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.
Now that in Canada, it's most likely that things won't gain any sort of normalcy until July, the biweekly Sunday routine with my anime buddy has gone into its own lockdown. However, I am getting caught up with some of the programs that I couldn't finish from Fall 2019 since my friend took off for Asia over the Holidays.
Interesting how during last year that there were two series whose titles had some reference to firing weapons. One was the grim cyberpunk "No Guns Life" which will be having its second season starting this month, while the other program is on the other side of the spectrum in tone, and that one was "Rifle is Beautiful". "Rifle is Beautiful" is so fluffy and moe that I had assumed that it originated from Kirara just like "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか）, but it actually hails from Tonari no Young Jump.
Especially during these dark times, it's relaxing to watch that slice-of-life anime that has some good friends joining forces to reach a goal in a mellow atmosphere. "GochuUsa" is all about the hot beverages and rabbits while "Rifle is Beautiful" deals with a high school air rifle club. The four main members are the adorable red-ribboned Hikari, her longtime buddy Izumi, somewhat high-strung Erika and stoic Yukio as played respectively by Machico, Akane Kumada（熊田茜音）, Saki Minami（南早紀）and Anna Yamaki（八巻アンナ）.
It took a while but the opening and ending themes have finally come around to me. The opener is "Let's Go! Rifling 4!!!!", a typically upbeat and supremely perky tune that wouldn't be out of place as a theme for a "PreCure" show. Sung by the above four seiyuu under the unit name of Rifling 4（ライフリング4）, it's nice to hear this as I head for the final two episodes of "Rifle is Beautiful". The song was written and composed by KOH.
The ending theme is "Yuuyake Friends"(Sunset Friends), also performed by Rifling 4, which I like even better than "Let's Go!" due to the refrain and the more wistful nature. With melody by KOH and lyrics by Mayu Miyazaki（宮崎まゆ）, the title might suggest the four buddies going home together at dusk after another rigorous practice session at the range.
One of the new anime that we've gotten a gander of this season is "Hachi-gatsu no Cinderella Nine"（八月のシンデレラナイン...The Cinderella Nine of August）which I found out was based on a smartphone game from two years ago. As soon as the first episode started rolling out, I immediately got memories of another baseball-and-high school girls anime from a decade prior called "Taisho Yakyu Musume"（大正野球娘。...Taisho Baseball Girls）. That show was based in the Taisho Era almost a century ago, so my imagination started running on whether the characters here were actually the descendants of the students from "Taisho Yakyu Musume". Maybe another title for the new show could be "Reiwa Yakyu Musume"（令和野球娘。）?
I've only seen the first couple of episodes from which the story is showing some similarities with "Taisho Yakyu Musume" in that the energetic and optimistic central character suddenly decides to set up a girls' baseball team in the school with her loyal best buddy in tow after which they recruit a couple of timid students with no particular athletic ability and then an initially disillusioned classmate who has a keen eye for baseball tactics and strategy. There hasn't been a whole lot of drama and despair as of yet but I'm sure that it will be coming from the middle episodes. So far, it's all been happiness and light.
The opening theme for "Hachi-gatsu no Cinderella Nine" hasn't exactly grabbed me yet but I do like the sweetness of the ending theme. My overriding reason is that it's a cover of "Donna Toki mo" (どんなときも...No Matter When), the breakthrough single of songsmith Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敬之）from 1991. The absolute cheerfulness of that big hit has been retained in full for this version as sung by some of the cast consisting of Nozomi Nishida（西田望見）, Reina Kondo（近藤玲奈）, Saki Minami（南早紀）and Honoka Inoue（井上ほの花）. As I've mentioned in my last anime article (from this morning), I wouldn't also mind hearing the full version of this in the coming weeks.
