As I am unfamiliar with the genre,

[camwyn]

can anyone point me in the direction of lyrics to the theme songs from Japanese children's cartoons? I've gone back to work on the story of Ikeshoji Kiyoshi, the ninety-five-year-old fellow who was once part of the IJMP, and I wanted to throw in a few bits of his five year old great-great-grandson singing something from TV for colour. I figure on writing the lyrics in English myself, but I'd like to get the general tone/content right.

I'm tempted to make the tv program Daisuke's song comes from the Ultimate Objectively Best Cartoon Ever, using the Everything's Better* list, but that's not entirely necessary. It might also be something on the order of Cartoon Network's "Time Patrol" cartoon, but written for a Japanese audience watching tv in 2019.

*Everything's better with monkeys
Everything's better with ninjas
Everything's better with pirates
Everything's better with giant robots
Everything's better with pie
Everything's better with Jackie Chan
Therefore the objectively best cartoon show ever would feature spacegoing superintelligent monkeys in giant robots committing acts of piracy in their never-ending battle against the star ninjas, who are out to co-opt the galaxy's supply of pie, and whose leader is voiced by a long-since retired Jackie Chan.

Comments

[penguinzero.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of anime song lyrics at AnimeLyrics (http://www.animelyrics.com); however, you'd need to know the name of the show you're looking for -- they don't group by genre. Also, most of the translations are done amateurly, by fans, and so they won't sound quite as natural as they do in Japanese.

Skimming through the site, here's a few shows that a five-year-old might watch:

Crayon Shin-Chan (about a very rude kid)
Doraemon (a boy and his robot cat from the future)
Tottoko Hamutaro (translated here as just Hamtaro -- little hamsters, big adventures)
Ojamajo Doremi (comedic adventures of some cute child witches)
Powerpuff Girls (it's been translated, with its own new songs)

Fan-favorites like Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, Dragonball, and Yu-Gi-Oh might skew a little older demographically than the five-year-old market, but they still might be good for influence.

And there's even the Japanese versions of a few songs from Disney movies listed on there, amusingly enough.

[aberrantangels]

Also, most of the translations are done amateurly, by fans, and so they won't sound quite as natural as they do in Japanese.

True dat. Then again, for all we know, that may be exactly the effect J.'s looking for.

On the other hand, one of the translations impressed me — the theme from Uchû Senkan Yamato. Like a lot of people my age, I have fond memories of Star Blazers, and I was impressed at how closely the (translated) Japanese lyrics resembled the English lyrics. It was like my attempt to fit the sense of "MOONLIGHT Densetsu" into the rhyme scheme of "The One Named Sailor Moon", only better. (Then again, these were professionals...)

[camwyn]

I only really need a little bit of song style; Daisuke's singing under his breath on the train ride from Osaka to Tokyo, and his great-great-grandfather in the seat next to him recognises the song as being from a cartoon he occasionally watches with the boy. Childish or clunky-sounding words are just fine.