Saori Hayami -- Yume no Hate made（夢の果てまで）

(Unfortunately the NHK clip got taken down but

this is "souvenir the movie 〜MARIYA TAKEUCHI Theater Live〜"

in which some of the clips were included in the documentary.)

Back on March 26th in Japan, NHK featured a special documentary regarding singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）which involved her taking a trip to Sweden to do some recording, interspersed with the variety of songs that she has performed herself and created for other singers over 40 years. There were even a few minutes in which Takeuchi spoke about her regrets concerning the tragic death of 80s aidoru Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）for whom she had also created songs.

NHK made it quite clear that this had been the first time in decades that Takeuchi allowed herself to come onto TV through a program (she did provide a relatively recent commercial, it seems, for potato chips), so it was quite a special opportunity to see her and actually give her insights.

(short version)

The narrator for the documentary was popular seiyuu Saori Hayami（早見沙織）, someone that I've seen very often through my buddy's collection of anime over the past several years, so it was great to hear her in her own voice, too. It was an appropriate choice as well, since Takeuchi had written and composed a song for Hayami a couple of years ago.

"Yume no Hate made" (To The Ends of a Dream) was the theme song for an anime motion picture that had been split and released in two parts in 2017 and 2018, "Haikara-san ga Tooru"（はいからさんが通る...Haikara-San: Here Comes Miss Modern）. Hayami herself starred in the movie as the titular Benio Hanamura, a high school girl of the Taisho Era in the early 20th century who seems to have had too much spunk and spice for her contemporaries.

Listening to "Yume no Hate made", which was Hayami's 3rd single released in November 2017, my impression was "Yup, this is a Mariya song!". There is something that is always dreamy, hopeful and heartfelt when it comes to one of her creations whether it be one of her own singles such as "Camouflage" or a song for someone else such as "Miracle Love" for Riho Makise（牧瀬里穂）. The overriding image that forms in my mind whenever I hear any of these songs is the particular singer or a much younger Mariya looking out her window up high at the moon one night as she looks for some kind of guidance or solace. Nothing too melancholy, though, and "Yume no Hate made" certainly doesn't reflect any sadness in its melody at least. The song made it as high as No. 21 on Oricon.