Digital Concept with Mami Koyama and Kenji Utsumi -- Dancing Doll

 

Now, remembering all the way back to that restaurant dinner on the first night of our stay in Tokyo back in 1981, we were catching the tail end of a "Dr. Slump"（Dr．スランプ）episode which included the ending credits. They happened to consist of the characters including Arale-chan （アラレちゃん）in summer festival mode while dancing to "Arale-chan Ondo"（アラレちゃん音頭）. So I know that the producers had covered the minyo side of the music for the show.

What I hadn't been aware of is that somehow the seiyuu behind Arale-chan and her inventor-cum-father Senbe Norimaki（則巻千兵衛）, Mami Koyama（小山茉美）and the late Kenji Utsumi（内海賢二）respectively, joined up with some sort of group called Digital Concept to provide a single called "Arale-chan Disco"（アラレちゃんDISCO）in 1981. With a bit of synthpop here and disco there, the first song is "Dancing Doll" where Koyama in Arale mode does some rapping while Utsumi's Senbe gabs away. From what I've gleaned from the J-Wiki article on the TV series, the single probably wasn't used in any of the episodes but it was another example of merch for the very popular show.

It was written by Yoshiaki Sagara（さがらよしあき）and composed by Katsunori Ishida（石田かつのり）. There's something about that keyboard and rhythm section that reminds me of "Forget-Me-Nots" by Patrice Rushen, but that wouldn't come out until the following year.