Maneki Kecak -- Kagami no Naka kara（鏡の中から）

 

Although I took that photo back in 2009, the sentiments are still the same...Happy Halloween! I hope that everyone reading this has had or will have a safe and enjoyable October 31st before a good majority of us enter the official commercial Xmas season as of tomorrow. 

I may have been a little too quick off the gun when I mentioned in yesterday's article involving a "Lupin III" theme that the Halloween buzz hadn't quite returned in Shibuya judging from what I saw on the YouTube live streams since I had always presumed that Saturdays would be the wild night instead of Sundays when it came to Halloween. However, looking at VIRTUAL JAPAN's "Shibuya Live Halloween - Tokyo 2021" this morning, it certainly looked like pre-pandemic pandemonium in Japan's Teen Valhalla which also made me a little worried about potential COVID case increases into November.

I actually saw Sadako walking across the massive Shibuya intersection on the live camera but not too rapidly anymore. Well, even vengeful spirits feel their old bones eventually. I guess that she can't even phase through television screens anymore.

Halloween is also Election Night for the Lower House in Japan and at this writing, the governing Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Komeito, have secured a majority although Prime Minister Kishida and his cronies may be licking some wounds due to a drop in several seats. 

But I also have to unfortunately report that there was real-life horror on one of the commuter trains tonight in Tokyo when some young nutcase in a Joker outfit decided to go on a stabbing spree and then set fire to one of the cars. He's been apprehended but as you can see above, several people are now injured. I first heard the news on NHK amidst all of the election coverage and I'm hoping that everyone will pull through.

Anyways getting to the matter at hand, I was wondering what I would do as a KPP entry to salute the night of trick or treaters. Couldn't really find anything at first so I opted to go for one easy solution: checking out any of the themes for the spooky anime "Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro"（ゲゲゲの鬼太郎）. Happily, I hit pay dirt through an ending song for the sixth iteration of the long-running series which ran for a couple of years from 2018-2020. "Kagami no Naka kara" (From Inside the Mirror) was performed by aidoru quintet Maneki Kecak（まねきケチャ）, which has been around since 2015, as the first of the ending themes from Episodes 1 to 13.

Even if listeners don't understand a word of Japanese, they will be entranced right from the get-go with the "Oh-eh-oh-eh-oh" getting into their ears and wrapping around their cerebral cortex (oops, I'm sorry, that was a "Star Trek II" reference). For a spooky song, "Kagami no Naka kara" is quite the dynamic tune with the rumbling rhythm underlaid by some of that relentless percussion and the cutesy vocals by Maneki Kecak. 

"Kagami no Naka kara" was the group's 4th single released in April 2018 under the full title of "Kagami no Naka kara/Atashi no Nokoro Zenbu Ageru"（鏡の中から/あたしの残りぜんぶあげる...I'll Give You All I Have Left）. The release date might have seemed too early considering that it's all about the spookiness, but as the video makes clear, it's all about the heebie-jeebies within Japan which actually celebrates the scary nights during the dog days of summer instead of the autumn in North America. Nice set design by the way. The single did very well, too, peaking at No. 5 on Oricon. Kan Furuya（古谷完）provided the lyrics while Ryota Suemasu（末益涼太）was the composer and arranger.

The name Maneki Kecak caught my attention as well. The first name is Japanese for "inviting" while the second name is a new concept for me (I think KKP contributor Joana Bernardo is more of an expert on this than I am) but according to the aidoru site "Bonjour Idol", "kecak" refers to "...when your favorite idol gets a ballad-like solo part in a song, it is time for you to throw your arms towards her and give her strength in a “kecha”!". The site also gives a much more detailed account (including who the members are) of what Maneki Kecak is all about so I encourage you to check it out.