Miyu Tomita, Yu Shinohara, Lynn, Azumi Waki -- HAPPY!! Strange Friends（HAPPY!!ストレンジフレンズ）

Yes, indeed, the bewitching holiday is once again upon us. Although the above picture was taken back in October 2014, I'm fairly sure that McDonalds Japan is once again serving its annual squid-ink burgers. Happy Halloween, everybody!

We got our first meteorological scare last night after I finished my chat with JTM. I looked out the window to see a clean layer of snow outside; it's about the earliest I've seen of the white stuff in many a year, but it was all gone by this morning. I also took a look at YouTube's live stream camera onto the main intersection of Shibuya. There was a Halloween presence including a couple in corny prison uniforms and another couple that I can only describe as "Stripper Precure". However, maybe it was the timing but my impression was that the celebrations seemed a little more subdued this time. Then again, we still have a few more nights before the 31st.

Happenstance perhaps, but this season's crop of anime includes at least a couple of Halloween-friendly shows that my buddy and I have started watching. There is one that I would like to label as "Gochuumon wa Kyuuketsuki desu ka?" or "Is The Order A Vampire?", but its actual title is "Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san"（となりの吸血鬼さん...Ms. Vampire who lives in my neighborhood.）.

It's another cute slice-of-life anime starring Miyu Tomita（富田美憂）as the 360+-year-old vampire Sophie Twilight who is far more grounded than a lot of humans. Tomita is no stranger to supernatural and horror since she was in last year's just-as-goofy "Gabriel Dropout"（ガヴリールドロップアウト）and later in the beautiful if oft-horrifying "Made In Abyss".

And as was the case with the theme songs for those shows, Tomita jumps in with the rest of the main cast to perform them. In this case, I want to feature the ending "HAPPY!! Strange Friends" as sung by Tomita, Yu Shinohara（篠原侑）as the vampire-obsessed Akari who becomes her BFF (or tries to, anyways), Lynn as Akari's human BFF from school, and Azumi Waki（和氣あず未）as fellow vampire Erie who I will probably see for the first time next week.

I did mention that shoutout to "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka"（ご注文はうさぎですか?）at the top there. Well, "HAPPY!! Strange Friends" is rather reminiscent of the theme songs used for that popular series, and I gotta say that I enjoy how Tomita draws out those first few lines in the verses. Junko Miyajima（宮嶋淳子）took care of the lyrics while Yu handled music and arrangement.