J-Pop Sunshine 4 – De Arimasu!

Posted verbatim from my Last.fm journal.

–

In July this year a few things came together; a thorough listen-through of Yuki’s best-of Five Star, Perfume’s smashing new album Triangle (OD won’t let me post the entry with the symbol), and my first, prolonged exposure to the many wondrous joys of Keroro Gunso. Because pretty much the entire second bracket consists of Keroro OP and ED themes, the fourth iteration of J-Pop Sunshine is so named, and so it should be.

This is also the first J-Pop Sunshine to be edited up to make a great, seamless experience through tracks 1 to 9. Even if there’s a pause, it has been measured to the millisecond to exploit the amping up of energy.

1. Perfume – Take off – Triangle (0:48)
2. Perfume – Edge (Triangle mix) – Triangle (7:56)
3. Perfume – Chocolate Disco – GAME (3:43)
4. Toutou – Kokoro no Mondai – Keroro Gunso (3:56)
5. GAGAGA SP – Zenkoku Musekinin Jidai – Keroro Gunso (3:44)
6. GROUP Tamashii – Kimi ni Juice wo Katte Ageru – Keroro Gunso (3:33)
7. POLYSICS – You-You-You – Keroro Gunso (3:40)
8. JAM Project – HELLO DARWIN! – Koukishin ON DEMAND -Keroro Gunso (4:00)
9. Sambo Master – Sekai Wa Sore O Ai To Yobunda Ze – Ossu! Tatake! Ouendan! 2 (5:02)
10. Dance Man – Afro Gunsou – Keroro Gunso (4:47)
11. Kylie Minogue – Stars – X (3:39)
12. Spitz – Mahou no Kotoba – Hachimitsu to Clover: The Movie (4:05)
13. Nobuo Uematsu – Feel (Yuna) – Final Fantasy X (4:36)
14. Sotte Bosse – Melanchorinista – Innocent View (4:42)
15. Natsumi Kiyoura – Bokura no Aikotoba – Keroro Gunso (3:58)
16. Yuki – Prism – Five Star (3:50)
17. Olivia – Dream Catcher – The Cloudy Dreamer (4:41)
18. The Seatbelts – Gotta Knock A Little Harder – Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (5:21)
19. Yoko Shimomura – Dearly Beloved (final) – Kingdom Hearts 2 (1:28)

1 hour, 17 minutes.

Triangle continues to exhibit Yasutaka Nakata’s amazing skill with energetic electro music with a brilliant J-Pop tilt, and the ramp-up from the album’s opener to Edge just had to be capped with Chocolate Disco from GAME – if you haven’t seen live-footage of this you absolutely need to. The performance is the regular girls dancing on stage but the crowd go absolutely bananas for it.

After that we ramp right into Keroro goodness. I love a lot of anime and I love a lot of anime themes, but no series has had the sheer number of awesome songs that Keroro Gunso has had over the years. I carefully chose the ones I wanted to tailor this mood for me, but almost all the ones that didn’t make it bar one or two are almost just as good. Sambo Master came to me via Ouendan 2 on DS and is a phenomenally awesome track, a great return to the Sunshine series given that Ouendan 1’s closer from L’arc en Ciel was on the very first compilation. I’m not much into punk and post-punk, but there’s a great sense of comedy to the unique Japanese tilt to this rockin-out style that Gagaga SP, Froup Tamashii and Polysics belt out. Every one of these songs is absolutely phenomenal.

This compilation was never going to be made without Dance Man’s Afro Gunsou – it’s pretty much the centrepiece of the playlist even though the first electronic bracket and the second hyperactive rock-out did turn out surprisingly awesome.

Keeping with established tradition a western track is included, this time Kylie’s Stars which is one of the very few songs of hers that I enjoy. The whole turnaround from Sambo Master to Dance Man to Kylie to Spitz may be one of the more awkward transitions I’ve ever done, but for me it works to evolve the playlist into what it becomes for its later brackets.

Mahou no Kotoba has been a favourite of mine since the Hachikuro live-action film was released, and it flows nicely from Kylie and into Feel, one of the additionally produced tracks that came from Final Fantasy X.
Sotte Bosse’s amazing rework of Yuki’s Melanchorinista was a wonderfully warm and mellow song, followed by one of the best outros from Keroro and into Yuki’s own Prism which is at present my favourite song from her.

I’ve been getting into Olivia’s stuff since Nana and while some of it is fairly ordinary, there is some brilliant music in her repertoire, and Dream Catcher equals Nana’s A Little Pain in its anthemic glory and production values.

This compilation was a lot about getting individual tracks onto a disc for the car so that I could hear them when I wanted, and it’s great to finally get The Seatbelts’ Gotta Knock A Little Harder on the Sunshine series. It’s a great tribute to 70’s rock and a brilliant recording.

Closing off the series is a short piano-only version of Dearly Beloved from Kingdom Hearts 2, though I’m not sure from which iteration of the game. I always loved this little tune which we first hear in the very first game and there are three iterations of it including this one, the last, quiet celebration.

–

So this is one of the best Sunshines yet to date, though I still love the other three playlists I’ve done. On review of the lists, Sunshine 2 was the only one not to feature Perfume which stuns me; I’m amazed I didn’t shove a track in there somewhere.
At this point I may have reached a kind of saturation point of my anime and J-Pop selection to generate another one, but then I’ve thought that after creating every playlist. For the fifth if there is to be one, I may select my most played tracks from the four current lists and create a kind of best-of for play on demand. I do still have a lot of great Spitz music from albums I have, plus there’s Yuki and hopefully a forthcoming album – Rendezvous left us screaming for more. There’s a whole stack of J-Pop, K-Pop and awesome J-Rock I haven’t even heard, plus other established bands like Tokyo Incidents and Shina Ringo’s solo work.

Yeah, there’ll definitely be another one coming, but it might be a while until I feel the urge to create it. Until then, May your J-Pop always be great J-Pop.

GOKURO SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!