The moment the music video for “Melori” (メロリ) from the new album S say dropped, something shifted deep inside the chest—an almost physical click, as if a forgotten tape started playing again without warning. It feels like remembering something that never really happened, like the smell of a season you can’t name or a flashback to a summer that might not have existed.
New yet familiar. Sweet yet painful. Nostalgic yet present. It’s the kind of sensory overload that makes you laugh through the sting of tears. “Melori” isn’t just a music video; it’s Hey! Say! JUMP bottling what youth feels like and handing it back to us years later.
To convey a tactile sense of nostalgia—Hey! Say! (the Heisei era)—the MV was filmed using various types of cameras such as flip phones, disposable cameras, and cheki.
The footage feels exactly like spending youth alongside the members, awakening faint memories in your mind.
Daiki Arioka’s concept is nothing short of brilliant. It wasn’t designed just to look nostalgic — it was designed to feel like remembering. Not reenacting youth, but triggering the exact ache of it. That intoxicating mix of “I miss this” and “I never actually lived this,” the kind of memory that makes your chest tighten with longing and tenderness at the same time.
Watching the footage feels like stumbling across an old home video you somehow forgot existed, and finding “the boy I used to be in love with back then” smiling back at you — familiar, distant, and impossibly dear. Or as if it were through Yuto’s POV.
Planned as the lead music video for the album S say (released November 26, 2025), “Melori” wasn’t created in isolation—it is positioned deliberately as the emotional centerpiece of the album. With songwriting by bassist–composer MINA and arrangement by Yuichi Harada, the track was designed from the start as a clash of glittering pop and dangerously heavy affection, a sound that pairs perfectly with the MV’s nostalgia-driven storytelling.
It’s overwhelmingly nostalgic, striking everyone right in the heart and reviving soft, bittersweet memories of adolescence.
To convey a tactile sense of nostalgia from the Hey! Say! (the Heisei era) era—the MV uses disposable cameras, Polaroids, flip phones, and a 4:3 aspect ratio—not for aesthetic trend but for emotional precision. It’s a visual language of memory, of the days before everything was easily edited and polished. The seven of them spend a whole day together, not performing but simply being.
Bowling, karaoke, gaming centers, table tennis, purikura, amusement parks, bouldering, monja—no big plot, no artificial stakes, no flashy MV tropes. Just joy. Just comfort. Just the warmth of people who genuinely like each other. It’s a day we didn’t get to experience with them, yet it somehow feels like a cherished memory of our own, very reminiscent of the old making-of videos a decade ago.
And then there’s the song. Polished pop glittering on the surface, but the lyrics pulse with heavy affection—love that’s beautiful because it’s a little unhinged, a little poisonous, a little too much. MINA’s bassline gives the track its heartbeat, the kind that quietly rewires you without asking permission. Harada’s production leaves space around the vocals and sharpens emotional peaks, syncing the sonic structure with the MV’s blend of past and present—the sound isn’t retro, but it feels like a memory.
The choreography completes the emotional ambush: the finger movements near the face, the cute gesture at the mouth, the soft bounce. It’s simple enough to copy but powerful enough to destroy—and it taps into something quintessentially JUMP. For years, they’ve been the kings of delivering choreography that anyone can follow, the kind that stays in your body long after the music stops and turns into tradition. Their dances don’t just trend; they become memories that fans keep forever. A textbook example of idol pop as emotional warfare.
Watching the MV makes screenshot impulses uncontrollable. Every frame is a postcard. Every second is a new “favorite moment.” And while it’s cute on the surface, the context makes it devastating: these men are in their 30s and still embrace “idol” not as an aesthetic assigned to youth, but as a craft they’ve chosen to grow with. They never abandoned softness for respectability or maturity—they expanded maturity to include softness. They prove, effortlessly, that youth isn’t an age; it’s a way of loving life.
Somewhere in the middle of watching, we all arrive at the same emotional truth: we want Hey! Say! JUMP to last forever. It’s not possessiveness. It’s not expectation. It’s just love.
When they are together—laughing, teasing, wrapped up in their own joy—their brightest selves come out. And witnessing that makes us want time to slow down. Even when we know “forever” cannot be guaranteed, we still pray for it, because their happiness feels too precious to be temporary.
The closing moments of the MV—filmed, notably, on the group’s anniversary——those poses, those expressions, that framing—feel like the final page of a diary written on a perfect day you never wanted to end.
It isn’t our memory and yet it feels like ours. We didn’t grow up beside them, yet our hearts insist we did. They’re far away, but we have lived so much of life alongside their voices, their smiles, their music. Maybe that’s why this MV hurts in the most beautiful way: it tricks the heart into believing it is remembering rather than watching.
And even though logic knows nothing is permanent, the simple reality that today the seven of them are laughing together is enough to make the world feel survivable. So we keep wishing: “Please stay happy.” “Please stay together for a long, long time.” “Please keep shining the way you do.” A gratitude. The kind that sits heavy and warm inside the chest.
Because “Melori” isn’t just cute. It’s a calculated emotional knockout. It gathers every reason Hey! Say! JUMP is loved—their chemistry, their sincerity, their softness, their sense of fun—and turns it into a time capsule of connection. It doesn’t make us long for the past; it makes the present feel like youth again.
Maybe forever doesn’t exist in reality. But this MV makes us believe in it anyway, even if it’s just for four minutes. And sometimes, that belief is enough.
Hey! Say! JUMP today, Hey! Say! JUMP back then, Hey! Say! JUMP years from now—it’s all the same wish: That all of them will stay happy, laughing, shining, and choosing each other.
A music video that makes us fall in love all over again—not just with them, but with the feeling of hope itself.
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