Young 101 -- Kaiju no Ballad（怪獣のバラード）

 

Earlier today, I wrote on Fuyumi Sakamoto's（坂本冬美）newest single, "Saikai Sakaba"（再会酒場）, and did a little mention of the expanded version of "Uta Con"（うたコン）tonight while wondering what the reason behind the special 70-minute show. Well, it turned out that a chunk of the broadcast was dedicated to commemorating the originating network NHK's 70th anniversary this year, and not surprisingly, the Kohaku Utagassen's first televised broadcast back at the end of 1953.

I've seen my fair share of music shows on NHK and the other commercial networks including "Uta Con" but there are many that I never got to see, and one of them which did get featured during the retrospective was "Stage 101"（ステージ101）on the national broadcaster. Although obviously, there were weekly music shows that came onto NHK dating back to the 1950s, "Stage 101", which lasted between 1970 and 1974, was touted as the first music show directly aimed at the younger audience. It was titled that way because the show took place at the network's CT-101 studio in Shibuya which had once boasted the largest such space in East Asia.

"Stage 101" had a changing group of hosts which included Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）, a former NHK announcer herself who would gain far more fame later as the host of TBS music ranking show "The Best 10"（ザ・ベストテン）. Plus, it had a group of dancing and singing men and women known as Young 101（ヤング101）who kinda looked like a massive group of The Partridge Family. Strangely enough, Young 101 had future soloists Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）, Akira Kushida（串田アキラ）and Hiroko Taniyama（谷山浩子）as members.

A number of original songs came from "Stage 101", one of them being "Kaiju no Ballad" (Ballad of the Magic Dragon) which was written by Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）and composed by Osamu Shouji（東海林修）as this Sunshine Pop feel-good tune which probably became a mainstay for high school glee clubs everywhere in Japan. The lyrics have a caravan of happy people inviting a dragon to not just lie in the desert but to join them for a trip to the wondrous ocean. The dragon apparently accepts. "Kaiju no Ballad" was released as a single in September 1972.

To finish off, "Stage 101" was replaced by "Let's Go Young"（レッツゴーヤング）the following month, another music show for the younger generation which had a much longer run.

Akira Kushida -- Kinnikuman Go Fight!（キン肉マンGo Fight!）

 

Yes, the Force of Nature that is seiyuu Tomokazu Sugita（杉田智和）. Quicksilver with a quip, he is such a teasing master that even Takagi-san blushes in his sights. I've often watched those live events in which he's mercilessly driven fellow seiyuu Kana Hanazawa（花澤香菜）into the embarrassment zone and paroxysms of laughter, and he's done the same to eminently teasable Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）on her radio program.

However, this article isn't on Sugita naturally as you can see from the title. Still that video above when he strode into the radio program in that costume was the spark for my curiosity. I learned that he was decked out as Warsman, one of the myriad characters in the manga-turned-anime "Kinnikuman"（キン肉マン）, and so I decided to see what all the hoopla was all about.

"Kinnikuman" is a character that I was hearing all about from time to time since my JET days when some of the junior high school kids were reading and watching him, and then that interest tallied forth into my long years in the Tokyo and Chiba area when I learned that some of my adult friends were also fans of the manga and the anime. The 1983 show was all about a goofy but stout-hearted superhero who had to battle all sorts of rivals to the throne via a wrestling championship of which Warsman starts out as a villain but then turns into an ally.

I looked up the theme song for "Kinnikuman" and discovered that the program had three opening themes, four ending themes, and many insert songs in which one of them was even "Me Gumi no Hito" （め組のひと）by Rats And Star. So, I guess Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）had actually been connected with an anime before, albeit indirectly.

Anyways, the first of those opening themes was "Kinnikuman Go Fight!" by anison veteran Akira Kushida（串田アキラ）. Written by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and composed by Hiroaki Serizawa（芹澤廣明）, the proud horns are part and parcel of the anime opening theme experience. I've heard them all the time on any mecha or superhero anime back in those days. However, there is that underlying rhythm provided by the keyboards which is surprisingly light and mellow along the lines of an AOR tune.

The delight from the audience above on hearing the intro for Kushida and "Kinnikuman Go Fight!" shows how beloved he and the seiyuu for the titular hero himself, Akira Kamiya（神谷明）, have been. 

Akira Kushida -- Uchuu Keiji Gyaban （宇宙刑事ギャバン）

My period for loving tokusatsu programs such as "Ultraman" （ウルトラマン）and "Kamen Rider"（仮面ライダー）was as a pre-pubescent kid in the early 1970s. By the time the 1980s rolled around, my interest had long turned toward anime, especially those series done in the Leiji Matsumoto style, so as such I'd never heard of this program "Uchuu Keiji Gyaban" (Space Sheriff Gavan) in its first run. Reading up on the Wikipedia article, I was surprised to find out that this particular tokusatsu had partially inspired the powers-that-be to create "Robocop". And by the way, the English translation of the title strikes me as being pretty cool...I think "Gavan" would be an excellent name for a sheriff cleaning up a dirty one-horse town. Just imagine:

"Ma'am, my name is Gavan...Sheriff John Gavan!"

The opening theme, "Uchuu Keiji Gyaban", though, sounded like something that I had heard before so I'm assuming that the song has frequently appeared on retrospective shows. And listening to it again, I definitely got this disco-era Rod Stewart vibe from the pumping heroic melody by Michiaki Watanabe（渡辺宙明）. Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）provided the lyrics and the prolific Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）helped to arrange the song. I think the kids at the time would have been pretty psyched to see the opening credits with the theme playing. Frankly, given a decade, they could have been dancing to it in the nightclubs.

But the fellow growling out his manly vocals was not anison master Isao Sasaki（ささきいさお）but Akira Kushida（串田アキラ）who has specialized in theme tunes for both anime and tokusatsu. You can check out his Wikipedia page here.