Whoa! Look at that! Someone has finally uploaded a 1080P version of Jun Togawa’s “Suki Suki Daisuki” music video that they’ve been sitting on for years! A big day for all Jun Togawa lovers, and a day we thought we’d never see. A part of me even thought that the 240P version of the music video was the only one existing (how big of a budget could a Japanese underground artist have had in the 80s?).
This heroic archival effort made me think of sites like web.archive.org, who archive everything. I went to their site and saw their new service “WayForwardMachine” (a reference to their usual “WayBackMachine”, which lets you see old archived versions of websites). The effort web.archive.org puts into archiving the world cannot be taken for granted. Neither can people uploading old music videos of artists like Jun Togawa. It may feel obvious that everything just is on the internet at all times, but without random persons all over the world getting the spontaneous idea to upload that old DVD instead of letting it die on the shelf, few people outside of Japan would know about Jun Togawa. And if Jun Togawa was more well-known, uploading her stuff would be even harder, because everyone in power nowadays seems to want to stop information rather than letting it free. It’s already pretty much like in the dystopic future the WayForwardMachine hints about:
Thanks to “ALFA MUSIC YouTube Channel” for being an archival hero!
This is a post of free association. Associate further: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jun+togawa+live
UPDATE: a live performance of the song also exists in HD now (UPDATE AGAIN sep 2023: The link is now dead. Doesn't that say something about this post?)
And just check out the channel that uploaded the Suki Suki Daisuki music video (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCED_jMuUdSWi1KRY_6n3hHQ/videos). They seem to be on a roll uploading old Jun Togawa stuff. I have a feeling that the 2010s style of 480P videos is over, the 2020s will be the real deal.