Megumi Nakajima -- Wasurenai yo （忘れないよ。）

About 18 months ago, I wrote about seiyuu/singer Megumi Nakajima's（中島愛）pulsating and clubby "TRY UNITE!", the theme song for anime "Rinne no LaGrange" from 2012. I got no further than the pilot episode but that song stayed in my brain for a good long time as I imagined driving down the night highways of Tokyo while listening to it.

Well, I came across another song from Nakajima only recently and it's another theme song from the same anime. "Wasurenai yo" (I Won't Forget). This was the co-ending theme to the 2nd season and was the coupling song to Nakajima's 7th single, "Marble" which was the opening theme to that season. But that's where the similarities end. Whereas "TRY UNITE!" has that perfect vibe for a nighttime spin in the Ferrari, "Wasurenai yo" has a heartwarming and huggable melody. Music and lyrics were by songwriter Miyagi Prefecture-born Kana Yabuki（矢吹香那）who has also created songs for acts like May J. and AKB48.

According to the write-up on J-Wiki for the song, the theme is on the old hometown. Yabuki wrote about the permanent bonds between friends even if proximity was no longer possible. Considering that it's graduation season in Japan, this would be the perfect song to get some tears flowing among classmates who are about to walk different paths. What has made this an earworm for me is not only the friendly and folksy music but also the intro of the full version (the theme for the closing credits starts up several seconds in) which has a slightly cool jazzy piano and guitar that put me at ease when I heard it the first time.

"Wasurenai yo" was released in August 2012 and got as high as No. 20 on Oricon and even as high as No. 5 on the Billboard Japan Adult Contemporary rankings. Maybe the song is good with that glass of Chablis, n'est-ce pas?