Da-iCE -- Star Mine（スターマイン）

 

Boy band Da-iCE has appeared within the annals of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" once before but that was via one member, Yuudai Ohno（大野雄大）, helping out the vocal duo all at once with one of the cooler "Meitantei Conan"（名探偵コナン...Case Closed） ending theme songs. I've yet to have the entire band over.

Besides, Da-iCE has already made their name known through concerts, music videos and shows like NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）with the group having been around since 2011. In fact, several weeks ago, they showed up to perform their August 2022 22nd single "Star Mine".

Just to make things clear though, Da-iCE is not part of the former Johnny's Entertainment/current STARTO boy aidoru conglomerate; they're actually under Avex Management and officially, their genres are pop and EDM. I even referred to them in the "Case Closed" end theme article as a song-and-dance group well into their thirties. Speaking of EDM, I guess it's been the preferred genre for many a boy band over the past few years since I heard Da-iCE and other similar groups performing these dance-clubby tunes with a certain Latin or Ibiza flair, and that's the case with "Star Mine" which was created by leader Taiki Kudo（工藤大輝）with Taro Mizote and Ryosuke Saito（サイトウ リョースケ）also helping out on the melody. His lyrics are somewhat murky but I gather that there is a certain sci-fi thing going on.

However, there's a lot of pizzazz in the arrangement with a karaoke-friendly minor expletive to get the main chorus going. It ended up winning an Excellent Performance prize at the Japan Record Awards of 2022 along with half a billion views on TikTok. "Star Mine" was also included in Da-iCE's 8th original album "Scene" from May 2023. Kudo's fellow Da-iCICLEs are the aforementioned Ohno, Toru Iwaoka（岩岡徹）, Sota Hanamura（花村想太）and Hayate Wada（和田颯）.