Kana Yuuki, Saki Miyashita, Atsumi Tanezaki & Rie Suegara -- Wish Me Luck!!!!

Just a few days before the end of 2018 (and for a lot of people, not a day too soon), but for anime fans like myself, there was a good crop of shows this year with some pretty nice anison attached.

Unless I find some more really good entries in the soundtrack for this Summer 2018 anime, this will probably be the final entry for "HaruKana Receive"（はるかなレシーブ）on the blog. "Wish Me Luck!!!!" was the ending theme for most of the episodes as sung by the four lead characters on the show.

Kana Yuuki（優木かな）as Haruka, Saki Miyashita（宮下早紀）as Kanata, Atsumi Tanezaki（種﨑敦美）as Claire Thomas and Rie Suegara（末柄里恵）as Emiri Thomas provide this uptempo ender whose arrangement I would label as "80s steel synth". Even when things got somewhat tense in an episode, "Wish Me Luck!!!!" was always there to reassure us that the four friends would stay together. Riyu Kosaka（小坂りゆ）and Naoki Maeda（前田尚紀）created the song. The arrangement hasn't exactly broken the mold, but heck, it's happy and optimistic. What more can you ask about a slice-of-life anime based in sunny Okinawa?

Plus, now that the Autumn 2018 season has now ended, it says something that "HaruKana Receive" can still linger in my mind as a good memory even with some of the big highlights in anime and theme songs that have come since.

Rasmus Faber -- Rise

Didn't catch "Uta Kon"（うたコン）last night as I usually would because I was actually out last night with a few close friends for a Peking Duck dinner. I didn't want that cholesterol to go to waste, after all. In other news, my latest package from Tower Records has been in Toronto for the past couple of days where it will probably be having an extended stay at a processing centre while the rotating strike-influenced backlog attempts to be cleared.

Anyways, back on Sunday when I met up with my anime buddy, we had our usual anison hour. My friend decided to play a few tracks from his newly-acquired soundtrack of the summer anime "Harukana Receive"（はるかなレシーブ）. Track 1, "Rise", immediately grabbed my attention with its happy and high-paced Latin beat. This is the vocal version (unfortunately I couldn't find out who the vocalist was) created by Rasmus Faber who was behind the entire soundtrack, but the instrumental version of it was played throughout the show at various points.

It's a great tune which has been able to pull me away from the current snow-laden weather outside, and "Rise" even reminds me of "Life" which was the wonderful Mondo Grosso creation from 2000. With a few more of these tropical tunes, I may just survive the Canadian winter to come here.

Kana Yuuki & Saki Miyashita -- FLY two BLUE

Just a few weeks ago, I featured a cute-as-heck fictional commercial jingle used in the anime "HaruKana Receive"（はるかなレシーブ）as sung by Chisaki Kimura（木村千咲）.

Well, let's get onto the opening theme for the show titled "FLY two BLUE", sung by the two lead seiyuu Kana Yuuki（優木かな）and Saki Miyashita（宮下早紀）as Haruka Ozora and Kana Higa（大空遥・比嘉かなた）respectively.

"FLY two BLUE" fairly soars off into the big blue yonder right after the twinkly synths bring our ears in. Listening to it again after getting our first snowfall last night made me even more nostalgic for the summer days that didn't seem to be too far off in the past. Makoto Nishikawa（西川マコト）wrote and composed the opener that could even reflect a typically fun if strenuous beach volleyball session between HaruKana and the Thomas Sisters.

Chisaki Kimura -- Waku Waku Shequasar（ワクワクシークヮーサー）

Amidst all of the wacky comedies that came out during the Summer 2018 season of anime, there was one show that kept things fairly grounded into a mellow slice-of-life feature. This was "HaruKana Receive"（はるかなレシーブ）, an anime that revolves around the sport of beach volleyball and is set in Okinawa. My anime buddy and I saw the whole thing, and it was about as relaxing as one could get with its themes of friendship and competition.

Now, the opening and ending themes are fine and I will cover them in the coming weeks, but I have to say that the one song that caught my ear was actually this catchy jazzed-up in-universe commercial jingle for a shequasar drink. And what is shequasar, you ask? I will be honest...until watching "HaruKana Receive", I didn't even know how it was translated into English or romanized into letters, although I knew about this citrus fruit when I was living in Japan. I did visit a few Okinawan restaurants here and in my home away from home, but for the life of me, I can't remember whether I even drank shequasar juice. Mind you, I did have my share of Orion Beer.

Still, the side character of Akari Oshiro（大城あかり）, as played by Chisaki Kimura（木村千咲）, who becomes the final addition to the group of high school buddies in the show, is the aidoru who got her start in show business by doing this jumpy little jingle called "Waku Waku Shequasar" (Exciting Shequasar). Yup, that song really drilled itself into my head very quickly.

Written by hotaru and composed by Tokiya Sugishita（杉下トキヤ）, I'm quite happy that they decided to put out a full version of "Waku Waku Shequasar". Maybe it will come out in the official soundtrack for "HaruKana Receive". In any case, there is a real drink for shequasar so I'm wondering if Kimura's efforts may have paid off in a boost of sales for it.

Shequasar may read like something a veteran Scrabble player might throw onto the board, but it actually sounds more exotic and interesting than its more sombre scientific name, Citrus depressa.