BODY: If you've ever wanted to belt out the Chainsaw Man movie theme at full volume without paying a karaoke-box hourly rate, Nintendo has opened a ten-day window.
On October 2 at 10:00 JST, Nintendo launched the "Anime Song Spectacular 10-Day Free Campaign" in Karaoke JOYSOUND for Nintendo Switch, the console's long-running karaoke app. The promotion runs until October 12 at 9:59 JST, and it is live as of this writing.
The deal is simple: 30 anime tracks are unlocked as free songs, and players can sing them up to 99 times per day at no cost — no pass, no ticket, no subscription. The highlighted picks lean heavily on the last year and a half of anime chart dominance. There's "IRIS OUT," Kenshi Yonezu's theme for Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc; "Kaijū," Sakanaction's opening for Orb: On the Movements of the Earth; and "Ai♡Scream!," the gloriously silly cross-franchise Love Live! single from AiScReam that became an inescapable short-video earworm.
Karaoke JOYSOUND for Nintendo Switch itself is a free download from the Nintendo eShop. Normally, singing requires buying a time-based pass, which is why these periodic free campaigns matter — they're the only way to use the software at zero cost. A dedicated USB microphone is sold separately, though USB mics and headsets generally work fine.
The insider take
Switch karaoke occupies a specific niche in Japanese domestic life that's easy to miss from abroad. Karaoke boxes are cheap by entertainment standards but still cost money per person per hour, and hitokara — solo karaoke — carries enough social weight that plenty of people would rather practice at home first. The Switch app is the default home rig precisely because the console is already under the TV in millions of living rooms. Nintendo's timing here is also no accident: early October is when the autumn anime cour begins and anime-song interest spikes. Expect another of these windows around New Year's, when extended families are stuck indoors together and someone inevitably suggests karaoke.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).