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.
Well, thanks to some YouTube happenstance, I was able to catch the final episode for "Murenase! Seton Gakuen"（群れなせ！シートン学園...Seton Academy: Join The Pack!）, and subtitled, too. For obvious reasons surrounding us right now, I will no longer be able to meet my anime buddy for those Sunday get-togethers for the foreseeable future, although we might be able to finagle a more virtual solution, if he's willing to accept my idea. But in any case, it was a nice heartwarming finale with the high likelihood of a second season considering what I saw at the end. Still, the ending credits scene while everyone in the Cooking Club was talking seemed a bit incomplete due to the insertion of a generic happy instrumental that I'd never heard before which made me wonder if the producing studio had been under some pressure to get something sorted out pretty quickly.
As stated in that article, my big favourite of the opening and ending themes was the latter in the form of the oh-so-adorable "Ohkami Blues"（オオカミブルース）by Hina Kino（木野日菜）. However, in recent weeks, the opening theme has started to grow on me as well, as all of the characters go gallivanting all throughout Seton Academy.
"Gakuen Soukan Zoo" (Academy Spectacle Zoo) has got a good chunk of the main cast including Kino singing a farcical circus march which sets the tone for the zaniness of each of the episodes. It not only has a didgeridoo and tribal drums at the start but everyone: Haruki Ishiya（石谷春貴）as the long-suffering Jin Kazama, Yume Miyamoto（宮本侑芽）as the other human Hitomi, Misaki Kuno（久野美咲）as the poo-loving koala Yukari, Konomi Kohara（小原好美）as the ever-dying sloth Miyubi, and Sora Tokui（徳井青空）as the cat Kurumi really got into their animal noises throughout the song.
As with "Ohkami Blues", "Gakuen Soukan Zoo" was created by Shin Furuya（古屋真）and Yosuke Yamashita（山下洋介）. It might be a little too speedy and uptempo to be the official school anthem at Seton, but heck, it makes for a good descriptor of what Season 1 has been about.
It was a nice Sunday yesterday. Got some really good, really seasonal weather for the first time in several months and it wasn't just me and my anime buddy but we had a guest appearance from another old friend and his son. So it was time to go out for some spicy Szechuan fare and then some dessert.
I gotta say that there are some offbeat shows this season of Spring 2018. We got another anime about dragons although this one isn't listed as a slice-of-life comedy but more of a wartime drama according to Wikipedia. Looking at the first few scenes of "Hisone to Masotan"（ひそねとまそたん...Hisone & Masotan）, I thought it was a straight show about a young awkward lady trying to fulfill her dreams of becoming an ASDF pilot for Japan.
Then I saw the dragon Masotan and, nope, it wasn't going to be all that simple. Still, there is plenty of humour to be had with the main character of Hisone Amakasu（甘粕ひそね）who might have Asperger's and awkwardness, and her frenemy (?), the cranky and resentful punk Nao Kaizaki（貝崎名緒）. My friend told me that Mari Okada（岡田麿里）is the screenwriter for the show, and apparently she has a penchant for killing off her characters in horrible myriad ways so perhaps I shouldn't get too attached to any of them. But then again, the notorious Gen Urobuchi（虚淵玄）was actually pretty nice (relatively speaking) on "Suisei no Gargantia"（翠星のガルガンティア...Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet）, so you never know.
Although Winter 2018 didn't have any instant earworms among the anime themes (although a few of them have grown on me), it looks like Spring 2018 may unearth a few musical maggots including the ending theme for "Hisone to Masotan", a cover of the late France Gall's"Le temps de la rentrée" with the added Japanese subtitle of "Koi no Ieji (Shin Gakki)"（恋の家路（新学期）...Love's Road Home (New School Term)）. As if things couldn't get even more weirder. The show has this cover of a French ye-ye tune performed by all of the Dragon Pilots or D-Pi (although not all of them have been introduced yet as of the 2nd episode) played by Misako Kuno（久野美咲）as Hisone, Tomoyo Kurosawa（黒沢ともよ）as Nao, Maki Kawase（河瀬茉希）, Satomi Arai（新井里美）and Kaori Nazuka（名塚佳織）. Plus, the ending credits have the characters channeling their inner American Bandstand.
The original song was a track on Gall's "Baby Pop"album from 1966 with father Robert and brother Patrice creating "Le temps de la rentrée". The song is only around a minute and change long so perhaps what I heard on the ending credits is the entire version. Short but very sweet.
