I LOVE コイキング

I LOVE KOIKING

MUSIC

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
1
RELEASE
July 28, 2016
LENGTH
4 min

DESCRIPTION

A song all about the Pokémon, Koiking (Magikarp). The song was made as a cross-promotion between the Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball team and the Pokémon Center location in Hiroshima.

EPISODES

Dubbed

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Not available on Crunchyroll

RELATED TO I LOVE KOIKING

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REVIEWS

TheRealKyuubey
100/100
Magikarp is Love, Magikarp is Life
2016 was an awful year. Yes, I know, that doesn’t sound like much from a modern perspective, as the world’s been getting steadily darker and darker for nearly a decade, but 2016 really was special in all of the worst ways. Despite the fact that there was no global pandemic to speak of, celebrities were dying at a rate that we hadn’t seen since 2009, and the world was about to make a consequential decision that would light the fuse to democracy’s ongoing downfall that we’re still witnessing.

If ever there was a year where the human race needed something joyful to distract us, it was 2016, and we were granted just that by one of the few things in our world that was still joyful, innocent and uncompromised: Pokemon.

Now the obvious answer to this is to bring up Pokemon Go, which was a revolutionary new way to explore the Pokemon franchise, although I wouldn’t know this personally, because I’ve never played it. Instead, I’d like to point to something I only discovered recently... Something I’m pretty sure I actually only discovered this year during one of my extended vacations from work, while attempting to buff my Completed list with a bunch of Pokemon music videos.

That’s right, we’re here to talk about the Magikarp song, which I’m going to link here for your convenience.

Now for those who don’t know, Magikarp is a basic unevolved Pokemon from the first generation, dating all the way back to the late nineties. It’s generally known as one of the many examples of duality in the Pokemon franchise. That is to say, it’s cripplingly weak at first, but can evolve into one of the coolest Pokemon in the entire game, Gyarados.

And when I say weak, I mean it. Magikarp has pitiful stats, and a moveset that contains no actual offensive moves, unless you breed it to know Tackle. It was kind of a genius move by the Pokemon creator to add a pokemon like this, because in order to raise a Gyarados, you had to work on some kind of clever battle strategy to level up your pitiful Magikarp without it constantly faiting... At least you did, until the games added experience sharing items, and later made experience sharing a core feature, because these days the games are either too easy or too complicated, with no middle ground.

Because the internet is what it is, all of these details surrounding Magikarp quickly evolved it into something equally impressive as Gyarados; A beloved meme. People love Magikarp, hell, if you count ironic love alongside the unironic, it’s probably even more popular than Gyarados. People love it’s dumb little face, the way it says it’s own name in English, they just love to watch it flop around helplessly, possibly because it reminds them of their efforts to succeed in a capitalist society, or just because they want to protect it’s derpy existence.

All of this leads me to the fantastic anomaly known as The Magikarp song, which I really wish I could say more about, but it really is just a song with a really cute music video... It’s hard to describe things like this, because there’s no real depth to it, there’s no actual subject matter, all I can really say is that it is one of the most precious gorram things in existence. The art and animation on display is of course impressive, because I'm assuming it had the budget and artistic integrity of the Pokemon company behind it, but whatever the case may be, it is very pretty and easy on the eyes.

The song is in English, sung by what sounds like a child, whose voice is damn near angelic. I honestly don’t know if there’s a japanese version, because while the lyrics do sound like a translation at times, the comments are turned off, so who can even tell. Either way, whoever wrote thi song was clearly very knowledgable about Magikarp, fitting an astounding amount of lore into the lyrics in a way that flows naturally and rhymes perfectly without straying from the beat.

The actual attitude the song has towards Magikarp is equal parts adoration and ridicule, happily roasting the poor golden fish while also glazing it worse than Ellis glazed Shrek, and I will be the first person to say, it is just so gosh darn funny that I can’t not recommend it to anyone who even has a passing interest in Pokemon. There’s an aura to this video that I can only compare to the insane brilliance of Akiba Maid War, it’s just so perfect in it’s weirdness that you have to experience it for yourself.

I give The Magikarp song a 10/10
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