Rina Chinen -- precious ・delicious

 

Marcos V. and I have contributed one article each so far for singer Rina Chinen（知念里奈）with Marcos writing about "DO-DO FOR ME", her 1996 debut single while I apparently aimed for some form of symmetry and wrote about her 2001 final single to date "Love You Close". As my colleague mentioned in his contribution, Chinen is a graduate from the Okinawa Actors School alongside other bright lights including the girl group SPEED and superstar Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）.

Despite the two articles already written, the first time that I ever saw the Naha-born Chinen wasn't via either of those songs. It was actually through the above commercial for her House Foods Fruit Jelly commercial that I was fortunate to track down. I can gather that fruit jelly wobbles a lot so I guess that it would be deserving of a dance-pop tune to accompany it in an ad.

The song in question is "precious・delicious", Chinen's 2nd single from March 1997. This one is quite interesting since the excerpt that I heard in the commercial is the most dance-poppiest section, but surrounding this repeated refrain is a melody that sounds more rock ballad contemplative and inspirational. The people behind "precious・delicious" are lyricist Takahiro Maeda（前田たかひろ）and composer Cozy Kubo（久保こーじ）, and another thing that I've observed is that for an aidoru tune, the song is a little longer than usual at just over five minutes. As well, the music video did hit some nostalgia nerves. I mean, game centres still exist in Japan but I guess the fashion that Chinen and her buddies were wearing back then may be quite natsukashii now. 

"precious・delicious" hit No. 18 on Oricon and it won a Best New Artist prize at the Japan Record Awards. It is also a track on Chinen's debut album "Growing" from June 1998. That peaked at No. 2 and ended up as the 51st-ranked album for the year.

Rina Chinen -- Love You Close

I guess if Marcos V. can come up with the first Rina Chinen（知念里奈）single for the blog, then I can come up with her 15th and last single to date.

Yep, I bought "Love You Close" on watching the official music video on one of the music channels one sunny Sunday and I got hooked on its gentle melody by Chika Ueda（上田知華）. It sounded rather like an old 1980s pop ballad with a hint of R&B despite it being released in March 2001. Hiromi Mori（森浩美）came up with the lyrics.

I only found out today that it had been the ending theme for the first "Doraemon"（ドラえもん）movie of the 21st century, "Doraemon Nobita to Tsubasa no Yūsha-tachi"（ドラえもん のび太と翼の勇者たち...Doraemon: Nobita and the Winged Braves）. Chinen even had a minor role in the movie. "Love You Close" made it all the way up to No. 39 on Oricon and was also a track on her 3rd album "breath", released in July 2001. The album peaked at No. 28.

Rina Chinen -- DO-DO FOR ME

If someone new to the J-Pop world, but aware of Namie Amuro (安室奈美恵) during the mid-90s, came across this video of Rina Chinen (知念 里奈) performing her debut single, "DO-DO FOR ME", in 1996, he/she would probably mistake one for another and believe that Namie Amuro was releasing another dance-pop hit. It was not the case! Rina Chinen, a former student from the same Okinawa Actors School that Amuro once attended, was kind of a Namie Amuro wannabe. As we can see in this performance, Rina Chinen, besides dressing like Amuro, was backed on stage by four dances, just like MAX did for Namie when she went solo one year earlier, in 1995.

Aside from this copycat marketing plan, Rina Chinen also relied heavily on this mix of dance-pop and eurobeat that dominated the Japanese charts at the time, thanks again for Ms. Amuro (and her famous producer Tetsuya “TK” Komuro [小室哲哉]). “DO-DO FOR ME” is a song full of atitude with very catchy lyrics, as, for example, the “What'cha gonna do for me? Nee, do do for me” phrase in the chorus. In the end, I’m satisfied with this new discovery, even though I came across it in a strange way: watching “Japanarama”, a compilation of mid-90s and early 00s weird Japanese television shows (mostly from Super Jockey and its overtly sexual games) mixed with commercials and some music performances from the same period. Just like MAX’s eurobeat hit “TORA TORA TORA”, which was also included on "Japanarama", was apparently strange by American standards, “DO-DO FOR ME” was considered something from another world to them, as the inclusion of it in the compilation was not based on a supposed American-friendy sound (I'm assuming here that "Japanarama" was put together by an American person. An European would probably not see eurodance inspired songs as something strange).

"DO-DO FOR ME" was released in October 1996 and reached #37 on the Oricon charts. Lyrics were written by Takahiro Maeda (前田たかひろ), while music and arrangement were done by Kouji Kubo (久保こーじ).