Yuko Matsutani/misono -- Lum no Love Song（ラムのラブソング）

Back in 2015, I wrote about the theme song for "Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer"（うる星やつら2： ビューティフル・ドリーマー）, "Ai wa Boomerang"（愛はブーメラン）, which had come out in 1984. I confessed that I was never a fan of the original series but that the character of Lum（ラム）was pretty well iconic to the point that even I knew about her.

Years ago, when I was living and working in the Tokyo area, a friend and I dropped into the famous Mandarake（まんだらけ）shop in Shibuya since my friend wanted to find a few things such as some manga. Apparently, it may have been one of the rules that at least some of the staffers there had to perform some sort of cosplay. Well, as I was walking through one of the narrow aisles, I encountered a young lithe lady who was decked out as the Lum. Yep, shrinking tiger-patterned outfit and all...just like the lady in the video above at Moa Channel, although the staffer at Mandarake was far more nonchalant. I quickly moved back the other way.

Last week, I wrote about singer-songwriter Izumi "Mimi" Kobayashi（小林泉美）who had been in the urban contemporary side of Japanese pop music from the 1970s. I found out that she had a lot to do with a number of the theme songs for "Urusei Yatsura", although "Ai wa Boomerang" wasn't one of them. However, she was partially responsible for the very first opening theme for the TV anime, "Lum no Love Song" (Lum's Love Song) which came out as a single in October 1981.

Sung by Yuko Matsutani（松谷祐子）, who would also sing "Ai wa Boomerang", Kobayashi took care of music and arrangement while Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）provided the lyrics. I only heard it for the first time a few nights ago, and it seems to come across just as saucy and coquettish as Lum herself. Nice touch with the Latin in there. The original version topped off at No. 50 on Oricon.

misono came out with her more hard-rocking version of "Lum no Love Song" as her 14th single in September 2009 which came out on the same day as her first album of cover songs "Cover Album"（カバALBUM）. The single did even better than the original on Oricon by peaking at No. 18 while the album went as high as No. 28.

According to J-Wiki, when asked for the reason behind covering "Lum no Love Song", misono replied that since her older sister, Kumi Koda（倖田來未）, had gotten her big break with her cover of the theme song for "Cutie Honey"（キューティーハニー）, another anime from yesteryear, she naturally thought that she could do the same with her own cover of an anison.