Maaya Sakamoto -- Million Clouds/Tekopikari -- Futari Shojo （ふたり少女）

My anime buddy and I have been doing our biweekly anime-and-meal sessions for over 4 years, and there has been a certain progression in the routine. What usually happens is that the wacky comedy (such as this anime this season) or action-packed stuff gets shown earlier in the afternoon while the final anime of the night is the calming show so that our stomachs can digest in relative peace. And especially after last night's tasty and very spicy Lahm ou'Ajeen (a Middle Eastern pizza) at a nearby restaurant, we needed some mellow fare. Something like "Corpse Party" would have had me producing some of my own "gore", if you know what I mean.

The seaside mall that has been featured in "Amanchu!"

Last anime season, that was fulfilled by the heartwarming "Flying Witch". But for this season, it is "Amanchu!"（あまんちゅ!）Both shows take place in an appealing sylvan environment way outside of Tokyo but unlike the northern city of Hirosaki from the former anime, "Amanchu!" takes place in the oceanside city of Ito（伊東）in Shizuoka Prefecture, a place that I actually visited in the fall of 2014 with my friend. It stars Eri Suzuki and Ai Kayano（鈴木絵理・茅野愛衣）as the wacky Hikari "Pikari" Kohinata and self-effacing Futaba "Teko" Ohki respectively as high school students who develop an unlikely friendship while being members at the school scuba diving club.

Man, as soon as I heard the opening notes of singer and lyricist Maaya Sakamoto's（坂本真綾）"Million Clouds", I knew my stomach would be cooing "calm blue ocean" along with the rest of me. It's about as sweet a ballad as I have ever heard for an anison. It begins with Sakamoto's feather-light vocals crooning along with a melody by Swedish singer Frida Sundemo that has a beginning which is the equivalent of a young girl with an innocent dream while Pikari and Teko look off into the sky in the opening credits. "Million Clouds" then quickly speeds up as the girls dive into the ocean as the dream seems to get closer to achievement before it all comes back to the song's original dreaminess. Wouldn't it be nice if this could be an inspirational song for some of those future Olympians out there?

I was hoping for the full recorded version of "Million Clouds" but happily I was able to find this unplugged version of the song by Sakamoto in concert. I don't know how well it did on Oricon but the song is indeed a perfect fit with the tone of "Amanchu!"

Ahhh...did find it!

Ito Station

Keeping in line with the purpose of this blog, I also enjoyed the score used for "Amanchu!" since it was by the guitar-playing duo of Gontiti（ゴンチチ）. It's not just the opening and closing themes but the ever-present music that keeps things nice and mellow for the 20-or-so minutes of high school/scuba diving life in Ito.

(cover version)

Speaking of the closing theme, the two main seiyuu tackle it as Tekopikari（てこぴかり）for "Futari Shojo" (Two Girls). I had thought it was Gontiti who created the light Latin-flavoured song but it was actually singer-lyricist Hitomi Mieno（三重野瞳）and singer-songwriter Akino Arai（新居昭乃）behind the just-as-soothing ender.

Not surprisingly, my buddy is already planning to purchase both "Million Clouds" and "Futari Shojo". I'll be sorry to see this show go.

For you "Amanchu!" fans who may be tantalized by the thought of actually staying overnight in Ito, you can try out Daitokan（大東館）which has an interesting variety in onsen inside. You'll need to know Japanese to navigate the hotel's website but there is always the TripAdvisor page.

An Ito sunset

Interesting....a lot of anime fans head over to the actual place where their favourite shows were set such as the town of Oarai in Ibaraki Prefecture for "Girls und Panzer" or even the Tokyo district of Azabu-Juban for "Sailor Moon" after they've been viewed and enjoyed. However, this might be the one instance in which my friend and I got on the Ito bandwagon even before "Amanchu!" was televised.

A nice coffee shop on a shopping street

Minami Shinoda & Eri Suzuki -- Nichijo no Mahou （日常の魔法）

(Vocaloid version)

Well, the spring season of anime has just wrapped up so I managed to catch the finales for a few of them yesterday at my anime buddy's place. I've mentioned a couple of them already: "Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear" (くまみこ) and "Flying Witch" (ふらいんぐうぃっち). The two of them have a commonality in that both of them are set up in Japan's northlands with the former taking place in the fictional hamlet of Kumade while the latter is in the very real-life Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture. Both shows also deal with magic to a certain degree for which the characters in both accept in the same way that they accept coffee or tea with their breakfast.

However, although "Kumamiko" never really lived up to its promise (we started getting fed up with the main character having her weekly mammoth nervous breakdowns) despite the fact that I liked the earworm-y ending (and perhaps opening) theme, "Flying Witch" was definitely the nicest way to wrap up a Sunday night and it is the only anime from this season that I will be missing (my buddy feels that most likely there won't be a sequel series for some reason). It stood out for being a magical girl series that really wasn't a magical girl series. It was really about the teenage witch Makoto's comfortable new life in a smaller regional city for which the magic didn't bombard us as a terrifying weapon or as this extremely dense and arcane philosophy; it was simply there to introduce some nice people and situations. Of course, this type of show won't attract absolutely everybody, but for me, I've always been a fan of the slice-of-life anime and "Flying Witch" provides it with slabs of life as thick as wonderful Japanese toast with the huge pat of butter soaking into the spongy nooks and crannies.

I've already written about the country-folksy opening theme for "Flying Witch", "Shanranran" (シャンランラン) by miwa, so here is the nice and mellow ending theme "Nichijo no Mahou" (Everyday Magic) by Minami Shinoda & Eri Suzuki（篠田みなみ・鈴木絵理）who played the roles of Makoto and her foster little sister Chinatsu. I think in one way, this ballad sums up what the series has been about....finding the magic in the everyday whether it be helping a classmate get over her fear of cooking at school or attending the annual summer festival in town. Although I was able to get the ending credits with the theme at the very top, I couldn't find the full version of "Nichijo no Mahou" with Shinoda and Suzuki but I did find a cover version starring a couple of Vocaloids, Miku Hatsune and Zunko Tohoku（初音ミク・東北ずん子）. The song was composed by Shuhei Mutsuki（睦月周平）and written by Natsumi Tadano（只野菜摘）.

After having read Noelle's adventures in northern Japan over the last few days and watching "Flying Witch", I wouldn't mind visiting good ol' Hirosaki or even Sapporo someday. And if you are interested in reading about some of the places that Noelle and I have visited over the days, and in my case, years, check out the new category in Labels called Sites.