coaltar of the deepers/Yui Horie -- DEAR FUTURE

 

Oh, OK...so that's what she said. There was much that I couldn't understand about the anime series/mindscrew called "Mawaru Penguindrum"（輪るピングドラム）because of what was involved in the plot and frankly because my friend didn't like having subtitles polluting the screen. Mind you, I probably was better off not knowing the exact translation of the trash talk that possessed Himari was giving her young charges but her character was a bit of a dominatrix after all, so I shouldn't be too surprised.

Anyways, "Mawaru Penguindrum" was one of the first anime that my anime buddy showed me after I got back from Japan for good in late 2011, and most likely, he started presenting the episodes in early 2012, although the original run for it was on TBS between July and December 2011. Man, has it been nearly ten years?!

Way back in 2013 in the early days of the blog, I did write about the two songs by rock band ARB that had been amazingly adapted for "Mawaru Penguindrum", "Rock Over Japan" and the attractively maudlin version of "Hai-iro no Suiyoubi" (灰色の水曜日）.

In fact, there are a number of opening and ending themes plus insert songs that were used throughout the duration of the long-running show including the first ending theme "DEAR FUTURE" by the uniquely-named coaltar of the deepers. I've read on their Wikipedia page that this alternative rock band which started up in 1991 liked to dip into a lot of genres for their sound but mostly they incorporated shoegaze, and on reading that, I did my naruhodo when it came to "DEAR FUTURE". 

Written by Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）and composed/arranged by band leader/guitarist/vocalist NARASAKI, I'm not into shoegaze at all but I have to admit that "DEAR FUTURE" is quite mesmerizing and haunting, thanks to the vocal delivery as Iwasato's lyrics ponder what could be a crossroads in a couple's relationship and whether it's time to split up at the fork or keep on going together. I think it was a good fit for the show along with "Hai-iro no Suiyoubi" which was actually used as the ending theme for only specific episodes.

Despite coaltar of the deepers releasing a number of albums and eps, for the longest time, "DEAR FUTURE" had been the only official single following its release at the end of August 2011. However, two more singles came out in 2019. Right now, although the band has had a number of members, it seems as if currently, it only has NARASAKI and drummer KANNO.

I couldn't even remember seiyuu Yui Horie（堀江由衣）, who had a recurring role as Masako Natsume on the show, singing her version of "DEAR FUTURE" at the end of Episode 10...perhaps it was a particularly intense episode. But I gotta say that her technopop take on the song (as arranged by WATCHMAN) is also darn tasty.