Marcos V. and I have contributed one article each so far for singer Rina Chinen（知念里奈）with Marcos writing about "DO-DO FOR ME", her 1996 debut single while I apparently aimed for some form of symmetry and wrote about her 2001 final single to date "Love You Close". As my colleague mentioned in his contribution, Chinen is a graduate from the Okinawa Actors School alongside other bright lights including the girl group SPEED and superstar Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）.
Despite the two articles already written, the first time that I ever saw the Naha-born Chinen wasn't via either of those songs. It was actually through the above commercial for her House Foods Fruit Jelly commercial that I was fortunate to track down. I can gather that fruit jelly wobbles a lot so I guess that it would be deserving of a dance-pop tune to accompany it in an ad.
The song in question is "precious・delicious", Chinen's 2nd single from March 1997. This one is quite interesting since the excerpt that I heard in the commercial is the most dance-poppiest section, but surrounding this repeated refrain is a melody that sounds more rock ballad contemplative and inspirational. The people behind "precious・delicious" are lyricist Takahiro Maeda（前田たかひろ）and composer Cozy Kubo（久保こーじ）, and another thing that I've observed is that for an aidoru tune, the song is a little longer than usual at just over five minutes. As well, the music video did hit some nostalgia nerves. I mean, game centres still exist in Japan but I guess the fashion that Chinen and her buddies were wearing back then may be quite natsukashii now.
"precious・delicious" hit No. 18 on Oricon and it won a Best New Artist prize at the Japan Record Awards. It is also a track on Chinen's debut album "Growing" from June 1998. That peaked at No. 2 and ended up as the 51st-ranked album for the year.
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