Had some extra stress added to my life today with the sudden emergency request for translations by the end of the month and then the final arrangements before some needed work inside the home gets done tomorrow. I need a few hours to relax before I hit the hay.
For this season, another anime that we've been watching has been "Shuumatsu no Izetta"（終末のイゼッタ...Izetta The Last Witch）which started out as something akin to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with plenty of derring-do escapes starring a princess of a besieged European country who has as much spunk as another princess long ago in a galaxy far far away. There's also that feeling of a Studio Ghibli production as well...not surprising considering that the princess has a secret weapon/best friend in the form of a witch. However over the past number of weeks, the World War II setting and the interplay among the various characters including Princess Fine and Izetta The Last Witch have given me the impression that the plot is heading down through some very dark territory. Perhaps the best I might hope for by the end of its 12 or 13 episodes is a very bittersweet epilogue.
What keeps that impression within me is the ending theme "Hikari Aru Basho e" (To A Place With Light) that starts out with some dramatic and all-together not particularly happy piano. However it is arranged beautifully as the darkness turns into hope through Kazao Fujisawa's（藤澤風緒）melody; I can hear that light peeking through the middle part of the song before that piano crashes again on that last note. Man, I hope it isn't trying to warn me about how the story is going to unfold in the last half of the series.
May'n is the songbird behind "Hikari Aru Basho e" with Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）providing the evocative lyrics of trying to persuade the listener that there is no light without the dark. The singer's voice reminds me a little of Ayumi Hamasaki's（浜崎あゆみ）delivery as she tenderly navigates through the sensitive topic of having to get hurt to get stronger and that all the prayers in the world won't help you unless you take the difficult steps yourself. Tough love, folks.
"Hikari Aru Basho e" is May'n's 14th single since her debut under her stage name in May 2009 (she did release 3 earlier singles under her real name of Mei Nakabayashi（中林芽依）back in 2005 and 2006). There are no reports on how it has been doing since it literally got released a couple of days ago. Her biography can be found at Wikipedia while the translation of Iwasato's lyrics can be found at Lyrical Nonsense.
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