FIELD OF VIEW -- DAN DAN Kokoro Hikareteku（DAN DAN 心魅かれてく）

Hello there. J-Canuck here and welcome to Easter Monday and April Fool's Day at the same time. No fooling around here, though, as frequent commenter and occasional contributor Fireminer will be providing the first two articles on KKP for April 2024! Take it away, Fireminer!

 

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” as it is often said. It is doubly true when applied to the late great Akira Toriyama. There is an industry in Japan for artists who can imitate Toriyama’s style. Fans of franchises like Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest can be assured that the Toriyama-ness of their favorite series are now safe in the hands of artists like Toyotarou who cut their teeth drawing Dragon Ball doujinshi.

But what happens when an artist imitates himself? Or rather, return to the root of the thing that gave him success? Dragon Ball GT is what happens. It will take far too long to explain what Dragon Ball GT is, its spirit, and its importance within the Dragon Ball mythos as well as to the fandom. What I will say that it is a lot more enjoyable than what Western fans give it credit. That and the opening song absolutely slaps.

J-Canuck has already made a good write-up (https://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2019/11/field-of-view-totsuzen.html) on the band FIELD OF VIEW, so I will only focus on their hit DAN DAN Kokoro Hikareteku (DAN DAN 心魅かれてく, Step by Step, You're Charming My Heart). Written by KKP’s regulars Izumi Sakai and Tetsuro Oda, who also wrote a few other hits for the band, Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku is a tour-de-force of a summer song. You simply can’t listen to it and then resist the urge of jumping right on a car and drive along the coast, feeling the sun and the wind rolling on your skin. That is the very vibe of Dragon Ball GT, an attempt to return to the innocence and whimsical adventures of the original Dragon Ball as opposed to Dragon Ball Z’s hot-blooded, roar-till-your-throat-raw spirit.

Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku was released by FIELD OF VIEW as their fourth single on March 11, 1996. It was an instant hit, no doubt buoyed by Oda’s breezy composition and Izumi’s lovely lyrics. It peaked at #4 on Oricon and charted for 11 weeks. The song was used as Dragon Ball GT’s opening song and then as the ending theme for Dragon Ball: The Path to Power, a movie that was actually a retelling of the original Dragon Ball storyline. Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku was the perfect song to both the show and the movie. I suppose it was also the perfect song for the Dragon Ball fans in the late 90s. Those who were brought up with Dragon Ball in the 90s now reached an age where they felt the first pang of nostalgia. Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku is the call to adventure for the restless soul who felt regret for not having made the best of his youth, but also having too much energy and time to just bottle it up. The song asks them to put aside their worries and fatigue for a moment, and just follow what their restlest spirit tells them to./.

FIELD OF VIEW -- Totsuzen（突然）

Welcome to November 2019! Yup, once again time seems to have snuck up behind us and surprised all of us with the penultimate month of the year. The snow didn't come at us as Halloween trick-or-treaters had feared but according to one of my friends on Facebook, some of the white stuff did hit his neighbourhood briefly this morning, although I doubt that there was any accumulation.

As much as I poke a little fun at the contemporary aidoru groups such as AKB 48, SKE 48 and NGT 48 by calling them the alphabet idols, I also fondly remember a lot of the bands from the early 1990s as the Scrabble or Scramble groups since they had names that looked like they had been formed by randomly selecting alphabet tiles from a pouch. I'm thinking of B'z, ZARD, ZYYG and REV.

But there was one band from that time which had a unique name to be sure but at least it did come out as a coherent phrase, FIELD OF VIEW. Starting as view in 1992 under the Being label, the quartet of vocalist Yuuya Asaoka（浅岡雄也）, drummer Takuto Kohashi（小橋琢人）, guitarist Takashi Oda（小田孝）and keyboardist Jun Abe（安部潤）put out their first 2 singles which didn't exactly light any fires. However with a style change of doffing their casual wear for some smart suits, and picking up two more words to their name, FIELD OF VIEW made a re-debut in 1995.

Their 4th single, "Totsuzen" (Sudden) was released in July 1995 and became their best hit chart-wise when it peaked at No. 2 on Oricon. It's a song that brought instant recognition to me after so long, mostly through its use as a commercial tune for the drink Pocari Sweat. With lyrics by Izumi ZARD Sakai（坂井泉水）and music by Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, a couple of song-smiths that were prolific during the 1990s, "Totsuzen" relates the story of a guy who may have been given a second chance at a relationship due to a sudden letter from his old flame. I also noticed a certain musical riff in there which reminded me of part of the melody in the SMAP super hit, "Sekai ni Hitotsu dake no Hana" （世界に一つだけの花）.

Selling 1.2 million copies (and perhaps truckloads of Pocari Sweat), "Totsuzen" managed to finish the year as the 22nd-ranked single for 1995. It also made it onto FIELD OF VIEW's debut album "FIELD OF VIEW I" released in October of that year and hit the top spot on the album charts and even became the 43rd-ranked album within those last three months.

Keyboardist Abe left the band following their 5th single to be replaced by bassist Kenji Niitsu（新津健二）. FIELD OF VIEW would release 22 singles and 5 original albums. Their last three singles up to mid-2002 would have the band picking up a definite article so they were known as the FIELD OF VIEW before finally calling it quits.