Masayuki Suzuki feat. Rikka Ihara -- Love Dramatic（ラブ・ドラマティック）

Nearly halfway through February, my anime buddy and I have finally gotten into the current Winter 2019 season of anime. Up until yesterday, some of the anison themes have been OK but not spectacular. Then, we saw this show:

Yup, "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~ Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunousen"（かぐや様は告らせたい〜天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦〜）, which translates directly as "Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains" (thank you, Wikipedia) although the official English title is "Kaguya-sama: Love is War", has quickly become my go-to anime of the season. A comedy of errors and misunderstandings featuring two main characters who would make great neighbours in the same luxury condo in Seattle where Frasier Crane lives, the above situation is just one of the highlights. Also, I love the hilarity in the soundtrack lifting riffs from "Tokyo Love Story" and "Winter Sonata".

Then, there is the opening theme. I can now enter another item in my growing list of "Never Saw That Coming". To explain, I had never expected soulful Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）to contribute one of his own tunes to an anime, but as soon as the snazzy opening credits started rolling, that was indeed Martin's voice singing "Love Dramatic" featuring actress Rikka Ihara（伊原六花）.

Some fellow on YouTube commented that this was quite the surprise in putting in a song that sounds like a theme from some old 1980s J-Drama. And I would agree since Martin does love the old funk/soul, and both commenter and I like "Love Dramatic" very much. The song will become his 39th single (and indeed, according to J-Wiki, this is his first anison) when it's released in a couple of weeks at the end of February, and my buddy has already remarked that he will be picking this up. The song was actually written and composed by Yoshiki Mizuno（水野良樹）, the leader of the band Ikimonogakari（いきものがかり）.

It was good to know that I've got my first anime earworm for 2019. A year ago, the Winter 2018 earworm came to me in this anime. Also liked the opening credits there.