Recently, I listened to one of the podcasts from "Japan Top 10" that I had mentioned via an article from earlier this month. It was Episode 114 hosted by Recca which dealt with all of the 80s songs of my relative youth. I recognized a lot of them but there was one that was actually new to my ears.
I've known Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）primarily for their big hit and debut single "Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide" （セーラー服を脱がさないで）from July 1985, and right from that song, my impression of the multi-aidoru supergroup was set: super-cute girls-next-door singing super-cute tunes, although my jaw did drop when I could finally translate Yasushi Akimoto's（秋元康）lyrics.
Through Recca's broadcast, I found "O-saki ni Shitsurei" (Excuse Me For Going First), their 5th single from July 1986 which was also written by Akimoto and composed by Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）. Another cute tune with a 50s twist, the sunny summer song hides the story of high school girls preparing for battle over the handsome high school boy. But as far as I know, no shivs were used...I gather that it had all the menace and violence of a comedic anime.
It's interesting watching the performances here when compared with Akimoto's longer-lasting venture with AKB48 and the rest of the alphabet aidoru groups. Onyanko Club seemed to have been far less flashy in their music and dance but the kawaii energy was indeed there along with the rabid fandom. And I think the point with the entire group back then was to have that really down-to-earth group of teenage girls without the need for a lot of pizzazz...relatively speaking, anyways.
"O-saki ni Shitsurei" hit No. 1 on Oricon and ended up as the 69th-ranked single for 1986. The main vocals as provided by J-Wiki were Harumi Tomikawa（富川春美）, Yukiko Iwai（岩井由紀子）, Marina Watanabe（渡辺満里奈）and Tomoko Fukawa（布川智子）.
Hi J-C ! Great to see Onyanko Club here again; especially since we observed the 31st anniversary of their final concert only a few days ago. With very few exceptions I'm not an AKB fan (or any other alphabet group); they seem to be regressing towards anime/manga tropes while Onyanko was clearly growing up almost week by week (if you watch the DVD set for 夕やけニャンニャン you can actually see it). In his book "Idols & Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture" the author, Patrick Galbraith, said it well: "... selected ... not necessarily on singing ability or good looks, but rather on how interesting they were." And still are ;)
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again, T-cat!
DeleteI'm not a huge fan of the alphabet groups either aside from a few songs and not a dedicated fan of Onyanko Club although quite a few of the members have become very famous on their own. Still, it was nice to come across this one by the Club.