Ai Furihata -- CITY

Well, my age-old question has finally been answered. What if an aidoru-esque Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Michael Sembello from the 1980s collaborated?

Yes, rather tongue-in-cheek for a Tuesday but that's the favourable impression that I got when I first saw "CITY", a track from the mini-album "Moonrise" which isn't even due to be released until late September 2020. The singer behind it is Ai Furihata（降幡愛）who is also a seiyuu hailing from Nagano Prefecture.

Furihata wrote the lyrics with Akimitsu Honma（本間昭光）providing the music. That melody sounds so much like early 1980s Billboard-friendly pop that I felt like Honma must have been inspired by Sembello's "Maniac" from the immensely popular "Flashdance" soundtrack or maybe even Oliva Newton-John's "Twist of Fate" hit single. As for lyricist-singer Furihata, a good chunk of her voice reminds me a lot of singer-songwriter Karashima because of that nasality. Then, there's that music video which pretty much yells out "I LOVE VAPORWAVE!".

Along with her work on anime, I also found out that Furihata is also a member of the anime aidoru group Aqours found in "Love Live! Sunshine!!". Shuka Saito（斉藤朱夏）, who I wrote about recently, is also a member.

Here's "Twist of Fate"!