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I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Special Favorite Music -- Hashire, Romance Ichi-go(走れ、ロマンス1号)

Wikimedia Commons

For the longest time, I'd wondered why these special Odakyu trains coming and leaving Shinjuku Station were called Romance Cars. I figured that they were popular with the young couples taking trips to the countryside, and as it turns out, I wasn't far off the mark. The Romance Cars contain what are basically love seats with no hand rest dividing the pair. Well, isn't that special? 


I think that's what the band Special Favorite Music was referring to as well with their March 2025 single "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go" (Run, Romance No. 1). In my last article on the band which I wrote up a couple of months ago, it was for their 2015 single "Gold", and in there, I'd thought about what the band would sound like now after about a decade and with all of the lineup changes they went through,

Well, as it turns out, listening to "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go", there doesn't seem to be too much change and that's not a bad thing. This particular song is quite the breezy pop number with the SFM strings coming in as usual. Plus with the marimba-sounding synth (or maybe that's a real marimba being played here) and the strings, there is a certain feeling of posh life. In fact, I don't know whether they'd intended to or not, but there's something with "Hashire, Romance Ichi-go" that feels like 1970s New Music.

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