Minami Kuribayashi -- Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line (翼はPleasure Line)

I always thought that Minami Kuribayashi (栗林みな実) deserved to be a famous J-pop singer, but her status as a seiyuu/anisong singer is probably a negative factor for this to become reality as few singers of the genre are really chart breaking like Megumi Hayashibara (林原めぐみ) in the 90s and Nana Mizuki  (水樹奈々) nowadays.

I’m saying that because after listening to Kuribayashi’s songs and watching some of her live performances we can certainly say that the girl can sing. Overall, her discography is not always on point, with very similar arrangements and some not very memorable hooks, but a good portion of the songs, like “Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” (翼はPleasure Line), is not part of that bunch. This particular song is one of Kuribayashi’s classics and it was the opening theme for the 2003-2004 anime “Chrno Crusade” (クロノクルセイド). I remember that after listening to it for the first time at my friend’s place back in 2006 I instantly became a fan of Minami Kuribayashi. Time passed by, but I never got tired of this song. It’s just THAT great to my ears.

The song as a whole is very energetic and Minami’s vocals are cute yet powerful when required (a very positive characteristic of her). As for the arrangement, the strings makes the song shine even more.

Minami Kuribayashi came to a big anime convention here in Brazil some years ago, but unfortunately I couldn’t attend the event. She sang “Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” and other famous songs from her discography, which makes me regret until today for not being able to cheer and have fun at her concert. Luckily, I have a copy of her "1st Live Tour 2007 fantastic arrow" concert DVD with that great performance of “Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” featured at the beginning of this post. And she was at the top of her beauty in this concert.

"Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line" is not only my favorite Minami Kuribayashi song, but one of my favourite songs of all times. As I said earlier, I never get tired of it.

“Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” was released back in January 2004 as Kuribayashi’s fourth single. It reached #17 on the Oricon charts and sold 51,500 copies (source: Wikipedia), making it the third best selling single of her career. The song was later included in the 2006 album “passage” and the 2011 best of compilation “stories”. The lyrics were written by Hata Aki (畑亜貴), while the music and arrangement were made by Noriyasu Agematsu (上松範康), a founding member of the group of music composers Elements Garden.