Kumi Miyasato -- Kaze no Lullaby （風のララバイ）

Well, happy Victoria Day to my fellow Canadians. I can hear some of the fireworks outside. Got together with a couple of my movie buddies in Toronto to catch one of the more anticipated blockbusters for 2017, "Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2". And it didn't disappoint. My anime buddy last week told me that he wasn't all that thrilled with it but I still had a good time, and strangely enough, there were even some poignant scenes at the end...I can guarantee if this had been released closer to Father's Day, there would have been some major waterworks from the guys. Finally, I did love the ending credits with most of the cast boogeying down (even Karen Gillan) along with David Hasselhoff chiming in.

Yesterday when I was doing the routine with my anime buddy, he put on a song that he hadn't done before during the music section of our session. It happened to be "Kaze no Lullaby" (Lullaby of the Wind), a ballad that had been included in the anime "Megazone 23" from 1985.

I barely remember that particular show although it was shown at U of T by somebody back in the day. Mind you, I do remember one scene from the 2nd part of "Megazone 23" in which a jet pilot gets ripped apart by a bunch of tentacles....I couldn't remember anything else including the sex scenes, and yet I remember that evisceration....kinda wish I could un-remember it.

"Kaze no Lullaby" was recorded by Kumi Miyasato（宮里久美）who actually had a starring role in the anime and my buddy told me that she had been groomed to be another Mari Iijima（飯島真理）who was immortalized because of her iconic character Lynn Minmay from "Macross". Miyasato didn't quite make that level of fame apparently (she left showbiz in 1989) but I did enjoy "Kaze no Lullaby" which has that gentle and classy European-sounding melody reminiscent of Gazebo's "I Love Chopin" which was famously covered by actress-singer Asami Kobayashi（小林麻美）as "Ame Oto wa Chopin no Shirabe"（雨音はショパンの調べ）. I've heard other songs by young female Japanese singers with a similar arrangement in the 1980s which makes me wonder whether the Gazebo hit had become quite the influence.

The song was written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by Hiroaki Serizawa（芹澤廣明）, and it was a track on Miyasato's debut album "Hitomi de Whispering"（瞳でウィスパリング...Whispering With My Eyes）from October 1985.