思い出は億千万 (110 Million Memories)

So I first heard this song in the Piano Medley I posted a week ago. At that time I thought it was just one of the Megaman theme songs. However, recently I watched a random video which actually gave the song lyrics! I was like… lyrics for Megaman theme song!?!?!

Digging further, I found out the song is called 思い出は億千万 (omoide ha okkusenman). It’s sometimes shorten to just 億千万 (okkusenman). The title translates to 110 Million Memories and I’ve been listening to the song over and over again. If you’re interested, you can download the song: okkusenman.mp3 (from Hardcore Mix with ゴム). If you get a weird Japanese Yahoo! page when trying to download the mp3, that just means the allocated bandwidth for that day has been used up, so try again later.

It appears multiple bands have played this as a cover song. It also appears there’s been several iterations of this song posted YouTube, the first being: ロックマン２　おっくせんまん ～　Hardcore Mix with ゴム ～ where they used video taken from the Rockman 2 (Megaman 2) game.

Later on, someone actually animated the song based on the lyrics, which really doesn’t have anything to do with Rockman/Megaman. If anything, it’d be Ultraman since that’s apparently the boy’s childhood hero. You can check out the new animation here: おもいではおっくせんまん(ボーカル有り)

I wanted to find out what the song was about. I got the jist of it, but my Japanese isn’t all the great and I didn’t want to search phrase by phrase. I found the translation here: OKKUSENMAN: MEMORIES ARE BILLIONS, but what was even better was the fact they linked to a video where the video had English subtitles: My Memories are 110 Million Music Video.

After watching the video for probably the 15th time, I’ve began to feel nostalgic. The song is about how when you were a kid, anything was possible, including becoming Ultraman (a children’s TV superhero). You don’t care how others see you, even when you run around acting silly playing Ultraman. As you grow up, you become more and more aware of how you others view you and become restricted in what you do. Friends go off in their own paths and soon you’re doing the same thing day in and day out.

It’s very sad and I miss those childhood days. When I was small, I’d have this imaginary kingdom, where I was the emperor. I was master ninja/swordsman and had millions of people under my command. I would play sword fights with imaginary enemies who were very skilled. Often times, my sword and weapons would be imaginary too, so you’d see a little me running around the house kicking and punching. I’m surprised I didn’t break anything… or did I? Those were the days, very fun. Unfortunately, with imaginary kingdoms, it’s hard to invite friends or siblings to join, as their vision of the imaginary kingdom differs from your own.

But those days are over… sigh…