halca -- Toki toshite Violence（時としてバイオレンス）

 

Yup, indeed I am a late bloomer. The zany anime "Dropkick on My Devil!! Dash"（邪神ちゃんドロップキック'）, the second season to the original 2018 "Dropkick on my Devil!", had already finished its run more than a year ago, and yet, I only finished my copy of it last night. No problems, though. I still had a lot of fun with it, and although TV Tropes mentioned that the second season toned down the nastiness and gore between the two main characters of devilish Jashin-chan and vengeful Yurine, I think that there was still plenty of nasty comeuppances against the former by the latter.

Before we get to the subject of this article, though, I just have to give my compliments to the seiyuu Aina Suzuki（鈴木愛奈）who plays Jashin-chan. Not only did she have her little devil go through a whole ton of vocal gymnastics and histrionics for the role, but she is quite the accomplished singer for not only taking part in the opening theme song for the first season, "Ano Ko ni Dropkick"（あの娘にドロップキック）, and providing the epic healing song for an ailing Yurine, "Jimbocho Aika"（神保町哀歌）, but from the ending credits for Episode 5 of "Dash", I found out that Suzuki had also been responsible for the rendition of "Ave Maria" in that episode while a younger version of her character was opening up a can of whoop-ass on some of her mean classmates.

Back to our regularly-scheduled song. The opening theme for "Dash" is "Toki toshite Violence" (Violence on Occasion) by pop singer and anison specialist halca. Compared to the cast-sung "Ano Ko ni Dropkick", it's a bit more conventional than the wild theme for the first season which swung between cute anison and heavy metal. However, "Toki toshite Violence" still pops and rocks and it reflects the often fast-paced yelling and slicing and dicing which take place in the average episode.

"Toki toshite Violence" was released as halca's 5th single in May 2020, about half a year following her previous single, "Hokago no Liberty"（放課後のリバティ）, the ending theme for another wacky comedy in its second season. It was written by Junko Miyajima（宮嶋淳子）and composed by Kazuhiro Hara（原一博）, and the song has tied with another halca single in being her highest-ranked song to date at No. 23 on Oricon.

Wrapping up, after another successful crowdfunding effort, the third season, "Dropkick on My Devil! X" will be premiering in 2022. My anime buddy had wanted to do his part for the show but, alas, the producers announced that the crowdfunding had already reached its target. So we can all look forward to another example of the most hilarious round of decapitation, disembowelment and impaling that can ever be seen in a show.