YMMV / Mariya Takeuchi

• Common Knowledge:
  • That "Plastic Love" was one of Mariya Takeuchi's biggest hits in the 1980s that got a revival in the late 2010s. It's actually virtually unknown in Japan. It was No. 85 on Oricon when it was first released.
  • The lovely picture◊ of Mariya Takeuchi commonly associated with "Plastic Love" was for another single, "The Sweetest Music". Why the people who uploaded her music to YouTube chose to use that picture instead is understandable, given that the original album cover for "Plastic Love" is rather minimalistic and drab◊.
  • That her more sentimental discography is anything like the somber longing of "Plastic Love". She actually made the song to try out her husband's signature style for herself.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • After the City Pop genre saw a surge in Western popularity during the 2010s (mostly through constant sampling of it by Vaporwave and Future Funk artists), Takeuchi gained a sizable following among Anglophones, with "Plastic Love" in particular becoming highly (and memetically) popular.
  • "Plastic Love" wasn't as huge in Japan as Takeuchi's biggest hits, "Camouflage/Winter Lovers", "Fushigi na Peach Pie" (a.k.a. "Mysterious Peach Pie"), and "Single Again". However, among overseas fans or mostly English-speaking fans, they mainly know Takeuchi for "Plastic Love", which helped turn her into the face of City Pop outside of Japan. As one YouTube comment on this video about ordinary Japanese citizens reacting to City Pop said:
    "I've never met a Japanese person who hadn't heard of Takeuchi Mariya. I also never met a Japanese person who had ever heard Plastic Love."
  • Furthermore, many youths from the 1990s in the Philippines might be able to place the melody of the 1989 song "Single Again" as the same melody used by the 1990 song "Lumayo Ka Man" (Even If You Leave) by Rodel Naval. What's essentially the Filipino version of "Single Again" soared to triple-platinum in the country in two months.
• Signature Song:
  • In the Anglosphere, "Plastic Love" stands as Takeuchi's best-known song, mainly off the heels of a fan-made extended mix that inexplicably became a staple of YouTube recommendations in the late 2010s.
  • In Japan, it's her biggest hit "Camouflage", which reached No. 1 in the Oricon charts, or "Single Again", which reached No. 2. There's also "Fushigi na Peach Pie", which was her first top 10 hit (reached No. 3). In contrast, "Plastic Love" originally reached No. 85 on Oricon upon its release in the mid-1980s before its renewed popularity in the late 2010s skyrocketed it to No. 5 at present.
• Vindicated by History: In Japan in the 1980s, "Plastic Love" was a B-Side song made into one of Mariya Takeuchi's least popular singles. Worldwide in the late 2010s, most people only know Mariya Takeuchi for "Plastic Love" and her City Pop songs sampled for Future Funk and Vaporwave.
• Watch It for the Meme: Listen in this case; many fell into the rabbit hole of listening to Mariya Takeuchi's entire discography or became City Pop fans because of the many memes involving "Plastic Love".

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