Bonnie Pink -- Cotton Candy

 

Through this decade-old video from Bytesize Science, this is the way to make cotton candy. I know all about its popularity as a summer fair treat with all that fluffy pink fibre guzzled down by kids from 9 to 92. However, though I recall having some of my own cotton candy as a lad, I never really cottoned onto it all that much myself despite the fact that I do have a sweet tooth.

To be honest, I actually kinda prefer "Cotton Candy" by Bonnie Pink, and it's nice to have her back on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" after quite a while away. Written and composed by the Kyoto-born singer-songwriter, it was also arranged and produced by Swedish music producer Tore Johansson who has worked with Bonnie in the past and also helped former 80s aidoru Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）on her version of "Romance" back in the 1990s.

"Cotton Candy" is quite the soothing rock ballad (perhaps shoegaze?) especially since it was used as the ending theme for the 2005 edition of the manga-turned-anime "Kyōshoku Sōkō Guyver"（強殖装甲ガイバー...Bio Booster Armor Guyver） which has all of that body horror and techno-organic stuff going on. The lyrics by Bonnie Pink are sad but hopeful as it depicts someone adrift in life looking for something or someone to anchor them and cotton candy is an analogy for that brief wisp of happiness that disappears in an instant. Even so, that someone would accept even that brief moment rather than having nothing.

The song was a track on Bonnie Pink's September 2005 8th studio album "Golden Tears" which shares space with "So Wonderful". It peaked at No. 8 on Oricon.

Up to this point, my only knowledge about "Guyver" was through hearing about the live-action version of the franchise done in 1991 as "The Guyver" featuring Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill. I guess that those were lean times for the former Jedi Master. When I picked up a VHS tape of the movie some years later, I'd thought that it was about a guy who could improvise a lethal weapon out of a paper clip and used bubble gum...ahh, but that was "MacGyver", wasn't it? (har de har har😂)