Japanese comedian steps into Justin Bieber’s shoes and eats flying sushi with Sheeran in hilarious new music video.

If there’s one thing British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran loves more than Japan, it’s cats – even though they did run away from him when he sang “Thinking Out Loud” to them during a visit to a cat cafe in Tokyo.

So when Warner Music Japan unveiled an official parody video for Sheeran’s latest hit “I Don’t Care”, following the release of his album No. 6 Collaborations Project on 12 July, it came filled with some of the singer’s favourite things, all packaged up in a crazy montage of images starring giant Godzilla-like cats, flying sushi, and Japanese comedian Buruzon Chiemi, aka Blouson Chiemi.

Chiemi’s starring role in the clip could be due to the fact that she has a bit of indirect history with Sheeran. After she used Austin Malone’s 2015 track “Dirty Work” as a soundtrack for one of her “career woman” comedy routines, it increased the popularity of the song, sending it to the number one position on Billboard’s Hot Overseas chart in Japan in 2017, where it knocked Sheeran’s “Shape of You” out of first place.

Sheeran now appears to be giving one back to Malone by teaming up with the woman who was largely responsible for Malone’s success in Japan. Take a look at the official parody video below:

The video starts off exactly like the original, with Sheeran wearing a suit and tie at a formal dinner party. After the first ten seconds though, things start to look very different to the original, with Blouson Chiemi appearing on the scene, rolling her eyes at the dinner party before posing over a glass of champagne.

▼ Then the first cat of the clip appears, chasing Chiemi around the room.

Chiemi is a perfect choice for the music video, as her comedy persona portrays her as a successful career woman who balances her work and love life and gives others tips on how to be adored like her. In line with the lyrics of “I Don’t Care”, Chiemi isn’t concerned with fitting in, and she knows how to have a good time as long as her “baby” Sheeran is around.

In the clip, Chiemi dances with aliens surrounded by a koala-headed space crew, gushes over Sheeran while clasping her hands into a kancho pose, and rides in a car with him as a maneki neko cat spins around in front of them and morsels of sushi fly into their mouths.

The video takes an unexpected turn when a giant cat crashes into their vehicle, causing them to plummet into an “I Don’t Care” game world where Chiemi jumps over giant koi fish with Mt Fuji and a giant beckoning cat in the background. She then heads off to catch a Japanese train with Sheeran, as a giant cat that resembles the Catbus from the Ghibli anime film My Neighbour Totoro sits in the sky.

The video ends after a space cat with laser beam eyes shoots out cats in flying saucers from its pupils, and a flurry of Japanese motifs fly by on the screen, with Sheeran and Chiemi interspersed in amongst it all.

▼ Yes, that’s a Sheeran-Chiemi family on the bottom right of the screen.

While Sheeran collaborated with a number of musicians for No. 6 Collaborations Project, Chiemi is the first comedian to have a starring role in a parody video for the lead single from the album.

And though “I Don’t Care” was written and performed by Sheeran and Justin Bieber, we’re pretty sure Bieber doesn’t mind being replaced by Chiemi for the new clip. After all, Bieber is such a fan of Japanese humour that he couldn’t contain his joy when he starred in a Japanese commercial with Piko Taro, who brought us “Pen-Pineapple-Pen“.

Source, images: YouTube/Warner Music Japan
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