Kalafina -- heavenly blue

 

It's hard to believe that it's been two years since our regular biweekly anime-and-food outings came to a close due to the pandemic, but at this point, because it appears that my buddy and I now have somewhat different tastes in what kind of anime we like, I don't think that we are in any amount of a rush to resume the old tradition. However, I did get to know a lot of anison from throughout the past few decades due to my friend's devotion of an hour at his place to sample those songs.

One trio of ladies that I heard sometimes during the anison hour was Kalafina whose work I can describe as being the chorus of angels wielding mighty large and dangerous spears. What I mean is that their beautiful voices often heralded anime that had more than its fair share of violence including the "Madoka Magica" and "Fate/stay night" franchises. My observation of Wakana, Hikaru and Keiko is that their voices meshed so well together that it sounded like one layered voice that truly fell from the heavens...if the heavens also had electric guitars on hand.

Kalafina was also behind the first opening theme of the anime "Aldnoah.Zero"（アルドノア・ゼロ）, a title that I've heard although my friend never showed me the series. From what I've read on Wikipedia and TV Tropes, it comes across as one of those epic space operas featuring a massive war between Earth and some alien empire. That would seem to be up Kalafina's alley, and sure enough "heavenly blue", the trio's August 2014 single, possesses the urgent and the calm, the heaven and the hell. The song was written, composed and arranged by Yuki Kajiura（梶浦由記）, the lady who formed Kalafina in the first place back in 2007.

"heavenly blue" peaked at No. 15 and went Gold, and it was featured on Kalafina's BEST album "THE BEST 'Blue'" which was released in July 2014. That compilation hit No. 3 on the charts. The trio released numerous singles and five studio albums; those albums all made it into the Top 10 of Oricon. I also recall seeing them a few times on NHK's "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）and its replacement program "Uta Con"（うたコン）, and I believe that they also provided themes for some NHK variety series. However, everything all ended when Kalafina officially broke up in 2019.