King Gnu -- Sanmon Shosetsu（三文小説）

 

Welcome back to Monday! I think one of the oft-used overarching plot lines in a sci-fi or fantasy story is that of Rip Van Winkle. A main character somehow ends up several years, decades or even centuries in the future due to magic, disease or technology and they have to somehow manage themselves in their vastly different and new world. 

Apparently that is the case for the late 2020 NTV drama "San-juu-go Sai no Shojo"（35歳の少女...The 35-Year-Old Girl） in which a young girl suffers a coma-inducing accident and doesn't wake up for a quarter-century. Played by Ko Shibasaki（柴咲コウ）, she is still that sweet 10-year-old but now in a 35-year-old body. I would say something like "Hilarity ensues", but I get the impression that it was all quite serious here and there were probably a lot of tearful scenes.

The theme song for the show is "Sanmon Shosetsu" (Dime Novel) by the mixture rock band King Gnu. I first wrote about the band in the first few days in 2020 just after first seeing them in action on the Kohaku Utagassen a few days prior, and I was intrigued by King Gnu since they were as advertised by blending in a few genres into their performance of "Hakujitsu"（白日）. Also, there were the vocals of Daiki Tsuneta（常田大希）which were far from the usual throat-shredding screams that I got from a rock singer.

"Sanmon Shosetsu", one-half of their 6th single "Sanmon Shosetsu/Senryo Yakusha"（三文小説/千両役者...Dime Novel/Prima Donna） from December 2020, which was written and composed by Tsuneta, fits hand-in-glove with the feeling of "San-juu-go Sai no Shojo". There is wonder, trepidation and hope in equal measure within the arrangement and of course, Tsuneta's high and beautiful vocals lift the song to the height of the angels. I was wondering what the significance of the title was, and looking at the translation of the lyrics, I realized that though a life may seem like a cheap dime store novel, the plot and the characters can be written over and over again to what is most desirable, regardless of how other readers may find them by the end.

There is something very Queen in "Sanmon Shosetsu" with its drama, courtliness and epicness which probably hit fans of the show quite hard and had them reaching for their Kleenex. It soared up to No. 2 on Oricon, going Gold.