[MUSIC] Wada Kanako, "Natsu No Mirage"
Feb. 18th, 2010 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFor the last few weekends, I've been watching the anime Kimagure Orange Road with a collection of friends. I've quite enjoyed it, somewhat to my surprise; the animation's good and the plots are entertaining and the backgrounds amusing. One thing we've all agree upon is that the music's quite good. One example of this is the song "Natsu No Mirage", "Summer Mirage," as sung by the J-Pop singer Wada Kanako, active in the late 1980s contemporaneously with the anime.
Below's the same song, performed live, extended to a total of four minutes.
There's not much at all about the singer, one of several singers used for the series' songs, apart from this link, the only link of substance I've found. "My introducton to her music was the Kimagure Orange Road CDs. I think she has an incredible voice; very, very beautiful and clear. Finding things of hers is almost impossible, though, as her own CDs are comparatively old and I haven't been able to find anyplace on the net that has them, including e-bay." The only thing of substance relevant to the song is that it's the first track of her her debut album, 1987's Esquisse (Sketches).
It's a shame that Wada Kanako shared in the disposability of most J-Pop stars, since we all agree that she has a wonderful voice, passionate and melancholy all at once. There's nothing wrong with the ephemeral, but sometimes I might like things to stay around for a little longer.
I'm not a massive anime fan, an obsessive one, the sort of person who might place personal ads announcing proudly that he speaks "Nipponese." (If I was to learn a third language--when I will, hopefully--it probably will be some language more widely used outside its homeland, something like Spanish or German or Portuguese or even Russian, but that's stuff for a different post altogether.) For me, apart from the storylines and the very high quality of the art, one of the nice things about anime is the way in which it gives me glimpses of Japanese culture, in the depictions of conventional life, say, in the spiritual and religious assumptions that would be assumed by Japanese viewers but not caught by non-Japanese viewers, in the sorts of music that are mainstream. Going beyond the superficial's always a good thing and those glimpses aren't anything more than superficial observations, but is there anything wrong with them in themselves? Increasingly, I tend to think not. Why not just enjoy the song?
Below's the same song, performed live, extended to a total of four minutes.
There's not much at all about the singer, one of several singers used for the series' songs, apart from this link, the only link of substance I've found. "My introducton to her music was the Kimagure Orange Road CDs. I think she has an incredible voice; very, very beautiful and clear. Finding things of hers is almost impossible, though, as her own CDs are comparatively old and I haven't been able to find anyplace on the net that has them, including e-bay." The only thing of substance relevant to the song is that it's the first track of her her debut album, 1987's Esquisse (Sketches).
It's a shame that Wada Kanako shared in the disposability of most J-Pop stars, since we all agree that she has a wonderful voice, passionate and melancholy all at once. There's nothing wrong with the ephemeral, but sometimes I might like things to stay around for a little longer.
I'm not a massive anime fan, an obsessive one, the sort of person who might place personal ads announcing proudly that he speaks "Nipponese." (If I was to learn a third language--when I will, hopefully--it probably will be some language more widely used outside its homeland, something like Spanish or German or Portuguese or even Russian, but that's stuff for a different post altogether.) For me, apart from the storylines and the very high quality of the art, one of the nice things about anime is the way in which it gives me glimpses of Japanese culture, in the depictions of conventional life, say, in the spiritual and religious assumptions that would be assumed by Japanese viewers but not caught by non-Japanese viewers, in the sorts of music that are mainstream. Going beyond the superficial's always a good thing and those glimpses aren't anything more than superficial observations, but is there anything wrong with them in themselves? Increasingly, I tend to think not. Why not just enjoy the song?
