ZAQ -- Please,Take on me♡

It was a bit like meeting old friends during the biweekly anime session this time around yesterday. Not that I met anyone other than my anime buddy, but what I did see was "Chuunibyo demo Koi ga Shitai! ~ Take on me"（中二病でも恋がしたい! ~ Take on me）, an anime film that had come out earlier this year in Japan. I watched the two original series some years ago, and even then, it was a couple of years after their original broadcast.

The show wasn't a total gag anime or a serious epic adventure but it did have elements of both and a certain sense of adolescent poignancy. Plus, the story seemed to grow beyond the initial premise of the boy Yuta trying to forget his past of eighth-grade delusional fantasy and the girl Rikka sploshing around happily in her present of eight-grade delusional fantasy with friends consisting of enablers and deprogrammers.

On first hearing the title for this movie, I couldn't help but think of an old 1980s pop tune but watching the movie, I realized that this was the finale for the anime franchise which must have gotten a lot of hankies out for the fans at the movie theatre. It was a good end all told with a long-awaited scene finally happening. Plus "Take on me" had that nice cross-country caper as well as Cary and Eva Marie...er, I mean, Yuta and Rikka traveling to places like Tokyo and Sapporo (nice seeing JR Sapporo Station again) with Moe and Curly...er, I mean, Nibutani and Dekomori hot on their trail.

Another "old friend" that I got to hear, actually, was singer-songwriter ZAQ. I haven't heard from her for some time, so it was nice to see her come back to help out with the theme songs in "Take on me". Her most recent single is "Journey" from January 2018 which includes all of the songs from the movie including this one, "Please, Take on me♡" which is my favourite.

ZAQ indeed wrote and composed "Please,Take on me♡", but with the voice modulation and contemporary technopop in there, I was reminded to a certain extent of the Perfume trio. It's nice and catchy and the song was inserted during that montage where Yuta and Rikka were having fun in the nation's capital. Incidentally, there was a clever bit of store naming in that scene when one of the most famous low-priced chains, Don Quixote, was actually dubbed La Mancha in the movie. However, I'm very sure that some actual restaurant or store or something in Japan has that very name. I would also not be surprised if the logo involved a tipping windmill.

In any case, ZAQ's 16th single made it up to No. 34 on Oricon.

ZAQ -- Sparkling Daydream/Black Raison d'etre -- Inside Identity

Ever have these memories from your younger and more foolish days that you just want excised from your cranium forever? Ever cringe at those "What the heck was I thinking of?!" acts from your adolescence? Yuta Togashi and Shinka Nibutani share your pain. For me, it wasn't just Eighth-Grader Syndrome...the condition was pretty much my entire educational history until university.

I've just been going through the first season of "Chūnibyō demo Koi ga Shitai!"（中二病でも恋がしたい!...Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions）from 2012 up to the episode where things got pretty darn serious all of a sudden with viewers finding out about Yuta's to-be girlfriend, kooky Rikka Takanashi's reason behind her syndrome. Up until then, things had been hilarious as the two other main characters of Yuta and Shinka tried to exorcise memories of their past embarrassing acts with mixed results.

One of the things I've enjoyed about "Chūnibyō " is the opening theme song by ZAQ, "Sparkling Daydream". Words, music and singing were all done by her, and it is a thoroughly soaring piece meshed well with the opening credits, especially with the left and right sides of the screen alternately flashing (not sure if that had been inspired by the fact that Rikka has that eyepatch). I just hope there have been no YouTubers uploading a loop of the credits with viewers watching them in a darkened room. Although "Sparkling Daydream" provides fine and fun background to the characters horsing around (Sanae Dekomori and her weaponized ponytails for example), I think the soaring aspect of the song can also be applied to the freedom in the characters' delusions whether through flight or power.

"Sparkling Daydream" was released in October 2012 as ZAQ's debut single (I've already written about her 2nd single) and broke through the Oricon Top 10 to reach No. 8. It is also a part of her 2014 album, "Noisy LAB." which also hit the No. 8 mark.

ZAQ was also responsible for words and music to the ending theme for the first season of "Chūnibyō ", "Inside Identity". However, instead of her singing it, she left it to the four main female seiyuu of the series as the show-specific unit Black Raison d'etre. The song has also gotten a lot of airplay on my hard drive just for the rock arrangement and the cute voices doing that near-rap. Once again, it worked well with the ending credits which kinda come off as one of those 80s music videos featuring dream states.

Just to inform you of those seiyuu, they are Maaya Uchida（内田真礼）, Chinatsu Akasaki（赤﨑千夏）, Azumi Asakura（浅倉杏美）and Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）.

"Inside Identity" peaked at No. 12 on the Oricon weeklies after its release in November 2012. Tap into that inner Dark Flame Master while you listen to it...and make sure no one sees you.