PlayStation Japan has teamed up with the Japanese rock band King Gnu, resulting in an unusual PlayStation 5 advertisement. The commercial features the band’s latest song, “):Asura:(”.
In a fashion that will certainly capture the interest of anyone, the ad shows the group facing a kaiju, tokusatsu-style. It comes off at an interesting start with the premise of the quad group encountering defeat to a large and powerful opponent. But as any good story-telling of its kind would have it, what is a large obstacle but something to overcome, especially with a small group of people to call allies at your side?
The four-man team symbolizes the PlayStation controller’s iconic face buttons. Namely, triangle (Yu Seki), circle (Daiki Tsuneta), “X” (Kazuki Arai), and square (Satoru Iguchi). Alone each individual is weak, but strong as a group, they fuse to become a unified, gigantic robot, willing and ready to face the big challenge ahead.
Barely hitting the 30-second mark, the ad is both short and a cliffhanger, but does not fall short of being enthralling. That is, it stops at the event where the possibly more interesting part of the ad’s narrative. Nevertheless, it serves what a typical advertisement should—pique the attention of the audience to foretell something that’s coming. In this case, a tie-up between Sony’s flagship console and one of Japan’s rising rock bands.
Per the press release, the ad campaign is set to take over both Shibuya and Harajuku in Tokyo, with graphics displays making their spotlight in 20 unique locations across both districts.
