Mika Kanai -- Ai wo Todoketai（愛を届けたい）

 

Last night, I had a listen to Scott's regular J-Xmas song podcast "Holly Jolly X'masu" and the episode was based around a 1997 album called "Clam Chowder" by Mika Kanai（かないみか）. To be honest, I'd never heard the name before, but she's a singer and seiyuu who has been around since 1989. Then I discovered that she has contributed a lot to the famous anime "Anpanman"（アンパンマン）with her voicing several characters including Melon Panna. "Clam Chowder" is quite an enjoyable album with the general theme of winter and Xmas, and as one Japanese reviewer put it, it's "cute and heartwarming". Cool and good!

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any sign of "Clam Chowder" on YouTube as of this writing, but I did find this one song sung by Kanai which comes from her 4th studio album "Style" from June 1995. "Ai wo Todoketai" (I Want to Deliver Love). Written by Hiromi Fuwa（浮羽ひろみ）, the song was composed by Takaaki Yasuoka（安岡孝章）, and by happenstance, I actually wrote an article about the vocalist and his 80s band I Re'in For Re'in（アイリーン・フォーリーン）over the weekend. The song is a pleasant combination of Kanai's soft and creamy vocals and an arrangement that mixes in New Jack Swing and some of that British sophisticated pop from the late 1980s. 

Her music output was restricted basically to the 1990s with 4 singles, 7 albums including "Style" and "Clam Chowder" and 3 mini albums coming out between 1992 and 2000.