Three things to know about the Japanese Donald Trump campaign ad that’s making the rounds on the Internet: 1) it’s actually American, 2) it’s satire and 3) it’s brilliant.
The video, if you haven’t seen it, is an impeccably Japanese love letter to the presumptive Republican nominee (Donarudo Torampu). There’s a blue-haired schoolgirl heroine, who idles on her bed gazing at Trump’s framed portrait, surrounded by her anime sketches of him. Her bedroom walls are lined with various snapshots from the campaign trail (including TIME’s August 2015 cover story).
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The television then blares out the news that Donald Trump has been “elected world President,” leading her to fall into a kawaii Trumpian reverie. She floats through a digital world where Trump’s name is atop every skyscraper, where the trees are ripe not with cherry blossoms but with Trump’s face, and where, finally, the two embrace as nuclear missiles launch behind them. Then Trump turns into a robot.
The YouTube video has more than 1 million views so far. Many of the comments are from people who are confused by Japan’s apparent adoration for the candidate, failing to note, as the Intercept does, that the video is actually the work of Mike Diva, a California-based visual artist.
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