When I was listening and reading up on this song, my mind made its own associations and my brain materialized that summer pastime in Japan, going to the rooftop beer garden among the skyscrapers. I'm basically a teetotaler but I had been to a few of these with friends and there is something appealing about having a mug and fried chicken under the stars. By the way, the above was provided by Samurai Junjiro Channel.
I guess all this beer garden on the brain is due to me coming across this latest album by the City Soul band Penthouse's latest album "Neon Garden" which was released on July 29th this year. One of the tracks here is the rapid-fire "Koi Suru Kamisama" (God of Love) that was written by vocalists Shintaro Namioka（浪岡真太郎）and Maho Ohshima（大島真帆）and composed by Namioka. It's quite the sangria of genres: technopop, jazz, soul, City Pop and all that as a young lass is going a little crazy about falling for a guy and asking for divine help to get her out of a sticky situation. Unfortunately, the titular deity probably has to deal with tons of other people in similar circumstances.
Just to let folks know, the above is an official music video for "Koi Suru Kamisama" and not a creditless anime opening or closing sequence, although seeing how polished and adorable it is, I wouldn't be surprised if fans are wondering if there shouldn't be an anime created because of it. Apparently, the story played out here has a more self-assured couple than in the lyrics.
J-Canuck, you have rendered 恋する神様 as “God of Love.” Which is of course perfectly understandable in the context of the song, but I kind of feel that this title might be slightly more playful than that, maybe. A conventional expression for “the god of love/romance” would more naturally be 恋の神様 (koi no kamisama). So, 恋する神様 (koi suru kamisama), taken literally, can sound like: “the god who falls in love” / “the loving god.” So I think there might be some intended grammatical ambiguity to this title and that this might be a kind of wordplay.
ReplyDeleteI was also wondering about the translation of the title because I had also initially translated it as "The God Who Falls In Love", but listening to the lyrics and how the translation went, I figured that in context, Namioka and Ohshima had been thinking of a god in charge of love matters.
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