Makiko Imai -- Koi wa Poker Face（恋はポーカーフェイス）

 

One of my observations on the whole anime thing is that during the usual frustration and other feelings for female characters to confess their love or have it confessed to them, they tend to roll around on the bed (but not just for that reason) since aside from the viewers' vantage point, they are completely and relatively comfortably alone to drain out all of their emotions (perhaps it's some kind of Serta therapy). Otherwise, the two potential lovebirds keep to their game of offense and defense in the presence of each other and hold stoic poker faces...until perhaps, the final episode or the final minute of it.

Thus, we come to "Koi wa Poker Face" (Love is a Poker Face), the launching track for Makiko Imai's（今井麻起子）first album "Ciao!" from February 1988. Although I don't think that Imai was considered to be an aidoru, "Koi wa Poker Face" has got quite a nice teenybopper bounciness to it, and I especially like it when Imai sings out the last two words of the title. Kumi Aoyama（あおやまくみ）and Shun Taguchi（田口俊）were responsible for the lyrics which exhort any high school potential boyfriends/girlfriends to drop the stone face from the playing-hard-to-get act; love may be a game but it needn't be an unfriendly one. Meanwhile, Toshihiko Shibaya（柴矢俊彦）provided the melody; Shibaya was actually the guitarist for the band Juicy Fruits（ジューシィ・フルーツ）.

"Koi wa Poker Face" joins the other Imai song that I've provided on KKP, "Belly Roll ~ Kaze no Josoji"（ベリー・ロール -風の助走路-）, also from the same album.