Chiaki Kuriyama/Ringo Shiina -- Oishii Kisetsu（おいしい季節）

 

When it comes to thespian/singer Chiaki Kuriyama（栗山千明）in the West, she will always be known as the teenage ball of furious insanity, Go Go Yubari. Her role was relatively brief but she did make an impression.

I know since then she's appeared in a number of movies and television dramas in Japan over the last twenty years although I've barely seen any of them. There was an episode of one mystery series that I saw where she played a skeptical police detective; it apparently was a mix of "The X-Files" and "Rain Man". Aside from that, Kuriyama has also done her fair share of goofy commercials and variety show appearances to repeatedly display that, no, she's not really a psychotic killer.

Kuriyama has also had her time behind the recording mike. She was even included in a Kayo Kyoku Plus article all the way back in 2017 but her "Seishun no Matataki"（青春の瞬き）was taken down by the powers-that-be on YouTube although her songwriter, Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）, provided her take on the song which is still intact.

So for all intents and purposes, this is Kuriyama's first time again on the blog, this time with "Oishii Kisetsu" (The Creamy Season) which was released in March 2011 as her 4th single. Looking at the video (sorry but it's not available anymore) and listening to the song about falling in love, I think a lot of folks will quickly see and hear the Shiina influences and indeed Shiina did create the song. In fact, I'd say that "Oishii Kisetsu" is a nice reminder of the songwriter's early works. Mind you, Kuriyama in the video doesn't appear nearly as scary as Shiina did back in those days. The single peaked at No. 37 on Oricon.

According to J-Wiki, Shiina has covered "Oishii Kisetsu" a few times over the years such as via her No. 3-ranking December 2017 second album of covers, "Gyakuyunyū: Koukuukyoku"（逆輸入 〜航空局〜...Reimport vol. 2: Civil Aviation Bureau）. Her version seems to be a bit more along the side of progressive rock and her more contemporary classical approach to music. This take was also included on the November 2019 "Newton no Ringo ~Hajimete no Best Ban~" （ニュートンの林檎 ～初めてのベスト盤～...Newton's Apple ～First Best Edition～）which hit No. 1 on the weekly charts and ended up as the 22nd-ranked album of 2019.