Nana Mizuki -- STARTING NOW!/Sumire Uesaka -- Koi suru Zukei (cubic futurismo) （恋する図形）

Looking above at one particular scene from Summer 2016 anime "Kono Bijutsu-bu ni wa Mondai ga aru"（この美術部には問題がある！...This Art Club Has a Problem!）, I do remember some of those weird vending machine drinks. Yup, I recall drinking banana au lait and peach nectar especially the latter during the scorching hot months in Tokyo (I've got no idea how the athletes are gonna cope in 2020...hope they have a lot of spare change). There was also this one drink called MAX COFFEE which supposedly was only sold east of Tokyo (not quite true...I have seen a few examples in the west end of the megalopolis) that I was greatly addicted to even more than Coke. It was basically coffee-flavoured liquid sugar that I just gulped down with my Chip Star...and so you must wonder how I actually survived past 2010. However, I must digress.

"Kono Bijutsu-bu ni wa Mondai ga aru" is one of the shows that my anime buddy and I have been watching for the past several weeks and it's been fun. Strangely enough, it's another Ari Ozawa（小澤亜李）-headed show featuring her as a high-strung high school student in love with a romantically oblivious schoolmate who is a talented artist while she is supported by at least one other high-powered seiyuu. If I had seen the script treatment before watching the show, I would have thought that a sequel to "Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun"（月刊少女野崎くん）was finally on the air. To be fair, though, the target of Ozawa's character's love this time is not a hulking fellow with a basso profundo voice but someone who looks a lot more twerpy.

Another similarity between "Bijutsu-bu" and "Nozaki-kun" is that both programs have earworm-y opening and ending themes.

First up is the opening "STARTING NOW!" with that high-powered seiyuu, Nana Mizuki（水樹奈々）, showing that she hasn't left her anison world behind. I'm not usually a huge rock anison fan but there is something about this one including the part where Mizuki uses the vocoder to yell out the title that really sticks in my eardrums along with the usual wax (my apologies if you were eating something when you read that just now).

Man, is she the youngest-looking 36-year-old (as of this writing) or what? In any case, "STARTING NOW!" was released in July 2016 with Mizuki coming up with the lyrics while Takuya Fujita（藤田卓也）composed the tune. Perhaps it has already peaked, but at this point it has gotten to No. 3 on Oricon. The above video is just a 2-minute short version but there is the longer take on the song via TV below. By the way, Mizuki plays the shy rookie teacher, Tachibana-sensei who supervises the art club in question.

Over the past few years, I've learned that whenever I hear a bunch of YMO-era syn-drums on an anison, it has got to be the TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN FUND behind it. Ever since hearing that earworm the size of an anaconda by them, "Witch Activity"（ウィッチ☆アクティビティ）, which ended each episode of "Witchcraft Works"（ウィッチクラフトワークス）a couple of years ago, I've been wondering if the Technoboys could come up with something that could top that.

Well, maybe I have with the ending theme for "Bijutsu-bu". This is "Koi suru Zukei" (A Figure in Love) sung by the Russian-speaking seiyuu and singer Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）. Those pulses, bleeps and synthesized percussion are back to create something that I like even more than "STARTING NOW!" I couldn't find the actual ending credits for the show with the song, but that's OK considering the music video is far more mesmerizing. As Uesaka has put up, it's encouraged to watch it on a smartphone for the best effect. However, I have never owned one of those contraptions and don't plan on getting one any time soon but even watching it on conventional YouTube is fun enough for me.

I wonder if those three guys who seem to be paying tribute to the British fellows from the old Art of Noise videos are the actual Technoboys. "Koi suru Zukei" is Uesaka's 7th single released just a couple of weeks ago on August 3rd. As for some trivia from J-Wiki, the title was simply just going to be "cubic futurismo" but since Uesaka is such a big fan of singer Jun Togawa（戸川純）, she was able to add on the Japanese title which is a twist on one of Togawa's songs from the 1980s, "Zukei no Koi"（図形の恋...Figure Love）. Uesaka also has a role in the show as the perky blonde buddy Collette who seems to be Dekomori from "Chuunibyo demo Koi ga shitai"（中二病でも恋がしたい）without the weaponized twin tails.

Now I can only wonder what would happen if I guzzled down a bottle of MAX COFFEE while listening to a TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN FUND-created tune. The last thing I would probably hear is "Death officially listed at...."