Arisa Mizuki -- Promise to Promise

 

Earlier this morning, I accompanied my father down to the hospital. Nothing serious; only his semi-annual eye check and everything was copacetic. Plus, I had some really good pizza in the hospital food court after the examination. I'll have to try a few more slices next time.

I was considering what to start today's batch of kayo kyoku with and I figured that with the hospital visit, I would start looking up some of the theme songs for the numerous hospital shows that have been on Japanese TV over the many decades. Basically, the medical drama over there, as it is over here in Canada and the US, is an absolute staple of scripted works on the telly. 

To be honest, I've never followed Arisa Mizuki's（観月ありさ）discography or filmography all that intently during the past few decades. She started out as this rather tall and willowy innocent in her early years and then in the last several years, she has morphed into suffer-no-fools-gladly roles that show off her steely will and power as folks like police squad leaders. 

However, in between those two phases, there was that middle phase where Mizuki landed her franchise role as a goofy and clumsy young lady trying to become the best nurse as one could be. And thus came her Izumi Asakura（朝倉いずみ）who made an impression upon me as the live-action version of Usagi Tsukino, aka Sailor Moon. "Nurse no O-shigoto"（ナースのお仕事...The Duties of a Nurse） was a Fuji-TV series that lasted four regular seasons and a few specials here and there up to 2014.

But Season 1 began in 1996 and so the first theme song for "Nurse no O-shigoto" was "Promise to Promise" as sung by Mizuki herself as her 12th single, released in July that year. Written and composed by Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）with Takahiro Maeda（前田たかひろ）helping out on lyrics, this was a pretty calming and button-down song about sticking with things no matter how tough they get, and Mizuki the singer therefore contrasts with Mizuki-as-Asakura. Asakura might be spilling tongue dispensers all over the ward but there is still a little bit of that calm blue ocean of Mizuki to right the ship. To be honest, the first time I heard this song was when one of the other cast members sang it during the blooper reel of the show.  "Promise to Promise" scored a No. 17 ranking on Oricon and sold about 150,000 copies.