Up to this point, I've had just two SEKAI NO OWARI articles up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus": "RAIN" which was the eclectic band's 2017 11th single and a theme song for an anime movie, and "Sazanka"（サザンカ）, their follow-up from 2018 which became the official theme song for NHK's broadcast of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
I guess that I'll now be bringing back SEKAI NO OWARI for the Xmas season since one of their songs was on one of the many J-Xmas compilation YouTube videos where I found "Snow Magic Fantasy". In fact, this goes back quite a few years in their history, being their 5th single as a major act from January 2014.
Yes, you did read that correctly. "Snow Magic Fantasy" came out almost a month following Christmas Day 2013, so perhaps the song really wasn't meant to be an Xmas tune (or maybe it was meant to be an extremely early Xmas tune) but generally more for winter. Indeed, it was used as the theme for Japan Railways' annual ski resort campaign. Still, I did find it on that J-Xmas video and with those jingle bells and the upbeat feeling, heck, I can at least make it an honourary Yuletide number.
Vocalist Fukase and percussionist Nakajin were behind "Snow Magic Fantasy" which comes out as SEKAI NO OWARI's own version of a particularly beefy toy march. What further makes the argument for its inclusion in the annals of J-Xmas tunes is that video of the band members dressed up as old-fashioned soldiers or old-fashioned Salvation Army employees and that mixture of Lewis Carroll and Hallmark greeting card design.
Mind you, with the title and the song's usage for the ski industry, isn't that just the title you would want to show off the wonders of the various ski resorts such as Naeba or Gala Yuzawa? Anyways, "Snow Magic Fantasy" was SEKAI NO OWARI's first No. 1 hit as it went Gold. It would become the 49th-ranked single of 2014, and its source (sophomore as a major act) album "TREE" released in January 2015 would also become their first top-ranking album, ending the year as the 8th-ranked release.
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