Perfume give their first televised performance of “Megu Loop”. Nocchiah Carey returns.

Perfume gave their first televised performance of “Meguri Loop”.

“Meguru Loop”. “Megu Loop”. Whatever the fuck this song is called. Even on Perfume’s official website the song title is listed in 2 different ways in English. When the song was introduced it was introduced as “Megu Loop”, so I’m guessing this is the actual title. But I’mma just called it “Throwing Card Song Number 3”.

And I think this might be Perfume’s first televised performance of a Nebula Romance song since their performances of “Cosmic Treat” at the tail end of 2024.

Perfume pulled up to Music Day wearing another variation of the Nebula Romance Army of Light outfits, which felt like a combination of their “Flash” and “Mugen Mirai” outfits — which many have been intentional, especially in light of the choreography. The outfits didn’t look completely terrible. But the outfits did look very busy. Perfume has worn several different Army of Light outfits in blue. That teal is OVER now. Which makes me wonder if the main outfit colour for Nebula Romance: Part 2 will be a richer blue.

HENNYWAY.

This performance ain’t about the outfits. It’s about the return of Nocchiah Carey. What’s that thing Maya Angelou said about caged birds and singing? Whatever. She’s back.

When I heard the snippet of “Throwing Card Song Number 3” I wasn’t expecting it to have anything in common with “Nebula Romance”, but it does. The sonics are very similar, which I dig. The verses and pre-chorus sound great — it really is so nice to hear Perfume sing differently and closer to their natural singing verses. But I cannot stand the chorus. The chorus is that cutesy bullshit I was hoping Perfume would move away from. And it doesn’t help that Perfume regresses back into that old Perfume way of singing during it. I really hope that this version of the song is a raggedy ‘Televised performance edit’ of the song and that there is actually a second verse. But with the way Yasutaka Nakata is with these song structures these days, you just never know.

Okay. So this performance isn’t just about Nocchiah Carey. It’s actually about Perfume’s choreographer — Mikiko — throwing more references and easter eggs in this bitch than Avengers: Endgame.

When I first watched this performance, I wasn’t keen on the choreography. I think it’s because it felt like there was a lot going on with it. There were so many moments which reminded me of other Perfume routines, that it kept pulling me out of the performance a little, because my mind kept trying to connect the dots of what was from where. But once I kinda accepted ‘This really is just a mish-mash of shit Perfume has done before’ and really thought about the song — the similarities to other routines began to make a lot more sense creatively. There’s so many references in this routine and I’m really hoping a dedicated stan pulls out their Pepe Silvia board and cuts together a video. But the specific ones that stuck out to me the most were “Time Warp”, “Mugen Mirai”, “Saisei”, “Polyrhythm” and the card throwing motion that we first saw in “Flash”. And in some cases it wasn’t just that moves were pulled from these routines, but also the vibes. The sound of “Throwing Card Song Number 3” bears similarities to “Time Warp”, “Mugen Mirai” and “Saisei”, so elements from the routines of these songs being present makes sense. But the lyrical themes of all three songs are also similar — the mention of time, looking back, memories and repetition. And “Polyrhythm” also has mention of repetition and loops.

Oftentimes what seems like Perfume self referencing ends up being coincidence. But after seeing Perfume hit that “Polyrhythm” pose, I said out loud ‘Bitch, this is intentional’, because that shit is too specific.

Perfume performing “Megu Loop” on The Music Day | NTV

I’m still not fully sold on the routine for “Throwing Card Song Number 3” as a whole, because it doesn’t really feel like it has an identity of its own. But I do like the intent, the easter eggs it provides fans and the connections to other song routines. A couple of my favourite Perfume concert moments are those which reference moments from their dance routines. The first being Nocchi’s section of “Perfume no Okite” from their Live at Tokyo Dome 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 show, where she does a move from 11 of Perfume’s singles up until that point. The second being and Pose Analysis from Reframe, where Perfume do the same thing, but as a trio and for more of their songs. So I guess it was only a matter of time until these were kinda done in a song. Especially with how we’ve been seeing familiar moves and moments in Perfume’s routines for the past couple of years.

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