GOODWARP -- Sweet Darwin

Back in November last year, I wrote up an article about the opening theme song for slice-of-life anime "Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari" (うどんの国の金色毛鞠), aka "Poco's Udon World", WEAVER's "S.O.S." I had yet to write anything about the ending theme but that was partially because I hadn't seen the last two episodes of the series from Fall 2016 and that was due to my buddy heading over to Japan during the Holidays.

However, I did catch those last two episodes this week and I'm kinda glad that I didn't see especially the finale over at my friend's place since frankly having two guys tear up watching an anime is still a bit weird for me. Yup, Episode 12 was that heartwarming and heartbreaking but not totally surprising, and from what I read on the YouTube comments, it looks like a lot of folks felt the same way.

I also read that "Poco's Udon World" didn't exactly launch any ratings up into the stratosphere and that's a bit disappointing although again not altogether surprising. Being a gentle slice-of-life show probably wouldn't have grabbed the action fans and the show had the slight misfortune of coming on right after a pretty similar series in the summer titled "Amaama to Inazuma"（甘々と稲妻）in terms of overall tone. Heck, it even had the same seiyuu, Yuuichi Nakamura（中村悠一）, in the lead male role.

But for those who did watch the antics of Poco and Souta from beginning to end like myself, I think they were satisfied for the most part with this mix of "Field of Dreams", Japanese folklore and a travelogue of Kagawa Prefecture. That finale, though...wow...and that was televised on Xmas Day, too.

I think that soothing ending theme by GOODWARP, "Sweet Darwin" hit harder than usual after all of the stuff that had occurred in Episode 12. To be honest, when I first heard it in Episode 1, I had thought that it was WEAVER again but it was indeed a different band here. The song was part of the band's 3rd single released in November 2016 and was created by vocalist Takuya Yoshizaki（吉崎拓也）.

GOODWARP is a rock band formed in 2011 with four members: the aforementioned Yoshizaki, guitarist Tomoo Fujita（藤田朋生）, bassist Hisashi Hagiwara（萩原尚史）and drummer Yuuji Ariyasu（有安祐二）. According to the J-Wiki profile, all four of them have their own distinct musical influences ranging from The Beatles to X Japan to YMO. As for the shortened version of the official music video here, you can also get a partial demonstration of how to make udon noodles

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You can see the ending credits featuring "Sweet Darwin" at a little past 19:10 in the above video.