AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI/Hironobu Kageyama/Yui Horie -- Melos no You ni - LONELY WAY（メロスのように）

Anime for me started with "Gatchaman"（ガッチャマン）and "Uchuu Senkan Yamato"（宇宙戦艦ヤマト）in the late 1970s when I was in junior high, but it wasn't too long after the turn of the decade when the age of the mecha dawned with other legendary franchises such as "Gundam"（ガンダム）and "Macross"（マクロス）. Part of the reason that I never went full bore into mecha anime was that at the time, it was still difficult to get access to video tapes of such series here in my side of North America. As well, mecha anime seemed to pop up like mushrooms and dandelions all over the place so I could never get a handle on what was what with all of the weird names such as "Xabungle" and "SPT Layzner". The naming must have been a Scrabble player's dream or nightmare.

Speaking of the 1985 "SPT Layzner", I should actually give the full name at least once. The official title is "Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner",（蒼き流星SPTレイズナー...Blue Comet SPT Layzner） and it's something that I've heard over and over throughout the years. I figured with that name, it just had to do something with battling mecha. Also that opening theme song was strangely familiar, probably because my anime buddy played it during the anison hour of our biweekly routine (which has been suspended for over three months now).

That opening theme is "Melos no You ni - LONELY WAY" (Just Like Melos). OK, first off, I gather that this Melos fellow must have been quicksilver fast according to the English translation of the lyrics (which you can check by going to the very final link at the bottom of the article), but that is all I know. The best that I could do was that Melos is also a Greek island, so if any wiser anime fan can tell me what Melos has to do with the song, I would be greatly appreciative.

Moving on, "Melos no You ni" was performed by the trio known as AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI which brings on Question No. 2: How the heck did they come up with that name? Well, according to the J-Wiki article on this band, an FM Yokohama radio interview revealed that the three members, vocalist/guitarist Toshiya Noshita（野下俊哉）, keyboardist/guitarist Minoru Yamada（山田稔）and keyboardist/guitarist Tetsushiro Tsuchiya（土屋徹志郎）, all hail from Nagasaki and apparently on the AIRMAIL part, they felt that their hometown was more of a foreign country compared to the rest of Japan. I can sleep well on that.

On listening to "Melos no You ni", which was written by future Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）and AKB48 Svengali Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）, I had first thought that AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI was a Johnny's Entertainment group like Hikaru Genji（光GENJI）or Shonentai（少年隊）from the vocals. But Noshita, Yamada and Tsuchiya all met at the beginning of the decade and formed a first group called Band Liverpool before changing into AIRMAIL. Getting back to the song itself, I enjoy it for those wailing guitars of 80s Japanese Oricon-friendly pop/rock and I even get some Alfee vibes from the background vocals.

The song was the band's only single, and there was only one mini-album released in 1986 "DOGEN?" as their output under their name.

"Melos no You ni" must have been one of those anison that various singers have loved to cover. Hironobu Kageyama（影山ヒロノブ）brought his rockin' vocals to it on the 1998 compilation album "Super Robot Taisen Vocal Collection 2"（スーパーロボット大戦 ボーカルコレクション2）.

Seiyuu/singer Yui Horie（堀江由衣）provided her own cover of the song as one of the iDOLM@STER idols, Yukiho Hagiwara, in the 2007 "The iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia Character Volume 2: Nesshou! Kyoudai (Sunrise) Robot Anime Song: Arashi".