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‘90s J-pop/drama star Ryoko Hirosue stars in amazing McDonald’s Japan vid…with her younger self

Casey Baseel Apr 8, 2022
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Maji de kawannai!

McDonald’s is, of course, best known for their burgers, but here in Japan they’ve shown that’s not the limit of their expertise. They know a thing or two about making matcha lattes and sakura pies too, for example. Oh, and they also seem to have mastered time travel, as displayed in their newest commercial.

As it opens we see two women sitting on a bench in a riverside park at sunset, each munching on a McDonald’s Bacon Potato Pie. Their cravings aren’t the only thing they have in common, though, as there’s an undeniable physical resemblance between the two of them.

They look like they might be mother and daughter, but the connection is even closer than that. So, sisters? Nope, closer…they’re both actually the same person, actress and J-pop recording star Ryoko Hirosue!

Hirosue rose to fame in the late ‘90s, starting off as a model for Procter & Gamble skincare products before becoming a singer and actress, with her filmography including a major role in 2008’s Academy Award-winning Departures.

McDonald’s Bacon Potato Pie has been on hiatus for a while, but the chain wants to assure fans that it’s coming back with the same great flavor they remember. So in a visual metaphor, the video has Hirosue playing a dual role as both her current 41-year-old self and a younger Hirosue who looks completely unchanged from 20 years ago.

***SUDDEN ‘90S J-POP TIME SLIP AND LINGUISTICS LESSON!***

Right at the start of the McDonald’s video, the two Hirosues happily declare “Maji de kawannai!” (“It seriously hasn’t changed!”) about the flavor of the Potato Bacon Pie. It’s a perfectly fine choice of words, but it’s also a callback to one of Hirosue’s biggest hits as a singer, 1997’s “Maji de Koisuru Gobyomae,” or “Five Seconds Before I Seriously Fall in Love.”

▼ “Maji de Koisuru Gobyomae”

The title of “Maji de Koisuru Gobyomae” is itself a play on words with “maji de kireru gobyomae,” a late-‘90s Japanese slang expression used to show mounting anger that translates to “I’m five seconds away from getting seriously pissed off,” and which was abbreviated to “MK5” by trendy teens during the age of charged-by-the-letter cell phone text messaging.

***SUDDEN RETURN TO THE PRESENT DAY!***

▼ The McDonald’s video’s short version

McDonald’s Japan has yet to release a making-of video or otherwise reveal how they pulled off the visuals (like they did for this other jaw-dropping time-slip video), but however they did it, the end result is pretty incredible. And before you go thinking the intended message is that getting older is a bad thing, when the video’s younger Hirosue asks “What’s your secret for staying the same?”, the present-day Hirosue saely answers “To always be changing.”

“Deep,” younger Hirosue intones. Maybe it’s something she’ll understand better when she’s a little older.

Source: YouTube/マクドナルド公式（McDonald’s） via IT Media
Top image: YouTube/マクドナルド公式（McDonald’s）
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he recommends the Sun Deck Version of Ryoko Hirosue’s “Daisuki.”