My friend though tofu too, but it didn’t seem to go with the whole “condiments” thing.
I assumed the cat was hung because of his indecision concerning which condiment to put on his fried egg.
I’ve had Kikkoman soy sauce in little plastic fish shaped containers like that before. Sort of a single serving size not dissimilar to individual ketchup packets in the US.
I got a translation of the lyrics:
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2002_11_17.html#000013
No clue as to who the square-headed guy is supposed to be, though.
Wow! One has to think that the anti-drug folks would have more luck with these things than their current campaigns.
Bwahahahahahaha!
Now, this is where all those years of Japanese study pay off…
Anyway, the fish-head’s kinda been explained. Soy-sauce containers for lunch boxes are shaped like that - it’s something anyone who’s lived in Japan would pick up right away, an integral part of daily life.
As for the sugar cube… The three “bases” of Japanese cooking are soy sauce, vinegar and sugar. The bottle shaped character had “vinegar” written on his head. See? Vinegar and sugar are soy sauce’s friends.
The translated lyrics are a prime example of Japeninglish, but there’s some stuff missing.
There are a few really awful puns in this thing that can’t really be translated.
[sub]Show me, show you… heeheehee[/sub]
Thanks, jovan. But, still, why was the kitty hung?
And anyway, you can’t fool me. Anyone who would hang a cat would fry a cat. Those fried things have four legs, ears and eyes and I’m not eating them.
Okay, the hung kitty, is well… I’m not sure I get it.
At the beginning of the clip, we see kitty wondering what to put on his eggs, Kikko-man then goes: fried eggs? Go for the soy sauce, man! We then see kitty in a sunny field, with the words “thank you Kikko-man!” somewhere on the screen. Towards the end, kitty is back at the table, and now a decidedly p-o’d Kikko-man yells That’s what I told you, soy sauce! Then we see poor kitty hanging… The text is less than clear, it goes something like, “that’s the way it is.” Not perticularly enlightening.
My interpretation is that this is meant to show that Kikko-man is not only Loving, he is also Just. It’s very important to understand that Kikko-man is capable of hate, because Kikko-man hates Worcestershire sauce. So, if you let Soy Sauce into your meal, Kikko-man will reward you with sunny fields. On the other hand, those who do not banish Worcestershire sauce from their kitchen are going to hell.
That’s my take on it, but then again, perhaps I read too much GD.
Okay… But where do all the pelvic thrusts and shooting mouth beams have to do with it?
Question on the second flash - what the heck was happening to the characters? At least twice they’d stop and their eyes would turn into vertical rectangles running the length of their heads.
My train of thought jumped the track. “Where do they fit in?” and “What does that have to do with it?” did a do-se-do in midsentence.
I’m certainly not gonna watch it once more, but…
There were soy sauce, vinegar and sugar characters so I guess that’s what they were shooting.
The shrimp and banana had weird eyes, cyrillic d’s in fact. I’m not sure but what you see as verticle rectangles, I see as crying. But then again, I’ve been here a while.
The English version is up:
http://yoga.tripod.co.jp/flash/kikkomaso_e.htm
The translation is a lot more accurate than on the previous link.
Crying… I’ll buy that. But I’ll admit that I’m anime-illiterate, so little visual cues that may be commonplace in the cartoons are totally lost on me.
Hanged! Hanged! Hanged!
Technically, I suppose a kitty cat can, in fact, be hung. But I really don’t want to hear about how you found out for sure. 
Eh, I like it better in Japanese. On a related note, America’s Test Kitchens did a taste test of soy sauces and guess which one was compared to “battery acid?” Yep. Our friend Kikkoman. Over-processed with too much salt.
I saw it, I don’t know what all the imagery means, but it haunts me sometimes… especially the song… “Show me Show me, Kikko Man Kikko Man”… yikes! Like there aren’t more important things I need that brain capacity for! someone help me please.
The cat appears to me to have been angered by Kikkoman’s pleas to use soy sauce. Note that Kikkoman ends up screaming at the cat to choose the soy sauce over other condiments. I imagine Ten Thousand Year-Old Turtle* is just as annoyed as the cat is. The cat decides to commit suicide, or Kikkoman killed the cat so he’d shut up.
[sub]kikko=turtle
man=10,000
The Japanese believe the turtle lives for 10,000 years.
Source: Kikkoman Corporation[/sub]
[brief hijack]
Speaking of which: Does anyone still have the link to that sad kitty?
Possible explanation sbmitted at chowhound.
This is terribly similar to the bizarre “Massage the Penis” ASCII Flash Animation movie. I guess the artist sold out.