Rie Kugimiya & Eri Kitamura -- Holy Night （ホーリーナイト）

More Christmas or Moé Christmas? That is the question.

Well, December has arrived which means the Yuletide is just around the corner. And that also means it's time to look for those Japanese Xmas songs. Mind you, it looks like I scoured the shelves for them during my first year of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", so it's been that much more difficult since then whenever the time comes.

However, I did the equivalent version of a Hail Mary pass on YouTube and entered 「日本クリスマス曲」into its search engine in the hopes that I might find something new. Of course, the two perennial chestnuts of "Christmas Eve" and "Christmas Carol no Koro ni wa"（クリスマス・キャロルの頃には）popped up, but then I came across the above video of a song called "Holy Night" which was sung by a couple of seiyuu on an anime that I have yet to watch called "ToraDora!"（とらドラ!）. From what I've read about it on YouTube and Television Tropes & Idioms, it was quite the well-regarded rom-com.

In any case, I became quite enchanted by "Holy Night", and since even at my advanced age, there's still a little part of me that gets gooshy about Christmas (I still watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" every year), I've ended up listening to it about half a dozen times in the past 24 hours. It hits all the right notes, no pun intended, and has the cute-as-all-get-out charm of a Santa hat-wearing Snoopy.

The song was performed by Rie Kugimiya（釘宮理恵）and Eri Kitamura（喜多村英梨）for the Xmas episode of "ToraDora!" which had its run between 2008 and 2009. I have heard Kitamura's name bandied about and probably I have seen her in guest roles on some of the anime that I've seen in the past few years, but Kugimiya is a more familiar presence. I've been able to see her in shows such as "Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to"（マンガ家さんとアシスタントさんと...The Manga Artist and The Assistant）and "Witchcraft Works"（ウィッチクラフトワークス）. She seems to have cultivated quite the reputation as the go-to thespian for tsundere roles (the prime example her role in "ToraDora!" as the explosive Taiga), but I did get to see her in a hilarious non-tsundere guest appearance in "Shirokuma Cafe"（しろくまカフェ）as the poor high school girl who just had to fall in love with the florist with the major Panda fetish, RinRin.

"Holy Night" was written by Mari Okada（岡田麿里）and composed by Yukari Hashimoto（橋本由香利）, and is available on "ToraDora! Character Song Album" which came out in 2009.

A wreath in Roppongi