Here’s Why Some ONCEs Aren’t Happy About TWICE’s Japanese Version of “Likey”

While ONCEs were surprised by TWICE Japan’s stealth release of “Likey” to hype up TWICE‘s upcoming 2nd Japanese compilation album, reactions to various aspects of the release were decidedly mixed.

Many ONCEs highlighted how strange it was that even though both the Korean and Japanese music video were filmed at the same time, that the Japanese version was released over a year after the Korean version was.

And they made their feelings on the subject known across social media.

The reactions from ONCEs across Twitter definitely seemed to lean more negative, though their were some positive comments in between.

Some notable reactions include:

“Wait… Did Twice film this at the same time as the Korean version? Twice planned so far ahead they knew they would need a Japanese version eventually. Wow! Queens.”
“So they only decided to release it now??? 2 years later!?”
“I can’t believe you guys kept this for over a year.”
“since WHEN did this EXIST”
“QUEENS OF RELEASING A MV TWO YEARS LATER”

Meanwhile, on the official YouTube video, reactions were slightly more positive.

Some interesting reactions were:

“queen of singing in different languages, hiding a mv for more than a year, and killing us with their talents.”
“Everytime I hear Tzuyu singing in Japanese, I’m stanning our multilingual queen more. Chinese, Korean, English AND Japanese? Yasss.”
This will be the next SOTY in JAPAN
So this was hidden for 1year and 3months jyp?
Why are they posting this now?? After so long lol

Reddit, meanwhile, focused more on various aspects of the song’s Japanese translation – and overall thought that the JP version just wasn’t as pleasing to the ear as the Korean version is.

Some comments about the topics include:

“Whenever songs get translated like this it feels so unnatural after listening to the original so many times lol”
“Translating songs will always have a weird style since you lose out actual vowel and consonant sounds even if you keep the same syllables haha.”
“Im a Japanese and as much I love TWICE, I legit do not know what are they saying. Except Mina and some Jihyo’s part. I’m really happy they release Japanese ver, but by looking at the comment section, most of us prefer the Korean ver, as the Japanese ver sounds unnatural”
Being a fan of Jpop, their pronunciation does sound weird, but damn I actually liked Mina’s part here more than the og.

What are your thoughts about the song, ONCEs?