Minami Kuribayashi -- ZERO!!

 

Well, it's been quite the interesting trend over the past number of months in anime land when it comes to some of the shows that I enjoyed in the last several years. First off, the cute-as-all-heck "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか）franchise returned late last year with a third season a number of years after their second season. But in the case of Cocoa and Chino and the gang, there were some fairly high expectations that they would all return once more with their coffee and rabbits.

Some other anime that I really liked such as the sweet "Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon"（小林さんちのメイドラゴン...Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid） and the hilarious "Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun"（月刊少女野崎くん...Girls' Monthly Nozaki-kun） seemed to be one and done. I'd assumed the same for another manga-turned-anime that came out all the way back in 2013 titled "Hataraku Maou-Sama!"（はたらく魔王さま!...The Devil Is a Part-Timer!）. My anime buddy had this on the screen during our old Sunday get-togethers years ago and it had its own moments of hilarity including the one up above.

Within a span of a few days, though, I got word that not only is "Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon" returning with a second season in the summer but "Hataraku Maou-Sama" also has the green light for a sequel. Good heavens! Eight years later?! Not sure when exactly it's going to come out this year or perhaps next year, but I'm interested in seeing how things have gone for the Demon Lord. Has he finally been promoted to manager of his own burger shop?

When it comes to singer-songwriter and seiyuu Minami Kuribayashi（栗林みな実）, my fellow blog co-administrator Marcos V. has done most of the heavy lifting, but I did write one article for a song that she was involved with, "Super Affection"（すーぱー☆あふぇくしょん）. Today, this is her second article by me and it's the theme song for the first season of "Hataraku Maou-Sama!", "ZERO!!".

Hearing the song again for the first time in so long was rather nostalgic. For the sake of full disclosure, though, "ZERO!!" isn't really anywhere near the top of my favourite anison but Kuribayashi's vocal intro has resonated, although those additional synthesizer notes at the beginning of the full version of the song caught me a little off-guard. At the same time, though, I did like the electric guitar solo. "ZERO!!" was written by Kuribayashi and composed by Tomohiro Nakatsuchi（中土智博）and the singer's 29th single from April 2013 peaked at No. 30 on Oricon. According to an issue of the Japanese anime fanzine, Anikan（アニカン）, via J-Wiki, the song was so titled because of Maou-sama starting from Ground Zero on entering his new home on Earth and beginning a career as a burger flipper.

Now, if we can only get a second season of "Nozaki-kun"...sigh.😔