Necry Talkie -- Fuzaketenai ze（ふざけてないぜ）/Momo Asakura -- Pinky Hook（ピンキーフック）

 

If it weren't for this pandemic, I would most likely be over at my anime buddy's house right now watching the finales for the 2021 summer season of anime. Naturally, that hasn't been the case for over 18 months so a lot of anime that I could have seen throughout 2020 and 2021 up to now has gone by the wayside. However, by my own volition, I've been catching a little of the stuff that has been within my "like" range and that has included the second season of "Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon"（小林さんちのメイドラゴン...Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid）.

Perhaps one small advantage that I've gotten from choosing my own anime to try out is that I've been able to see shows that my buddy probably wouldn't have chosen for the biweekly viewings. One such show is "Kanojo mo Kanojo"（カノジョも彼女...Girlfriend, Girlfriend）. It's within the same genre of slice-of-life comedy as "Kobayashi-san" but this one is far more in the farce category. I mean, if "Kobayashi-san" is the "I Dream of Jeannie" of anime then "Kanojo mo Kanojo" is "Three's Company" for those who are in the know regarding old American sitcoms.

For my anime buddy, "Kanojo mo Kanojo" is probably too farcical for his liking. But I've enjoyed watching the first two episodes so far and it has one seiyuu who I've known since I came back from Japan a decade ago. Ayane Sakura（佐倉綾音）has been in the business since 2010 and some of the earliest anime that I've seen since getting back into the animated tangled web have featured her in programs such as "Joshiraku"（じょしらく）and "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか？...Is The Order A Rabbit?）. With "Kanojo mo Kanojo", she's playing closer to her short-tempered rakugo-ka in "Joshiraku" as the suffering but bi-curious girlfriend to a fellow who is insanely honest to the point of potentially ending up at the bottom of the Sumida River someday. 

Listening and watching the opening and closing credits to "Kanojo mo Kanojo" has gotten me to write about the opening and closing themes today. As for the former, it's "Fuzaketenai ze" (Not Fooling Around) by Necry Talkie（ネクライトーキー）, a rock band which I wrote about less than two weeks ago, so it is with some coincidence that I'm talking about them again. With words and music by guitarist Asahi（朝日）, it begins with an appropriately sultry rock beat which continues into something more upbeat and innocent, probably reflecting the overall harem situation among the characters.

The ending theme is "Pinky Hook" by seiyuu/singer Momo Asakura（麻倉もも）, a funkier tune with some light and breezy synthpop involved which was written and composed by Sho Watanabe（渡辺翔）. I mentioned his name earlier in the summer since he composed a Tokyo Girls' Style（東京女子流）song a decade ago. If I'm not mistaken, the title refers to the Japanese custom of intertwining pinky fingers between two friends to confirm a promise.

And the "Three's Company" award for double entendres goes to...

Necry Talkie -- Yume Miru Dobunezumi（夢みるドブネズミ）

 

Some Canadiana for you on this Tuesday night. "Hinterland: Who's Who" was the classic CBC one-minute vignette on the myriad forms of wildlife in the Great White North beginning with a haunting flute sequence followed by a soothing narrator talking about the animal selected. It was definitely one of my childhood memories and it often preceded some of the other beloved kids' shows such as "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Dressup".

That one minute on the beaver was the closest that I could get to segueing into Necry Talkie's（ネクライトーキー）"Yume Miru Dobunezumi" (Dreaming Brown Rat). And here I thought that the band Qaijff was going to be the one with the unusual name this week that got onto KKP. Perhaps that was indeed hasty thinking since I haven't been able to find out as of yet the origins of this unusual name for this outfit from Osaka.

Necry Talkie has been described on Wikipedia and elsewhere as this pop-punk band which began in 2017, and the blog "Good Morning Aomori" has a good article providing a comprehensive report on the band and their albums. All I can do, though, being a newbie to Necry Talkie is first introduce who the members are: vocalist/guitarist Mossa（もっさ）, guitarist Asahi（朝日）, bassist Fujita（藤田）, drummer Kazuma Takei（カズマ・タケイ）and keyboardist Ayaka Nakamura（中村郁香）. Then, I can introduce one of the tracks from their January 2020 first major album "ZOO!!", "Yume Miru Dobunezumi".

I've gotten the impression that Necry Talkie can go from sweet to raunchy through their discography. However, I think "Yume Miru Dobunezumi" is more on the sweet side of things with Mossa's high and cute vocals and the arrangement which includes a comical quality and some hints of what I used to remember from the bohemian band Jitterin' Jinn. I can even pick up on a bit of alternative in there as well. Asahi took care of both words and music for this one. "ZOO!!" itself peaked at No. 17 on Oricon.