Mrs. GREEN APPLE -- Inferno（インフェルノ）/Keina Suda -- veil

One of the anime that I've been catching for the past several weeks is "En En no Shouboutai"（炎炎ノ消防隊...Fire Force）, a somewhat dystopian sci-fi show that strikes me as being a mix of "Backdraft", "Supernatural" and even "X-Men". Still, despite the grim premise of a special fire department having to deal with poor human beings who spontaneously explode into fiery monsters, I was surprised to see a fair amount of humour among the characters.

As has been the case with at least one other anime this season, it took a while but the opening and closing themes for "En En no Shouboutai" have started to grow on me. For instance, the opener "Inferno" by rock group Mrs. GREEN APPLE, which I first wrote about only a couple of weeks ago.

Written and composed by vocalist Motoki Ohmori（大森元貴）, it's the guitar licks and his rhythmical vocals that finally hooked me in and once the refrain kicks in, there is something about the arrangement that reminds me of some of the rock songs that I heard back in my youth on both sides of the 49th Parallel. Apparently at this point, "Inferno" is currently on release as Mrs. GREEN APPLE's 3rd digital download single as of last month.

And then there is the ending theme "veil" by singer-songwriter Keina Suda（須田景凪）which I like even better. Watching the ending credits showing the tragic past of the character Iris, the intro with the singer's filtered vocals and then the funky guitars flying in got my attention as well.

Like "Inferno", "veil" has finally been able to grab the scruff of my neck and take me for a fun ride. It's been a bit surprising that I hadn't gotten on the bandwagon for both themes earlier. And I'm glad to hear that my anime buddy is getting his own copy of the song, too.

As for Suda, according to his J-Wiki profile, he started the drums in junior high school before getting involved in a band. His initial desire was to become a studio musician but feeling that simply drumming wasn't going to have him progress further in his career, he apparently ended up swapping his drum kit for a personal computer and guitar to go into songwriting. Debuting in 2013, he provided a number of albums under the name Balloon（バルーン）for Vocaloid recordings before starting to put out albums under his own name in 2018. "veil" is available on his 2nd EP "porte" which got released only a few days ago.