment. Many of the songs use twinkly instrumentation to project something cartoony. Given the film’s tropical setting, a handful of numbers here feature woodwinds and horns utilized to create a beach-side celebration (see “Shima No Uta” and its many variations). Purely from the perspective of Tokumaru, this is a great display of his instrumental dexterity and ability to give something a cheery, childish atmosphere…which is what a summer-break film in Japan will call for. This time, there’s also just a little more orchestral swell to it all (not to mention the rabbit rap up top, which is both totally new territory and old hat for Tokumaru, who probably has used the sound of a can top before).

Yet in the same way the generally low-stakes world Chiikawa resides in can suddenly turn dramatic, Tokumaru’s music has always had the potential to take an emotional turn. It’s easier to achieve when you have a narrative at your disposal to play with…not to mention the haunting singing of the voice actor behind Siren5, whose bellow adds a welcome chill to many of these songs…but listening to these songs in the theater and later from the soundtrack brought to memories all the numbers in Tokumaru’s catalog that are emotionally twisty rather than musically so.

Again, I hear a lot of Night Piece in the world of Chiikawa’s slower moments, along with “Wedding” from Exit and a lot of “Linne,” a delicate piano number on Port Entropy that the better reviews pointed to as a welcome shift from the sprints around it. That comes across in the instrumentals meant to heighten the emotional stakes, such as the particularly gorgeous “Futari No Himitsu” (“Their Secret”), but also the songs featuring the voice actors singing, including the end-credits song, which might actually be the most Tokumaru-album-ready inclusion here (but with a pre-teen singing, so close your ears those afraid of the childish) while still working with the weird “aftertaste6” of the movie.

This album is a clear sign of why Tokumaru was perfect for this series…he can provide the cartoony and propulsive when needed, but also switch into something more emotionally complicated when called upon. That’s because his very own music has always been the same way, darty up front but always concealing something more.

Now, millions more in Japan are getting that, to the point Tokumaru has made a genuine commercial smash.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2026 Spotify Playlist here!