Hi ! you remember last time so i won't waste page space here. i tend to listen to music from Love Live and Bandori differently than i do pretty much any other album, so it felt like it made sense to talk about it separately.
No Brand Girls is the first song that i think of going for a favorite Love Live song. and i know this is one of the more popular ones, but you'll see how little that matters with the last μ's song here... anyway, No Brand Girls means so much to me. coming at the point in the story it does, the harder guitar edge compliments the mounting drama of the end of School Idol Project's first cour perfectly. The song is about desperately trying for self expression to the world while struggling to find an identity in the work. "i have so much to say, but what makes that special ?" that's what the "No Brand" in the title means. and i get that very deeply; as i write this i've collapsed on my mattress and still writing on my phone because i can't bear to keep my feelings to myself where i might forget them. but the song isn't too mired on that tug-of-war between slacking and burnout. it's also, as expected from idols, very focused on being motivating. It'll be evident later on but this kind of soundscape energizes me a lot more than something more traditionally idol pop. It just feels like it gets it, you know ? this kind of thing can't be too shiny or self-assured. there'd be a dissonance in the reckless emotions and the feel of the sound. that frantic path to burnout can't be too pretty and it certainly shouldn't look effortless, like dancing with a smile. it has to be fast, rough guitars and a shouted countdown–i'm talking from experience.
Garasu no Hanazono is just such a sweet song of forbidden love. It's relatively self-explanatory, especially in the context of the show and the relationship between Nozomi and Eli. on the meta level, the series was yet to get as comfortable with textual yuri as it would with Nijigasaki and Superstar, so its "forbidden love" in a very classic sense. in the role NozoEli play to the rest of μ's, they have to be more restrained and mature than their kouhai and Nico. i wouldn't say its a strain, but its definitely (in at least Nozomi's case) imperative she project dependability and maturity. everything about both of them as "group moms" really comes out here. they express their restraint so fully and beautifully it seems like a contradiction. there's so much complex inner strength to Eli's unexpected warmth and the way Nozomi came to her reliability–i admire them both deeply, and love their love, so of course Garasu no Hanazo would blow me away.
Snow Halation is like, the most obvious "favorite μ's song" i could pick. It's super popular, owing to its memetic popularity; as a meme, i've had so much fun with it. There are some legitimately great remixes out there, and so many that have made me laugh. Even more than that, though, the song itself being so idol-pop cheery and so about winter really helped me to appreciate winter for itself more than just the holidays that fall within it. The lyrics themselves are about a hard-to-define ache of frustrated yearning, "Snow Halation" being the name given to it for want of something more concrete. To say its a contrast with the glimmery feel of the soundscape is both an understatement and completely incorrect. It's about experiencing inner turmoil in the happiest time of the year, so the beauty and the frustration of the song are the point. As i get older, the more im convinced it might just the perfect song for this season. Either way it let me understand my best friend (whose favorite season is winter) a little better, so it'll always have points in my book for that.
-------------------------------------------------------------i already wrote pretty extensively about Saint Snow on this blog, and i do firmly hold that Believe Again is one of the best songs in the love live franchise for where it hits in the story. but i wanna take the chance to talk about Awaken the Power a bit more. Snow Halation merges slightly-bitter-sweet holiday pop song instrumentals with incredibly melancholy lyrics to great effect. it really evokes a full picture of that time of year. as a sequel, Love Live Sunshine took the time for a full Christmas arc, and the resulting music is almost entirely different. everything about the context of this song just heightens it. more than anything, from the start, its an effort from Ruby to cheer up and motivate her new friend Leah, who believes she's ruined her last performance with her sister as Saint Snow. Leah takes the duo's status as Aqours' rivals very seriously, so she's pretty mean to Ruby, but that doesn't change the fact Ruby wants to help someone who clearly needs it. ultimately they are pretty similar people–both little sisters, both very serious about their characters as idols, both struggling to express their emotions. Her time with the openly distraught Leah also helps Ruby come to terms with how much she'll miss her own sister, Dia, when she graduates. on top of that, finally, the song Awaken the Power by Aqours Saint Snow (one group) is about the ability of music to inspire Leah's recovery and the togetherness shared by every idol performing it. As a Christmas episode, it's about being together with both your family and your friends; as an idol song, Awaken the Power gets me pumped up like almost nothing else. the harsh, aggressive beats inform this as much as they betray it. much like Leah as a person, it sounds a lot angrier of a song than it really is; the lyrics are about being frustrated and conflicted, but ultimately having so much passion that it overwhelms the choice, much like Leah and performing with her sister again or Ruby and her desire to make that happen. Having a heart full of overwhelming feelings, tears coming more easily than words, these are ideas that are both incredibly relatable to me and highlight the similarities between Ruby and Leah really nicely. It's a great song and no small part of why Saint Snow is my favorite rival group.
Guilty Kiss are so cool. The only real canon context for them in the show is all glorious yuri shipbait. Their introduction translates to "Love is everything, Guilty Kiss", their fashion sense is very gothic, even the name "Guilty Kiss" leans into the theme of "forbidden love" harder than You crushes on Chika. To say they're a group with a strong sense of presentation would be an understatement. But its definitely earned, given just how well these characters work together... Well, i'll spare you the majority of my himejoshing out. But for instance, Riko and Yohane are one of my favorite ships ever. At first it feels like Riko is the straight-laced reliable one to immature, chuunibyou Yohane, but it flips that on its head while also being more complicated. When Yohane is not just accepted, but wanted for who she is, it becomes clear she really has a better head on her shoulders than it would appear at first. Her second season focus episode has her being there to help Riko past her kind of childish fear of dogs. Just because she's a first year in high school still afflicted with second-year-of-middle-school-syndrome doesn't mean she's necessarily immature !! In fact she and Mari, the third year who also runs their school, are able to relate to each other quite well. In the composition of their lineup, and in their very clear aesthetic personas even by idol standards, Guilty Kiss is really a Yohane-centric subunit in a way. And it shows in their sound, too. From the genuinely heavy opening riff of Kowareyasuki recalling Linkin Park to New Romantic Sailors' strong allusions to its namesake genre, they embody a coexisting maturity and edginess. It makes sense that a group with Riko, the member of Aqours with the most experience as a musician, would do so many different sounds and styles well, and that Mari and Yohane together would amplify each other's best artistic instincts. There's a reason both my favorite subunits are the two with the most carefully considered lineups; here, each member feels carefully selected in service of my favorite image for anison to take–mature, Gothic tinged electronic-pop-rock.
-------------------------------------------------------------Liella is an under-discussed group comparatively and the one that made me fall in love with Love Live. Their brand of idol pop is so memorable to me, and so many of their songs stand out to me as something that has every right to be more popular than it is. So does Love Live Superstar, as a show, for that matter. Nowhere is this more evident than with Starlight Prologue, a sweetly beautiful song in the vein of Snow Halation but far less popular–even though it may be better ? Or at least, it lives up to its sound better, being slightly less melancholic but no less yearning. Being so overshadowed probably also makes it feel more special to me; Starlight Prologue was actually the song that inspired my to talk about my personal canon for Love Live specifically. Fitting for the song closing out the first act of the gen that spends the most time with its characters, Starlight Prologue feels like the first step in an epic journey, not just the highs and lows of school idoldom, but for Kanon's journey from paralyzing shyness to shining on stage as a star as well.
As expected, my oshi Wakana Shiki stole the show for me this gen. Special Color is... well, i don't have too much to say about it. As a song on its own, its lyrics really make it for me. Though it's about the kind of thing that can only be written in retrospect, rather than someone looking back, it's so strongly sensory in how it's written it feels like someone remembering how it felt to be there, to be held back by an inability to perform to the expectations of those around you. In Superstar, Wakana Shiki is written to be one of the most thoroughly autistic characters in anime, already a pretty autistic medium. This song is about her experiences: going from being scared to publicly be someone who will never be "normal", to being confident in who she is for the people who love her, starting with Mei and including herself, enough to get up on stage and shine as an idol. As an idol song, it's about her conveying this feeling to the audience, but in being so honest about how each step of the way is gonna feel, it excels at that thesis statement for the Love Live series in a way only Shiki could have. Well, it also took Chisato selecting her for the center–i absolutely adore how this song is a result of my two favorite members of Liella bonding, by the way. It's hard to feel how raw the first half of this song is without the translated lyrics, but having read them (many times) it can't not hit. Especially thinking about Shiki and Mei's relationship; their choreography in this song's performance scene, and just how well they support each other... Their obvious bond just makes the song feel that much more genuine, that and the fact ShikiMei are probably the closest Love Live has to a canon couple.
Either way, of Shiki's focus songs, i definitely prefer Tsumi da yo ne. i'm pretty sure everyone has observed that it's basically Liella's Garasu no Hanazono, but it really is an apt comparison. As idol songs go, both are way slower, more intimate, and specifically about romantic angst–the title here literally means "It's a sin, isn't it?". Forbidden love, my favorite kind. But this one really sounds like it. Like it holds the longing. It's the sort of song that you can't help but reminisce with, or at least i can't. It has that same driving, yet somehow soothing bass and twinkly ear candy (Thanks Matpi) as any mournful city pop standard; though on first listen i described it as Sailor Moon by way of Pet Shop Boys (that may have just been the title.) Regardless, there's definitely a strong retro vision to the soundscape, which like a certain Nijigasaki song i'll talk about in a bit makes it feel a lot more personal. It's nothing so much as lonely like a cityscape at night, but still perfectly romantic for Shiki and Mei's dynamic, one of the truest loves in fiction to me. Tsumi da yo ne is very melodramatically romantic as a song because anything less would fail to begin to convey the beauty of their connection, but in doing so it makes for such a solid sadgirl jam on its own.
-------------------------------------------------------------i mentioned liking rock-flavored idol songs best earlier, right ? It should be no surprise Setsuna is one of my favorite of Nijigasaki's idols. From the minute i heard Chase in the first episode i got it, their geeky enthusiasm that makes them so cute. it's probably not surprising that i really liked the idol who, in large part, found themself through a passionate fandom of anime. But it's not that i identify with, so much as understand, them. And that's not just because i don't wanna steal Matpi's thunder !! The difference really comes out in how i relate to their music; when i need to get motivated, their songs are the kind of thing i go for, but i don't think that kind of hot-blooded spirit is as much of a part of me as it is for them. i am primed to connect with it, though. Well, out of the Nijigasaki idols, Ayumu is the one i see myself in the most, so that probably makes sense. (i don't have nearly as much to say about her music, though.) As for Setsuna, though, all aspects of their personality shine through in Chase. It's an incredibly confident song, as anything that sounds so similar to Sorairo Days must be; but Setsuna, and indeed all of Njiigasaki's idols, are in incredible disarray. They've just broken up the club. Setsuna is on stage alone on the fly and they still manage to project confidence. And that's the key: projection. Performance. Setsuna is, even more than usual for an idol, the kind of person who chooses how to be at any given moment, because they have to be. Whether that's student council president Nana, passionate otaku and loving friend Setsu, or the idol, Yuki Setsuna, they're switching between roles defined by external observation. Don't get me wrong. They have an incredibly strong sense of identity, down to the stage name Yuki Setsuna being taken from their favorite light novel hero and heroine; they are both reliable and capable as well as full of otaku passion, and incredibly kind. All those heroic traits really show in their music. It's sonically interesting, again sounding more like the openings to an action show than most idol pop i've heard. In that it feels like something the character would have written. This is a theme with Nijigasaki.
I don't have as much to say about Osaka Shizuku's Audrey, it's just a really strong pop song that feels like the kind of thing that the character would write. In the same way as Setsuna's hot-blooded love letters to anime openings, this one feels really personal to Shizuku as an actress and idol. It's always stood out to me for that; especially with how her interest in theatre and golden age Hollywood made it harder for her to relate to her peers, it means a lot for this character to have "written" a song so specifically about her personal canon. This really feels like the kind of song that wouldn't have been possible in any other season. Nijigasaki's concept, "a club of solo idols," really shines here, too.
-------------------------------------------------------------Oh, and AiScReam, the absurdly popular cross-generation subunit consisting of my Niji oshi Ayumu, my Superstar oshi Shiki, and one of my favorite members of Aqours... it half-burns me a group so "made for me" is also so popular IRL, but it makes me just as happy to see this song in particular getting so much love, even if a lot of it is from normies. It's really all about the group composition; they all had significant mental hurdles on their road to shine. Aside from her physical hurdles, Shiki was convinced she wasn't fit to be an idol, that all her qualities were troublesome and not cute at all. Ayumu became an idol for someone else's sake and had to work really hard to find what truly made her happy about that path. And Ruby was so shy it was more like a social phobia; its a miracle she was ever able to perform. Together, they made a really cute song with an absurdly famous call-and-response about their likes, the kind of thing only they could have done. The rest of the song is very cool and calming. it feels like recovery and moving on, going out to get ice cream as a pick-me-up from a bad day. the lyric video is also done in a really sweet, nostalgic style like DS or PlayStation graphics, set in a world of cool mint and white. all in all, it's the kind of song i want there for me in my most unsteady moments and there really wasn't a more perfect group to deliver it.
-------------------------------------------------------------i got into Bandori because of two bands, and Roselia is the first of those. Not an uncommon story; everyone loves Roselia. In a series whose first gen was mostly too poppy to keep my interest, they're seriously, undeniably rock. And like, of course they are. That's what their story is about; Yukina's determination rallying all these disparate, not-normie personalities into giving their all into technically impressive rock. This would prove to be a winning formula for Bandori. But before i knew anything about that, it was the song Fire Bird that just blew me away, and still stands in my mind as the definitive example of what makes Roselia a great band. Aiba Aina as Yukina is one of the best vocalists i think i've ever heard for this kind of music, her powerful, soaring voice is perfect for a song about a mythical bird that represents rebirth and new beginnings. The song itself is an epic 5-and-a-half-minute journey from a twinkling piano at the dawn and never slows down its flight through treacherous valleys and blazing updrafts. Even while evoking such fantastic imagery, it still sinks its burning talons down to your bones and pulls you along for the ride. It's inescapable. It feels mythic, like a song people will talk about thousands of years from now. And it might not be my favorite on the album ? At least, it's a hard race; if Fire Bird is a statement of intent, the rest of the album Wahl is a follow through on that promise. From the opening bass lick to R to the last second of Song I Am, it's cover-to-cover one of the records that's stuck with me the most over the years. Even as i don't listen to it quite as much as i used to, it still bowls me over every time i do. At the very least, persisting in my life across distance and time like that should read as testament to Roselia's passionate skill.
Raise A Suilen was the other one that appealed to me at first, and i have so many fond memories of their aggressive hard-rock-meets-synth soundscape scoring my time reading incredibly edgy manga (my favorite kind.) I'll never forget laying on the floor of my old bedroom reading Gantz while songs like A Declaration of XXX blared through my headphones. "You love bands that sing about the bleakness of their high school years, right?" Yup ! And listen. In a pre-MyGo, pre-Ave Mujica world, Raise A Suilen was the band with the most complex story and interesting characters, with the band's DJ Chu2 setting out to make the band she sees as hers into rivals to Roselia. Their hard-edged sound is what got me in the door, but there was a real sense of insecurity to the music as well; especially contrasted with Roselia's elaborate symphonic metal compositions, the electronica and shouting RAS are known for brought a totally different kind of darkness. Nowadays, i love their music for the memories of that time more than anything, and the ways i feel just as angsty even still. As much as i praise bands that evolve their sound well, i treasure more than anything an act like Raise A Suilen that has their identity staked in a sound a lot of artists (at least claim to) grow out of. There isn't any elegance or pretention there. You could call that punk, but more than that, it's the enemy-making outburst of a child prodigy, and it takes a lot to make me hate any music that sounds like that.
i've already written about MyGo and Ave Mujica on this blog, too, but they both changed my life. It often gets overshadowed by the impression Ave Mujica left in my mind, but so much about MyGo means so much to me. Half a year later, i still can't listen to Mayoiuta or their version of Haruhikage without crying. Meisekiha on its own is just a really good melodic hardcore album, which even when compared to the genuinely heavy Roselia and harsh RAS, is just a completely left-field genre pick for a band in this franchise. The music being so rough and raw, the feelings themselves being so unresolvable, it's the perfect storm of emotional charges. Even without factoring the show in, Youmiya Hina as Tomori delivers her vocals with the sound of tears caught in eyelashes, and the lights of a live house caught in those tears. But like i wrote about in my first post on this site, the show itself changed my life to such a degree it's hard to imagine i could separate my feelings on it from the show. Each of these songs is, at various points, the exact kind of thing i need to get over whatever's keeping me from moving forward. If i had to boil it down, i love MyGo for being about carrying on, no matter what made you lose your way in the past, it's a lesson i constantly need to internalize better.
As for Ave Mujica, i think about Completeness all the time. i probably listen to it front to back at least once a week. If you know me or have been around this blog for any amount of time, this is not a surprise; nor should it surprise you to know that their brand of heavy Gothic metal is exactly what i've wanted from Bandori ever since first listening to Roselia. Attempting to put aside my feelings on my favorite show of all time, Completeness is absolutely the kind of album i would have listened to for months on end at any point in my life and never really put down. That is to say, it's like it was made to target my fascinations. i had my jaw on the floor hearing drop-tuned chug riffs in a Bandori project. Having grown up on "Risecore" and the like i'm firmly used to that kind of thing being firmly away from the mainstream–and it's still not by any means, but that's what Bandori is now. It's 5 mentally ill girls playing kickass metal music about their inner demons and lesbian feelings for each other and it's melodramatic and fucked up and awesome. KillKiss, the opening to the show, opens its album version with a significant chunk of eerie atmosphere building (that in the show is just the backdrop to a monologue introducing the setting of Ave Mujica's live performances) before jumping into a frantic, tormented love story that only really makes sense after watching all thirteen episodes. That level of energy doesn't slow down until Imprisoned XII, which is impossible for me to separate from its context in the show but which i also feel in my chest every time. i cannot listen to it without feeling how hard Hatsune is trying in order to stay near Sakiko, and how much Saki loves her. Musica Caelestis is sweeping as the night sky under which Sakiko saw, with love, what makes Hatsune distinct, despite her best efforts to hide herself, and Alter Ego right before that is just a really solid dancy tune with a delicious bassline throughout. Even attempting to imagine if Ave Mujica the show didn't mean as much to me as it does, the band is undeniable.
Thank you very much for reading ! i have a few more of these posts in the works, i'm not sure if i'll put out my video games or movies one first, but they're the ones i have the most progress made on so far, so look forward to that !!