Yuko Tsuburaya -- Mystery of Sound

 

Although I've been watching "Meitantei Conan"（名探偵コナン...Case Closed）, the anime about the pint-sized sleuth for years now, I never quite got into the other teenaged amateur detective show "Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo"（金田一少年の事件簿...The Kindaichi Case Files） that is also based on the manga. I do remember though, one of the various television iterations which was the mid-1990s Saturday-night live-action drama starring one of the Kinki Kids, Tsuyoshi Domoto（堂本剛）, along with Rie Tomosaka（ともさかりえ）.

There were also a number of anime adaptations for "Kindaichi" which I never saw. They certainly didn't shirk from showing the blood.

For an anime movie version of "Kindaichi" which came out in December 1996, its theme song was provided by Yuko Tsuburaya（円谷優子）. Titled "Mystery of Sound", a single released in the same month, the synthesizer-heavy melody and arrangement are so familiar that I didn't need to refer to any online text to identify it as a Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）piece. Plus, considering the time of release, it was during the era of the Komuro steamroller when basically anything the former TM Network keyboardist touched turned to Oricon gold.

Indeed, Komuro was behind the composition and arrangement while Marc Panther, his compadre from their band globe, took care of the lyrics. In fact, this was Panther's first set of lyrics for a song outside of globe's discography. During the Komuro steamroller, I always heard about the big guns in the Komuro Family such as trf,  Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）and Ryoko Shinohara（篠原涼子）, but there have been some of the other not-as-well-known singers under the wide-ranging umbrella and this would include Tsuburaya. I wrote about a track from her debut album "Colors" from 1989, "Ame no Uta"（雨の詩）which was a breezy and summery West Coast AOR-ish tune.

That's definitely not the case with "Mystery of Sound" which has that mystery imbued right into Komuro's melody, fitting for "Kindaichi". And Tsuburaya has that characteristic Komuro-guided siren-like delivery for this song just like when listening to the aforementioned Amuro and Shinohara. Although I couldn't find the definitive statement, I think that this was the singer's most successful single as it has been described as a smash hit, selling around 200,000 copies and hitting No. 19 on Oricon.

I couldn't find the official music video for "Mystery of Sound", but according to J-Wiki, it had been filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles with the premise being a secret underground factory done in anime style. Apparently, the director for the shoot was someone who had worked with bands such as Bon Jovi and Guns & Roses.

Yuko Tsuburaya -- Ame no Uta（雨の詩）

 

The final Monday for 2021 has been a dreary start to this week. I have the right sort of song, though.

(36:26)

Mind you, "Ame no Uta" (Rain Song) is actually quite the cheerful tune with the hint of 80s West Coast AOR. This is a track from Yuko Tsuburaya's（円谷優子）debut album "Colors" from April 1989. Written by Rui Serizawa（芹沢類）and composed by Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）, the arrangement and Tsuburaya's clear vocals has me thinking of ironically far sunnier days in California than a damp cloudy one in Toronto. 

According to J-Wiki, Tsuburaya started her career as a part of the regular membership of girls on the TBS variety show "Momoco Club"（モモコクラブ）, based on the weekly aidoru pinup magazine "Momoco". There are excerpts of the show (October 1986 to September 1987) on YouTube, and there are some similarities to 1980s aidoru supergroup Onyanko Club's（おニャン子クラブ）representative TV program "Yuyake Nyan Nyan"（夕焼けニャンニャン）; the lasses of "Momoco Club" even had had their membership numbers as in the case of Onyanko Club's members and, as can be seen below, they even showed up to do musical numbers although my impression is that "Momoco Club" was more about how photogenic its members were than how musically inclined they were.

Incidentally, Tsuburaya's number was 1980 which I had initially mistook for the starting year of her career. Another interesting point that I saw in her J-Wiki profile was that her senpai in her talent agency KEN-ON（研音）, none other than the Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）, made a point on "Music Station" to introduce and promote Tsuburaya when she did make her debut in late 1988 as someone with a lovely voice. I can only imagine the gratitude and pressure that the young singer must have felt at the time.

Going into the late 1990s, Tsuburaya would release 10 singles and 3 albums including one single under the aegis of Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）which became a big hit. But I'll have to do that one sometime in the New Year.