AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI/Seiko Tomizawa -- Go-fun Dake no Wagamama（5分だけのわがまま）

Last month, I wrote about this band with the unusual name of AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI which was responsible for the anison "Melos no You ni - LONELY WAY"（メロスのように）, the theme song for "Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner",（蒼き流星SPTレイズナー...Blue Comet SPT Layzner） back in 1985. The band also struck me as rather distinct as a group that sounded a bit like a Johnny's Entertainment group from that era such as Shonentai（少年隊）and Hikaru Genji（光GENJI）but was actually a "homegrown" band with a slightly mellower approach.

After being around since 1980 under the name Band Liverpool and then AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI, there was just that one single "Melos no You ni" in 1985 and then a mini-album "DOGEN?" the following year after which the band broke up. From that album, I bring you "Go-fun Dake no Wagamama" (Just Five Minutes of Selfishness).

As with "Melos no You ni", "Go-fun Dake no Wagamama" was written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）as this pillowy love song. Not sure if this is a ballad about a final embrace before breakup or just enjoying that daily surreptitious hug and kiss before the lovebird high school kids take off for their respective homes. It's an interesting tune because of vocalist/guitarist Toshiya Noshita's（野下俊哉）singing which can't help but feel like something that the aforementioned Johnny's groups would croon, but at the same time, that singing and the arrangement by Kei Wakakusa（若草恵）also reminds me of the works of other bands from that decade such as H2O and Omega Tribe. It's definitely got that sunset feeling.

I only found this out while I was writing this article, but "Go-fun Dake no Wagamama" also has that connection with "Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner" after all. The song was the first ending theme for the anime but was recorded by singer-songwriter Seiko Tomizawa（富沢聖子）who has provided her fair share of anison.

AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI/Hironobu Kageyama/Yui Horie -- Melos no You ni - LONELY WAY（メロスのように）

Anime for me started with "Gatchaman"（ガッチャマン）and "Uchuu Senkan Yamato"（宇宙戦艦ヤマト）in the late 1970s when I was in junior high, but it wasn't too long after the turn of the decade when the age of the mecha dawned with other legendary franchises such as "Gundam"（ガンダム）and "Macross"（マクロス）. Part of the reason that I never went full bore into mecha anime was that at the time, it was still difficult to get access to video tapes of such series here in my side of North America. As well, mecha anime seemed to pop up like mushrooms and dandelions all over the place so I could never get a handle on what was what with all of the weird names such as "Xabungle" and "SPT Layzner". The naming must have been a Scrabble player's dream or nightmare.

Speaking of the 1985 "SPT Layzner", I should actually give the full name at least once. The official title is "Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner",（蒼き流星SPTレイズナー...Blue Comet SPT Layzner） and it's something that I've heard over and over throughout the years. I figured with that name, it just had to do something with battling mecha. Also that opening theme song was strangely familiar, probably because my anime buddy played it during the anison hour of our biweekly routine (which has been suspended for over three months now).

That opening theme is "Melos no You ni - LONELY WAY" (Just Like Melos). OK, first off, I gather that this Melos fellow must have been quicksilver fast according to the English translation of the lyrics (which you can check by going to the very final link at the bottom of the article), but that is all I know. The best that I could do was that Melos is also a Greek island, so if any wiser anime fan can tell me what Melos has to do with the song, I would be greatly appreciative.

Moving on, "Melos no You ni" was performed by the trio known as AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI which brings on Question No. 2: How the heck did they come up with that name? Well, according to the J-Wiki article on this band, an FM Yokohama radio interview revealed that the three members, vocalist/guitarist Toshiya Noshita（野下俊哉）, keyboardist/guitarist Minoru Yamada（山田稔）and keyboardist/guitarist Tetsushiro Tsuchiya（土屋徹志郎）, all hail from Nagasaki and apparently on the AIRMAIL part, they felt that their hometown was more of a foreign country compared to the rest of Japan. I can sleep well on that.

On listening to "Melos no You ni", which was written by future Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）and AKB48 Svengali Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）, I had first thought that AIRMAIL from NAGASAKI was a Johnny's Entertainment group like Hikaru Genji（光GENJI）or Shonentai（少年隊）from the vocals. But Noshita, Yamada and Tsuchiya all met at the beginning of the decade and formed a first group called Band Liverpool before changing into AIRMAIL. Getting back to the song itself, I enjoy it for those wailing guitars of 80s Japanese Oricon-friendly pop/rock and I even get some Alfee vibes from the background vocals.

The song was the band's only single, and there was only one mini-album released in 1986 "DOGEN?" as their output under their name.

"Melos no You ni" must have been one of those anison that various singers have loved to cover. Hironobu Kageyama（影山ヒロノブ）brought his rockin' vocals to it on the 1998 compilation album "Super Robot Taisen Vocal Collection 2"（スーパーロボット大戦 ボーカルコレクション2）.

Seiyuu/singer Yui Horie（堀江由衣）provided her own cover of the song as one of the iDOLM@STER idols, Yukiho Hagiwara, in the 2007 "The iDOLM@STER Xenoglossia Character Volume 2: Nesshou! Kyoudai (Sunrise) Robot Anime Song: Arashi".