Yumiko Takahashi -- Good Love!

Last week, commenter Pocari D. referred to Yumiko Takahashi（高橋由美子）in my article for Chami Satonaka（里中茶美）. I'd known that Takahashi did have her aidoru phase in the 1990s, but I primarily knew her as an actress in all those J-Dramas way back when.

During my time back in Toronto between my JET days and my far longer stay in Japan from the mid-90s onwards, I used to get videotapes from Japanese TV whether it be through the local rental stores or from friends living in the nation. One of my favourite programs happened to be the annual or semi-annual blooper reel shows that popped up on Fuji-TV.

One of the shows featured was a comedy-drama called "Onegai Darling!"（お願いダーリン!...Please Darling!）starring Takahashi as a high school student married to a high school teacher at the same school. Apparently, much hilarity ensued.

The other television memory that I have of Takahashi was when she co-starred as one of the office ladies in the "Shomu-ni"（ショムニ...General Affairs, Section 2）franchise about a much-maligned section in a huge corporation where careers go to die. Takahashi played the incredibly stone-faced Rie Himukai（日向リエ）, the section's fortune-telling expert. She barely cracked any sort of emotion in that show, aside from one special episode where Himukai actually fell in love.

Getting back to that first show, the theme song for "Onegai Darling!" was Takahashi's 10th single, "Good Love!" from February 1993. Pocari D. referred to her Eurobeat material but at least with this one, I wouldn't say that this falls into the Eurobeat genre and I'm not even sure if this would be a totally cutesy aidoru tune itself although Miyu Yuzuki's（柚木美祐）lyrics refer to a woman's falling head-over-heels in love. The melody by Kazuya Motojima（本島一弥）and arrangement by Masaki Iwamoto（岩本正樹）take things a bit higher in my estimation; I'm such a sucker for the keyboards during that decade.

And I have to say that so far, Takahashi doesn't sound too hard on the ears. She apparently didn't sound too hard on the ears for a lot of people either, since "Good Love!" peaked at No. 17, selling a tad over 190,000 copies and becoming her 2nd-most successful single.