Coro Machikado -- Yoi Machi Cantare（よいまちカンターレ）

 

About a week ago, I posted Rikako Aida's（逢田梨香子）"Ordinary Love" which was the ending theme for the 2019 anime "Senryu Shojo"（川柳少女...Short Poetry Girl）. I've been re-watching the show after having first seen it at my anime buddy's place all those years ago before the pandemic. In the same year, I also watched "Machikado Mazoku"（まちカドまぞく...The Demon Girl Next Door） for the first time, but my reaction to it was somewhat less enthusiastic for that one although both shows were filled with tsukkomi comedy. My guess is that my lack of knowledge in supernatural vocabulary got in the way and my buddy was not one who enjoyed having English subtitles on the screen, so a lot of the fast-paced banter between Shamiko and her friends went over my head.

However having said all that, I did enjoy the opening theme for that first season, "Machikado Tangent"（町かどタンジェント）by the duo shami momo consisting of the two main characters Shamiko and Momo played by Konomi Kohara（小原好美） and Akari Kitō（鬼頭明里） respectively. It has that breezy Bacharach swing arrangement which I'm always going to be a sucker for.

The ending theme hasn't been too bad although it took a while longer for it to take root within my psyche. "Yoi Machi Cantare" which I think translates into "Good Street Singing" (Japanese and Italian) was basically recorded by shami momo + two other seiyuu. Minami Takahashi（髙橋ミナミ）who plays Shamiko's flighty ancestor and mentor Lilith and Tomoko Takayanagi（高柳知葉）who plays another magical girl Mikan join the duo to form Coro Machikado（コーロまちカド）.

"Yoi Machi Cantare" has got quite the energy to it and my anime buddy noted that the bass player on the song should have been given hazard pay for his hard work; bleeding fingers may have been his reward. The lyrics were written by the author of the original manga Izumo Ito（伊藤いづも）while Koichi Fujimoto（藤本功一）took care of the speedy melody. I've also got my copy of the second season so I'll be interested in hearing those theme songs as well. And yep, I appreciate the anime a whole lot more now that I can understand what is fully going on.