Zuiikin' English

"Zuiikin' English" or officially nihongo|"Eikaiwa Taisō Zuiikin' English"|英会話体操 Zuiikin' English|Eikaiwa Taisō Zuiikin Ingurisshu is a Japanese television series originally aired in 1992 by Fuji Television. Eikaiwa, Taisō and Zuiikin mean English conversation, gymnastic exercises and voluntary muscles respectively. The series borrows the formats of both English conversation lesson and gymnastic exercise programs. The series consists of 24 episodes.

Background

In 1987, Fuji Television, whose call sign is JOCX-TV, branded their late-night/early-morning slots collectively as JOCX-TV2 (meaning "alternative JOCX-TV") in an effort to market the traditionally unprofitable time slots and give opportunities to young creators to express their new ideas. The broadcaster produced numerous experimental programs on low budgets under this and follow-on brands until 1995. One such program tried to help viewers to fall asleep while another showed an actor reading out a well-known novel and nothing else. "Zuiikin' English" was born under these circumstances.

Format

At the beginning of the show, the host and mastermind, Fernandez Verde, demonstrates an interesting philosophy in learning languages. He proclaims that different cultures use muscles in different proportions due to their customs. For example, in one episode he states Japanese people have stronger lower back muscles (from bowing and keeping a lower posture), and a different leg muscle structure (due to squatting for long periods of time). He feels that using those particular muscles while learning the language of that culture will create strong connotations in your mind and faster learning.

Then a sketch starts like an ordinary language lesson program. Every time a new English phrase is introduced, the sketch pauses and switches to the Zuiikin Gals, a threesome gymnastic exercise team. They start to perform synchronised exercises with innocent smiles on their faces while chanting the phrase hypnotically to idyllic techno-pop sounds. The choice of unpractical phrases such as "Spare me my life," "I was robbed by two men," "How dare you say such a thing to me," "Let's go Dutch," and perhaps most famously, "I have a bad case of diarrhea," in combination with the total lack of efforts to neutralise the accent add up to a sense of irrelevance that is probably the main source of viewer's amusement. In the final episode, three English native speakers formed the Zuiikin Boys and demonstrated gymnastic movements while chanting supposedly useful Japanese phrases. One such phrase, "tsumaranai mono desuga" (つまらない物ですが） ends up translating rather roughly to "please accept this trifling thing". No translations are provided during these Japanese lessons as they are for the English lessons, only Japanese characters and romanisations.

Initial broadcasting in Japan

The program was initially broadcasted in the spring of 1992. It occupied an early-morning slot around 5 AM. This allocation itself was probably a move to perfect the parody because the long-running gymnastic exercise program by national station NHK was also broadcasted in early mornings (around 6 AM). This early broadcast time was one of the main reasons why the series passed unnoticed to most people in Japan.

International minor cult

It wasn't until the broadcaster decided to rerun the series from November 2005 on their satellite channels that the program, and especially the Zuiikin Gals started to attract international attention. Video clips taken from the series and posted on the Internet have helped people worldwide to unearth the Gals' enigmatic charms. One of the clips uploaded on YouTube has been viewed more than a half-million times (as of October 2006). The show is often shown on popular American TV program The Soup during "Souper Fantastic Ultra Wish Time!". And recently, one segment was weird enough to land a spot in the "What Were They Thinking?" segment of "Anderson Cooper 360", a nightly news show on CNN.

In their native country, the Zuiikin Gals are still anonymous. The Zuiikin Gals are Maiko Miyazawa (宮沢麻衣子), Reiko Saito (斎藤レイ子) and Takako Inayoshi (稻吉貴子), whose names are displayed at the beginning of each exercise. Inayoshi is still active in the entertainment business as an actress.

External links

* [http://www.fujitv.co.jp/cs/program/7395_014.html The show's official homepage (in Japanese)]