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This is my shrine for the only music unit in the world focused on the Sega Dreamcast, Pinokiwo!!

This page was opened on 20 August 2024 and last updated on 8 Febuary 2025.

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What is Pinokiwo?

Pinokiwo is the only music unit in the world who makes music only using the SEGA Dreamcast. It's a Visual Kei solo project and a doujin unit all at the same time.

The sound is very cheery and chiptune, and a lot of songs are made using the Sega Dreamcast. The stand-out song for this project, in my opinion, is Tokyo Radio City Girl. A perfect pop song with a metric tonne of autotune.

It might not be the most appealing sound in the world, but you have to admit it's unique. A certain kind of people (ME) really like it.

According to an interview done to promote the VA compilation album TOKYO guerrilla, Uyuni wanted to start a band, but he'd lost a lot of his passion, and the only things he liked anymore were games, anime, and 80s technopop musicians.

So, according to the official website:

In the year 2000, Uyuni felt so sorry for SEGA that he decided, "I'm going to make a doujin circle with the Dreamcast as a main feature!"

...but, it somehow turned out music unit when things were said and done.

"Everything important is taught to us by games, manga and anime!" is the motto of the unit. With this as their motto, they solve all of their troubles with 2D!

Uyuni's best friends are Sonic the Hedgehog, crawfish, and remote-control cars.

He doesn't care if the distance between himself and the real world is growing bigger and bigger.

He'll just turn around and straighten up!

...so, we have a middle-aged otaku choosing to ignore reality in order to dedicate himself to making shit music because of SEGA. And really? That's what's so good about it!

Who is Pinokiwo?

The unit started in December of the year 2000 with two members, Uyuni and Satetsu. Satetsu is more well known by his solo project Cosmo-Shiki, or from the band Shinjuku Gewalt under his real name Yoshiyuki Shimizu.

source

Unfortunately, he left on 3 Febuary 2003 for undisclosed reasons.

So Uyuni is the only member. But this isn't entirely true!

Officially, Uyuni isn't even in the band. I know this doesn't make sense, but bear with me. I'll give you a rundown of the current members:

Uyuni		He's in charge of singing and actually performing on the stage. He's not actually a member! He's just an eternal support member who happens to handle everything related to Pinokiwo because the other members can't! Born on March 5, 1975.
Dreamcast		In charge of performing and leading the band as a game console on stage. A fantastic 128-bit guy! In Pinokiwo, she's gendered as female.
Shiru-Sa-Maa		A water bottle placed on the stage to moisturise when needed. She's French (an Evian water bottle) and she's transparent, so she's entirely naked during lives. She's a girl who Uyuni kisses a lot during concerts, but she's sad because she gets thrown away afterwards.
Crystal		Pinokiwo's bassist. She should be on stage, but she's only visible to people with the ability to see her! She's the first "air member" of a band ever, she not only plays the air bass, but her body is made of air too. She got married in 2019, so she's no longer active in the band. She's based off the real-life Christel Takigawa.
Yuukorin		Pinokiwo's guitarist. Again, she should be on stage, but she's only visible to people with the ability to see her. She's also been absent from live shows because she's suddenly married with two children. She's based off the real-life Yuko Ogura.
Chiaki Kuryaama		Pinokiwo's drummer. Like Yuukorin and Crystal, she's only visible to people with the ability to see her. She's based off the real-life Chiaki Kuriyama. (She was in Kill Bill!)

...As you can see, Uyuni is only support. No, the members other than the Dreamcast and the water bottle have never been on stage. No, he isn't and has never been in contact with any of the girls he's put in his band. That's Pinokiwo for you!

Why like Pinokiwo?

The answer to this could be simple or it could be complex. After all, I'm not you, but if you want a general list of reasons to like it you've come to the right place.

As a Visual Kei project, there's always the visuals. You can't say there isn't a good aesthetic here. But to be fair, if that draws you in, then you're already halfway where you need to be when it comes to liking this guy.

Pinokiwo started as a doujin unit, and it still is (although it doesn't function like it used to). If you're an otaku--that is, if you're into manga, anime, games, and so on--then you should at least give listening to Pinokiwo a try. It's a living doujin work!

If you like electronic music, and particularly shit electronic music, then there's another reason. There's also the novelty: Music on a SEGA Dreamcast. Isn't that neat? I have my own copy of the software Uyuni uses, but I'm horrible at it. I'm very impressed with the music he can produce.

Of course, if you like other picopico musicians, you probably will like the music here. And if you don't... that's cool too, but I hope you can come around to it. I know I did.

What is Pinokiwo to ME?

It's a regular thing for web-shrines to have a section where the webmaster speaks about their own experiences with and relationship to the thing in question. This is mine! Although it ended up a bit long... please forgive me. ^_^; Pinokiwo is special to me because... the music is good, it introduced me to picopico bands in general, and in a roundabout way made me a braver person?

Visual Kei bands have been my one big passion for ages. For a very long time I wasn't doing well, and I mostly focused on V-Kei bands to get away from my real life. It's embarrassing to admit, and I'm doing better now, but this is exactly what triggered my obsession.

I think I first saw Pinokiwo around in late 2021, or maybe very early 2022, but I heard one song and I decided that it just wasn't my style... but around May 2022, I somehow stumbled on Pinokiwo again. This time I thought, maybe this isn't so bad. Good, even.

I liked the visuals... I realised that Tokyo Radio City Girl is actually a really good song... but I was still calling Uyuni "Pinokiwo" like it was his name! I did this for a long while without realising it. Well, it was mostly casual interest in the project. I still thought Uyuni was really cute!

Then in late August, I made one of my first ever CD purchases. I still don't know why I did this, I didn't collect before that moment, but I felt very compelled to buy a certain disc. It was Sega no Game wa Sekai Ichi!

That was likely the thing that made me go from casual fan to a little bit crazy. When I finally picked it up from the post office halfway through September, I opened the package right outside the post office, the obi strip fell off and then blew away before I could get it back! Which is a very embarrassing memory... but I was too excited to care for more than a moment.

I immediately became obsessed with what I had. The CD case is made to like a Dreamcast game, but it's blue like a PAL game. The booklet is a mock game manual, but the "health and safety instructions" aren't healthy or safe at all! I stared at it a stupid amount before I even decided to go home with my new prize.

I didn't have a CD player despite owning one other CD. What I did have lying around was a region free DVD player. So I loaded the CD into the player, and...

...and the song was exactly what I'd expected. Well, I'd heard live recordings already, so it wasn't anything new to me. And then the second track played, the remix, and it was kind of awful. But I couldn't really care about that... because I had a new CD! My friends and family didn't care about my love for Visual Kei, and usually I'd be sad about it, but the good thing in this case was that nobody cared enough for my collections to be anything but mine. That feeling of identity was very important to me at the time.

I ended up collecting a lot of CDs and things from more popular bands to reinforce this feeling, but that CD is really what kicked things off for me as a Pinokiwo fan too. I didn't know any other Pinokiwo Fans at the time, so I didn't have anyone to let down by being a Bad Fan. Because I didn't know any other Pinokiwo fans, I had to do my best with my own research. I got into other picopico bands and became slightly less anxious... and it helped me make lots more friends!

I don't just have this web-shrine dedicated to Pinokiwo, but a physical shrine in my room too. It's silly, but I'm a very dedicated person, and I love to collect things. Why not collect Pinokiwo merchandise too?

I've become obsessed with picopico as a whole since I got into Pinokiwo... and I wouldn't give it up for anything. I have no reason to! This kind of music makes me really happy. I make pages like this in hopes of spreading that joy to everyone else.

My CDs

Sega no Game wa Sekai Ichi!		Named after a comic about anthropomorphic SEGA consoles. Fun first track, awful remix. I clearly didn't take care of it correctly... It's covered in scratches.
pinokiwo-taikennbann CD-R Otameshi-!		A fun CD-R! I really love the first song. I have also fallen in love with anime characters to some extent, so I understand Uyuni. Short and sweet.
pinokiwo-taikennbann CD-R Otameshi-! 2		Also really good, believe it or not. I actually had people on YouTube asking me if I could upload Soda Mizu (which is actually Soda Sui, by the way--Uyuni uses the Chinese reading!) before I ever got rips of it... Now I have the disc of course.
Motto! Uyu-niitan.		Embarrassingly, my favourite out of everything I own. But you can't find Uyuni pretending to be a yandere and waking you up/telling you you've got a phone call/confessing his love to you anywhere else, and I spent forever looking for it, so... I think I'm allowed to like it. :-)
A film show Gessekai FILM		Not a CD, but who's counting? Live DVD from a remote solo concert in 2020. There's really nothing not to love about this one. I especially like the part where he jumps around and starts giggling to himself. Proof that grown men can be moe too.
RECORD	Image pending!	Pinokiwo's first and only album, released Christmas 2024. I ordered four copies for the bonuses and am giving three away to friends. I waited years for this... and it was worth it! My favourite track is track 6.

End & Links

Thank you for reading through my shrine. I love Uyuni and his music very very much, even if it's "bad". I wouldn't trade it for the world!

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