Naoki Sato -- Shiny Luminous Henshin（シャイニールミナス変身）

 

There was a time during the biweekly Sunday routine with my anime buddy that I was catching up on TV Asahi's long-running "PreCure" franchise (2004 to the present day) since I basically began midway through it in 2011. However in the last few years, I've gotten weaned off it although the little kids and even their parents are still devoted to the magical girl teams. A number of the opening and ending themes for the individual series have rubbed off on me and so I've covered them including the opener for the very first entry "Futari wa Precure"（ふたりはプリキュア）, "DANZEN! Futari wa Precure" （DANZEN！ ふたりはプリキュア）by Mayumi Gojo（五條真由美）.

However, one musical sequence that I've never covered is the background music which accompanies the transformation sequences (for which the bad guys are more than willing to wait the two minutes it takes for the ladies to change; this is Japan, y'know). From what I remember, they've all been their fair share of orchestral analogues of good, excitement and hope but I never really got to the point where I felt like actually writing about them.

That ends tonight. The reason for that is that there has been music for one transformation sequence that has been stuck in my head for years because I think that it's so good, and strangely enough, the person involved isn't an official Cure. Yup, the person here is Hikari Kujo（九条ひかり）, aka Shiny Luminous（シャイニールミナス）, who was a major part of the overarching plot in the second season of Cure Black and Cure White's time on the air, "Futari wa Precure ~ Max Heart". 

Kujo may not have the most effervescent personality and Luminous is no fighter (she's all about defensive support), but when it comes to her transformation sequence, she might as well be the coolest and greatest queen of them all (well, technically, she is a fragment of one). Naoki Sato（佐藤直樹）, the composer who was in the charge of the Precure soundtracks between 2004 and 2009, can be thanked for coming up with "Shiny Luminous Henshin" (Transformation into Shiny Luminous), which is an epic piece fit for the entry of a classic Disney hero but also seems to incorporate a bit of 1970s disco with the strings and horns and even some country-western. 

I can imagine Cure Black on hearing "Shiny Luminous Henshin" whining "Hey, why can't I get a cool theme like that?! Arienai!". Them's the breaks, Nagisa. Anyways, this particular track can be found on the January 2006 soundtrack "Futari wa Precure ~ Max Heart Original Soundtrack Precure Sound Screw! MAX!!Spark!!". Luminous Shining Stream, indeed!