Tomori Kusunoki, Saori Hayami, Aoi Koga and Reina Aoyama -- Annoying! San San Week!（アノーイング！さんさんウィーク！）

 

Another season has begun for anime and I've actually been scouting through a few shows already via YouTube. 

One show that has got my eye and ear is the manga-adapted "Senpai ga Uzai Kohai no Hanashi"（先輩がうざい後輩の話...My Senpai is Annoying） which is following the recent trend of rom-com anime whose main characters consist of the teased versus the teaser. The earliest example that I know of that is "Karakai Jouzu na Takagi-san"（からかい上手の高木さん...Skilled Teaser Takagi-san） which was set in a junior high school. Since then, I've come across similar shows set in high school and university.

Well with "Senpai ga Uzai", it's gone from the classroom to the boardroom. The teased is Futaba Igarashi（五十嵐双葉）played by Tomori Kusunoki（楠木ともり）, a sales staffer at a trading company who may be short in stature and temper but is tall in spunk. Meanwhile, her senpai teaser is Harumi Takeda（武田晴海）, a huge boisterous lug who has all the smarts and experience of his office but drives Futaba up the wall because he treats her like an elementary school kid. And yet, there are already hints in the first episode that something might be blooming between them.

Kusunoki and Reina Aoyama（青山玲菜）are seiyuu that are new to me but Saori Hayami（早見沙織）and Aoi Koga（古賀葵）are practically old buddies in the anime world. Hayami has been in a number of anime that I've seen over the past decade including "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか？...Is The Order A Rabbit?）and then there is Koga who is the Kaguya-sama from "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai"（かぐや様をこくらせたい）. But all four of them are involved in the performance of the opening theme song "Annoying! San San Week!". For some reason, the Wikipedia article on the anime hasn't given a translation of "san san"（燦々）but according to Jisho.org, it can mean brilliant or bright, so I can go with "Annoying! Brilliant Week!".

It is pretty catchy and it's just about there as an earworm. I think it can even work as a corporate-themed cheer song, although I'm not sure if it'll be in the karaoke lineup during the year-end parties in Japan (if those are allowed to happen this year...it's looking hopeful, though). Words and music were provided by Junky, songwriter and producer of Vocaloid tunes. By the way, have a read of the ending theme as well.

Yuri Tanaka/Saori Hayami -- Plastic Love

Geez...how long has it been since thanks to that lucky YouTube algorithm, the world became cognizant of Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）famous "Plastic Love"? A couple of years, I gather. Well, along with the multiple videos of the singer-songwriter's 1980s single that have materialized on the site, plenty of the amateurs and professionals have also plied their vocals to the tune that has also ended up on Takeuchi's comeback 1984 album "Variety".

Among the pros is vocalist for the Neo City Pop band BLU-SWING, Yuri Tanaka（田中裕梨）, and in 2019, she released the sequel to her 2016 album of covers "City Lights", "City Lights 2nd Season". It even starts off with a cover of "Plastic Love" which doesn't stray too far off from the original and retains all that groovy goodness with the boppy bass and the horns. On listening to this, I had to go "Naruhodo" on Tanaka, one of the new generation of City Popsters, taking on this 80s City Pop classic.

I don't think that this has been released as an official song in her discography, but seiyuu/singer Saori Hayami（早見沙織）performed an unplugged version of "Plastic Love". Takeuchi has created songs for Hayami and I gather that this could be Hayami's way of paying tribute and saying thanks to the lady. Boy, wouldn't it be something if Blue Mountain Aoyama were to perform this one at Rabbit House during Amateur Night there? Sorry, just geeking out a bit.

Saori Hayami -- Yuuei（遊泳）

Over the past several years as I got back into anime again thanks to my good friend, the names of the seiyuus also became household words to me. Although I have no real idea what the education is like for Japanese voice actors, I can imagine that they must receive the rigorous training in trying out all sorts of different timbres ranging from high-pitched moe to growly and threatening.

Seiyuu Saori Hayami（早見沙織）was one of the first that I got to know by name since my anime buddy presented a lot of shows that had her in major or recurring roles. Usually, though, if I were asked to describe her usual voice, I would have to say "creamy" based on what I've heard from her characters in series such as "Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to"（マンガ家さんとアシスタントさんと）and "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか）. Having said that, I was pretty floored when I heard her rough-and-tumble, suffer-no-fools-at-all character of pink-haired Deana Del Rio on the action-comedy "Double Decker! Doug & Kirill".

Therefore, it's not all that often that I get to hear Hayami (or any seiyuu, for that matter) performing a song in a non-anime capacity, but one commenter was kind enough to introduce me to a few songs that had been composed by Yasuyuki Horigome（堀込泰行）, former member of Kirinji and brother of Kirinji vocalist Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）. One of those songs happens to be the topic of this "Kayo Kyoku Plus" article.

"Yuuei", according to jisho.org, has a couple of meanings. There is the basic one of swimming but there is also the more intriguing one of making one's way in the world. Perhaps Hayami's song is trying to cover both definitions; she provided the lyrics which seem to develop a scene of mystery and romance in some tropical clime thanks to Horigome's bossa nova melody (and there's even some spacey keyboard in the middle which reminds me of some of the more recent Kirinji material that I've been hearing). There's also a mention of a code name in the lyrics so perhaps the heroine is trying get herself out of an espionage jam in South America somewhere.

In any case, "Yuuei" is pleasantly delivered and a nice tune to have with that tall cocktail on the beach chair. But it's also not bad listening while anchored down in a chair in front of a computer. The song is a part of Hayami's 2nd mini-album from March this year, "Sister Cities"（シスターシティーズ）, with that illustration of her getting ready for a vacation. Maybe it could be performed at Rabbit House in the 3rd season of "Gochuumon" under Hayami's guise of author Blue Mountain Aoyama; couldn't really see Dina doing it.

Saori Hayami, Sakura Tange & Yuko Minaguchi -- Eien Diary（永遠ダイアリー）

Although my buddy got me back into anime once I returned from Japan for good, his other hobby of gaming never infused into me either here or back there. There was a period of several years though when my anime buddy had temporarily given up on the ghost for anime up to 2006 and was more into video games.

Well, perhaps I should revise that first sentence. Actually, in my Ichikawa days, I did buy a Play Station 1 in the mid-1990s on which I played a lot of those arcade games and even one of those do-it-yourself games where I could design and build my own house. However, I never got into some of the games that my friend liked such as those sword-and-sorcery epics.

One of the other habits that also happened during my Ichikawa life was that my buddy would sometimes ask me to receive some of his purchases from Japanese pop culture stores since those establishments wouldn't send their ware overseas and required a Japanese address (that's still the case with Tower Records). I would then dutifully relay the goods over or wait for him or one of his friends to visit so that I could hand over the stuff to him.

Well, as Nozaki-kun and Mikorin will kindly illustrate in the video above, one of the goods that my buddy purchased and had delivered to my home was a couple of dating sim games. He was very generous in even allowing me to try them out if I so desired. I didn't so desire but out of curiosity, I tried one on for size (the game...THE GAME!) and perhaps I made it up to the first five minutes before deciding that this was a little too skeevy for me. When his buddy finally arrived one day to pick up the games, I handed them over with no questions or answers.

Let's jump forward to the present day, shall we? Now that we've been doing the usual anime-and-food outings for several years, this particular song that gets into the anison hour from time to time reminds me of that very brief dating sim experience. And that's because the song is the theme from a dating sim itself called "Love Plus" which came out in 2009.

"Eien Diary" (Eternal Diary) is an alright song (nice jazzy guitar riff in the middle) but I chose it for the blog tonight mostly due to the three seiyuu who play the potential love interests. Saori Hayami（早見沙織）, Sakura Tange（丹下桜）and Yuko Minaguchi（皆口裕子）are now familiar names to me in the anime department but they would've just garnered a blank stare from me at the time that "Love Plus" was first released.

Hayami is now an A-lister but I think that she was at a pretty early stage in her career when she participated in "Love Plus". Tange and Minaguchi had already gained a lot of fame for their starring turns in "Card Captor Sakura"（カードキャプターさくら）and "Yawara!" respectively, but again at the time, anime was a lost art to me, let alone the knowledge of seiyuu. So it was interesting to find out that it was those three behind this theme.

I was able to find out from the JASRAC database that Tatsuji Ueda（上田起士）was the lyricist and Norihiko Hibino（日比野則彦）was the composer for "Eien Diary", and the song is available on the "Love Plus" soundtrack.

Saori Hayami -- Yume no Hate made（夢の果てまで）

(Unfortunately the NHK clip got taken down but

this is "souvenir the movie 〜MARIYA TAKEUCHI Theater Live〜"

in which some of the clips were included in the documentary.)

Back on March 26th in Japan, NHK featured a special documentary regarding singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）which involved her taking a trip to Sweden to do some recording, interspersed with the variety of songs that she has performed herself and created for other singers over 40 years. There were even a few minutes in which Takeuchi spoke about her regrets concerning the tragic death of 80s aidoru Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）for whom she had also created songs.

NHK made it quite clear that this had been the first time in decades that Takeuchi allowed herself to come onto TV through a program (she did provide a relatively recent commercial, it seems, for potato chips), so it was quite a special opportunity to see her and actually give her insights.

(short version)

The narrator for the documentary was popular seiyuu Saori Hayami（早見沙織）, someone that I've seen very often through my buddy's collection of anime over the past several years, so it was great to hear her in her own voice, too. It was an appropriate choice as well, since Takeuchi had written and composed a song for Hayami a couple of years ago.

"Yume no Hate made" (To The Ends of a Dream) was the theme song for an anime motion picture that had been split and released in two parts in 2017 and 2018, "Haikara-san ga Tooru"（はいからさんが通る...Haikara-San: Here Comes Miss Modern）. Hayami herself starred in the movie as the titular Benio Hanamura, a high school girl of the Taisho Era in the early 20th century who seems to have had too much spunk and spice for her contemporaries.

Listening to "Yume no Hate made", which was Hayami's 3rd single released in November 2017, my impression was "Yup, this is a Mariya song!". There is something that is always dreamy, hopeful and heartfelt when it comes to one of her creations whether it be one of her own singles such as "Camouflage" or a song for someone else such as "Miracle Love" for Riho Makise（牧瀬里穂）. The overriding image that forms in my mind whenever I hear any of these songs is the particular singer or a much younger Mariya looking out her window up high at the moon one night as she looks for some kind of guidance or solace. Nothing too melancholy, though, and "Yume no Hate made" certainly doesn't reflect any sadness in its melody at least. The song made it as high as No. 21 on Oricon.

Tsurezurenaru Ayatsuri Mugenan -- Tabiji Yoiyoi Yume Hanabi（旅路宵酔ゐ夢花火）

I figure that the "Show By Rock!!" category has garnered a rousing technopop tune and the Princess Princess-reminiscent opening theme from the first season on the blog so far.

Well, I'm now putting this song in since it's probably the one that I've heard the most since I saw that first season a couple of years ago. My anime buddy has frequently put "Tabiji Yoiyoi Yume Hanabi" (Enchanting Dream Fireworks of a Night Journey) on the stereo during anison hour or anison hour-and-a-half.

In recent years, I've been hearing of this music boom surrounding a genre known as wagakki（和楽器）which features rock bands using traditional Japanese instruments such as shamisen with the electric guitars. I've already seen a few of these bands perform on certain shows, but strangely enough, the first time I heard of wagakki was through this fictional band on "Show By Rock!!" known as Tsurezurenaru Ayatsuri Mugenan（徒然なる操り霧幻庵）...whew, imagine being the members who have to autograph tons of books with that name.

Tsurezurenaru Ayatsuri Mugenan has popped up on both seasons of "Show By Rock!!" as recurring characters. The band struck me as being one of those distant characters that pops up at key moments on some sort of police procedural, and they have that sort of ninja quality. Although I don't know much about seiyuu Eriko Matsui（松井恵理子）who plays Un（吽）the bassist, I definitely know about Saori Hayami（早見沙織）as guitarist A（阿）and Megumi Han（潘めぐみ）as the charismatic drummer Daru Dayu（ダル太夫）. Hinata Ogi（仰木日向）provided the lyrics while the composer was Tsubasa Ito（伊藤翼）.

I've known Han as some of her fluffier characters, especially in her triumphant turn as the high-pitched and goofy Akko Kagari in "Little Witch Academia". So to hear her Daru Dayu purr and sing so regally in a much lower and sexier voice was quite the revelation, although I'm well aware that the best seiyuu have a wide range of vocal abilities.

As for the song itself, wagakki isn't exactly my genre so it's been a case of "Tabiji Yoiyoi Yume Hanabi" gradually infusing itself into me over the months. Plus, the factor of Hayami and Han, whom I've usually known for their speaking roles, getting into the rock star stuff hasn't hurt either.

Now, as for the real-life example, this is the Wagakki Band with "Yoshiwara Lament"（吉原ラメント）. I could see this unit performing at the Olympics.

Show Hayami & Saori Hayami -- Daydream Cafe

Yes, I guess I'm on the "GochiUsa" kick tonight after writing about "No Poi!"（ノーポイッ!）earlier. But I came across a rather delightful version of the first opening theme "Daydream Cafe" so would like to show that to you but allow me a little space for some prefacing.

Along with the main female cast of "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか？...Is The Order A Rabbit?）, there are a couple of minor characters. One is Blue Mountain (Midori) Aoyama（青山 ブルーマウンテン）, the somewhat spacey-sounding author as played by Saori Hayami（早見沙織）whom I've seen in other anime such as "Mangaka-san to Ashisutanto-san to"（マンガ家さんとアシスタントさんと...The Comic Artist and Assistants）as the oft-harassed Sahoto Ashisu and "Soul Eater Not!" as the slightly snooty Anya Hepburn. In "GochiUsa", her character of Blue Mountain is truly mellow (maybe that's not just coffee in her cup) although she has a rather disturbing habit of staring at Sharo's lower extremities.

The other character has far less time on the show: Chino's father, Takahiro Kafuu（香風タカヒロ）, the master of Rabbit House the Bar, and a truly amiable ex-soldier with a darn fine voice. He is played by veteran seiyuu Show Hayami（速水奨）, who is incidentally no relation to Saori Hayami (as you can tell from the kanji). I was surprised to find out that he had voiced Maximilian Jenius, the bespectacled ace pilot from the original "Macross" decades back (only knew Max from "Robotech"; can barely remember him from the "Macross" movie).

I tried to find a scene from the anime with the two of them conversing together but couldn't find the particular scene I wanted, but at least I have them in one short video.

Enough prefacing. Purely by accident, I found a version of "Daydream Cafe" on YouTube featuring the Hayamis dueting. I will always enjoy the original by Petit's Rabbits but this cover has got a fun vibe to it. I'm not quite sure if it's an especially upbeat Xmas version or a take of the song filtered through snazzy Shibuya-kei, and I have no idea where it came from (please let me know if any of you know). Still, it's amusing to listen to especially with Takahiro sounding so self-controlled usually on the show.