LiSA -- Ring a Bell（リングアベル）

 

First off, congratulations to singer-songwriter LiSA for making it onto NHK's Kohaku Utagassen for the second year in a row. Japan's national broadcaster announced what the participants will be singing on the show in about 9 days' time, and for LiSA, it will be a "Kimetsu no Yaiba"（鬼滅の刃）suite following the success of the anime TV series and movie. With our luck in North America, though, TV Japan will likely block out the performance visuals if any of the anime or movie is shown behind her like they did at last year's Kohaku due to the usual copyright issues.😒

Probably a whole lot more people discovered the Gifu Prefecture native through the opening theme for the anime series last year, "Gurenge"（紅蓮華）, which pretty much feels like a typical rocking battle between the hero Tanjiro and the monsters to be defeated. However, as I was watching the NHK children's music vignette "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）some time ago, LiSA had contributed a song for the kids back in 2017 called "Ring a Bell".

Written by the singer and composed by musician Kousuke Nouma（野間康介）, "Ring a Bell" is as comfortable as a mother's hug, and the "Minna no Uta" video has very much of an "Awwww..." component. It's just too bad that the video doesn't exist on YouTube. According to the J-Wiki article for the song, LiSA came up with the title after hearing the expression from people close to her; plus, she wanted to create to have a title that even children could remember.

The video was first shown on "Minna no Uta" between December 2016 and January 2017 but the song was released as a track on LiSA's 11th single, "Catch the Moment" in February 2017. It had also come out as a digital download earlier in that December.