I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Had the usual food-and-anime session with my buddy yesterday. I got to see a number of new anime for Fall 2017 which have been OK so far..."Just Because" was actually funnier than I had thought it would be while "Two-Car" was more dramatic than expected. Of course, "Mahoujin Guru Guru" has continued to be hilarious as usual. The theme songs accompanying the new shows haven't exactly been instant earworms, though.
Of course, there was the anison hour, and I wanted to touch upon one short classical piece that I heard and enjoyed. It was actually from the 2000 motion picture treatment of the beloved anime "Ah! Megami-sama"（ああっ女神さまっ...Ah! My Goddess）. Titled "Coro di dea", I guess it must have had its time during the climactic moment during the movie (I never saw it) but it was performed by the three main seiyuu from the original show, Kikuko Inoue（井上喜久子）, Yumi Touma（冬馬由美）and Aya Hisakawa（久川綾）as Belldandy, Urd and Skuld respectively.
Accompanied by the Warsaw Chorus, it's quite the grand 2 minutes and very anthemic. Anime fans have commented that a certain anison should be their choice for a song to be played at their weddings or funerals. I would be more than happy to have "Coro di dea" played at my funeral although I'm not particularly religious.
I was surprised to find out that the song was composed by Shiro Hamaguchi（浜口史郎）who would come up with another grand but different song for an anime about a dozen years later. Animation director Hiroaki Gouda（合田浩章）wrote the lyrics to "Coro di dea" with Taro Yamashita（山下太郎）translating them into Latin.
Incidentally, happy belated birthday to Inoue (September 25th) who turns 17...again!
Well, I gotta say that it isn't everyday that two beloved anison produced years apart share the exact same title. Therefore, today will be that special day. The one that I've already known about for years is "Omoide ga Ippai" by the folk-pop duo, H2O, the touching ballad that ended the anime "Miyuki"（みゆき）back in the early 1980s and has since become a graduation ceremony favourite, usually guaranteed to induce tears in the students.
"Ranma 1/2"（らんま1/2）is an anime that even I have heard about but only through reputation based on the original manga by Rumiko Takahashi（高橋留美子）. Even so, I have been listening to the theme song, also titled "Omoide ga Ippai" (Full of Memories) for the second entry of the anime franchise, "Ranma 1/2 Nettohen"（らんま1/2 熱闘編...The Fierce Fighting Edition） which went on for almost 3 years (1989-1992). The song often came up as part of my anime buddy's anison hour and I've got it in my collection of anison without having known its source for a number of years.
The aidoru group CoCo recorded the original version as the coupling song to their 3rd single"Natsu no Tomodachi"（夏の友達...Summer Friends） from May 1990. Written by Neko Oikawa（及川眠子）and composed by Masayuki Iwata（岩田雅之）, the cute anison sounds like something Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）would have sung in her junior high school days; I think it is the synths that make me think that way. The single peaked at No. 3.
But to be honest with you, my preference is for the cover version by the female seiyuu from the cast of "Ranma 1/2". Forming the quintet DoCo in 1990, the members were Kikuko (17 forever) Inoue（井上喜久子）, Noriko Hidaka（日高のり子）, Megumi Hayashibara（林原めぐみ）, Minami Takayama（高山みなみ）and Rei Sakuma（佐久間レイ）. Their "Omoide ga Ippai" was recorded for one of the franchise's OVAs "Super Vol. 2" in November 1995.
For me, the difference was just the added depth in DoCo's performance when they recorded it and that soaring instrumental bridge near the end. Incidentally, when asked how their collective name, similar to CoCo, was created, the answer provided was apparently that "D" was next after "C". Plus, there is the fact that the Japanese word "koko" means "here" whereas "doko" means "where".
Between stints in Japan (1991-1994), when I was back to being involved with my old university club at U of T, the JCSA, there were a number of programs being run including English Through Video for those working-holiday students who wanted to learn some words and expressions via Hollywood movies (psst, I don't think "9 1/2 Weeks" was such a great choice) and Japanese Through Video for those who wanted to do the same from the Japanese language via the various J-dramas.
Then, once in a while, my anime buddy, the same fellow that I get together with biweekly for our food-and-anime sessions, held anime presentations on campus (I think the genre was still known as Japanimation back then). One of the favourites among the audience during the sessions was the show "Ah! Megami-sama"（ああっ女神さまっ...Ah! My Goddess）. To be honest, I don't remember much about the overall story anymore since my 17 years in Japan were anime-free aside from "Sazae-san" (サザエさん) and "Chibi Maruko-chan"(ちびまる子ちゃん), but I do remember the basic premise of three sister goddesses taking up residence in a teenage boy's residence. It all struck me as being somewhat "I Dream of Jeannie". However, instead of the simple name of Jeannie, I had to take in the relatively complex names of Belldandy, Urd and Skuld.
Although with my return to the anime fold in the last few years since my permanent return to Toronto, I've been able to retain my knowledge of the brightest and best in the seiyuu world, back in the early 90s, I had no idea who was voicing who in the world of anime back then although my buddy would rattle them off all the time. I simply smiled and nodded. So it was a surprise to find out that on hearing the above song at my buddy's house, two of the singers involved here were seiyuu that I do know now.
"Kataomoi Shika Shiranai Kuse ni" (Even Though My Unrequited Love Is Still Unknown) is on one of the many albums devoted to "Ah! Megami-sama", "Kamisama no Okurimono"（神さまの贈りもの...God's Present） from 1993. And the singers (under the group name of Goddess Family Club) are the ones who played the goddesses Belldandy, Urd and Skuld, seiyuu Kikuko Inoue（井上喜久子）, Yumi Touma（冬馬由美）and Aya Hisakawa（久川綾 ）respectively.
Touma is a seiyuu that hasn't rung a bell with me although looking her up on J-Wiki, I found out that she had played the cold-as-ice mother to heroine Miho Nishizumi in the recent sleeper hit "Girls und Panzer". However, Inoue and Hisakawa are voices that I've heard everywhere in the last few years in more older authority roles. Inoue, of course, is eternally 17 years old. However, realizing that it was Hisakawa who was voicing the often-petulant Skuld was surprising since at around the same time, she was the shy and reasonable voice behind the arguably even more famous Sailor Mercury in the "Sailor Moon" franchise.
Anyways, listening to "Kataomoi Shika Shiranai Kuse ni" was quite pleasant and nostalgic since its arrangement sounds like something that I would have heard in the lighter side of Japanese pop back in the late 80s or early 90s just from the choice of synths. I've sometimes said that anison from a certain age had elements from an even earlier age, and I think this song is one example of this. Perhaps I can even pick up a certain Resort Pop sound in it as well. The song by the way was composed by Kenji Kawai（川井憲次）and written by Sora Hasegawa（長谷川空）.
I'm devoting "Kataomoi Shika Shiranai Kuse ni" to veteran seiyuu Yuko Mizutani（水谷優子）. She performed so many roles but considering that my family still watches "Chibi Maruko-chan" on TV Japan, I know her best as Maruko's older sister, Sakiko Sakura. Unfortunately, I found out this morning that Mizutani had passed away a couple of days ago from breast cancer at the too-young age of 51. Go-meifuku wo o-inori shimasu.
