Shibuya Punk

In June 2025 PlayStation+ offered Bomb Rush Cyberfunk as one of its free monthly games. Its impact on me was immediate, and I quickly dug into Hideki Naganuma's music, the Jet Set Radio series, and Sonic Rush.

The video game aesthetic is referred to as grind fiction. I've been referring to the music as "grind funk." Shibuya punk seems like a helpful term to refer to the subculture or ethos.

I don't want to get into explaining the games right now (maybe another time), but I do want to explain their impact on me. They bring together a number of my values and interests throughout my life that I thought were disparate. These include:

• Electronic music
• Rollerblading: I was drawn to it as a teenager and had my own pair, but gave it up since my home and college were in hilly areas.
• Rap without sexually explicit or misogynist content. Not all rap or nu metal suffers from that, but a lot of it does. I don't want to hear that, and because it's by and large not there in Shibuya punk music, I can enjoy it with my kids too.
• Other elements of hip hop: DJing, graffiti, and b-boy fashion. I've been drawn to these, but I felt self-conscious as a white suburbanite about whether it's pretentious for me to be interested in or participate in them. (Another post coming someday about the definition of "cool".) The fictional origin of this aesthetic means the creators could craft a world where people of all ethnicities could participate together, and that can be the basis of us aspiring to that in the real world.
• Bold colors: as a kid doing early web designs, once I got out of my Marathon-and-Journeyman-Project-inspired brushed-metal phase, I was drawn to bold colors: whites, blacks, and strong colors. KMFDM's album design was an influence. And as someone who isn't very visually inclined, white-black-and-a-color gave the most impact with the least amount of color theory effort. The games are all about striking and surprising colors.
• Nonconformism and resisting corrupt authority: although I'm inclined to follow rules, when I see rules that are unjust I bristle. I guess I see myself as lawful-to-neutral good. In my teens that came out as resisting any kind of authority, including both religion and digital rights violations. Today the latter is still the case, as well as trying to educate myself about racial injustice and police brutality in the US.
• 2000s optimism and sincerity: with all the problems in the world in 2026 and the pervalent attitude of sarcasm and indifference, it's refreshing to hear music and see characters that unabashedly do what they enjoy, and who believe that by individually resisting they can make the world a better place.

The video game aesthetic is referred to as grind fiction. I've been referring to the music as "grind funk."