Beat of the Week: Snow Angel

Hello there folks!

First and foremost, I know I'm procrastinating real bad uh, I mean, I need a break from frying my brain cells to death, so you might wanna ignore (temporarily) what DarrenW mentioned previously about me having exams.

Secondly, I do realize that I'm late for this week's Beat of the Week... I do sincerely apologize. >__<

Now, I know FayeA has introduced y'all to mainstream, LiSA, but today I'll be hitting the whole lot of you with a home run so hard you'll wake up in the Ice Age (figuratively speaking, of course). Why is that so? Let's just say that I don't know anyone in real life who knows the song I'll be introducing today... in my defense, if you look under my bio under the "Team" section, I DID mention that my favorite music genre is basically anything that catches my ear.

This song, Snow Angel, is sung by KOTOKO. While she might not be that obscure a name for you readers (since she's sung quite a few songs, e.g. for Shakugan no Shana), it's the anime that this song is used in that's really unheard of... Onegai Teacher, anyone?

Well, I gotta confess that I watched the anime only after listening to a few songs from the anime, most of which are sung by KOTOKO. (what a coincidence...) While this post ain't exactly an anime review, I would like to gently remind those who are interested in searching for it that Onegai Teacher is ecchi, and thus might be subject to viewer discretion. Undoubtedly, some of you will immediately search for it the moment I mention "ecchi", but ah well.

I personally find Snow Angel to be quite a pleasant mix between J-Rock and rather stereotypical anime J-Pop. The live (and often more easily reproducible than synth/dubstep/etc) instruments blend in well with the vocals, with neither one overshadowing the other too much. (the transition in the beginning from a cute piano mini-solo to a full blown band performance is also quite cute)

Lyrics wise, most unfortunately, this song is yet another run-of-the-mill J-Pop songs concerning love and all. A huge redeeming point for this song, however, would be the addition of snowy depictions (à la the title - surprise, how unexpected!) but that might be a bit biased coming from me because I like winter. :/

When I was searching for this song, it came to my attention that the live version of this song was sung in 2004 - further google-fu showed that the anime was shown in 2002. Whoops, I feel old...

Below, I shall attach two versions of the same song - the anime version (which is quite cute, especially if you understand the context of the anime) and the live version, which is, truthfully, surprisingly good because I tend to have a...less than fantastic opinion of J-Pop singers when singing live. Hey, I may like Japanese culture and all but I prefer to stay realistic.




P.S. This might be because I've never been to a live J-Pop concert before, but I don't quite get the point of backup dancers and all, especially when the song isn't a dance-y song...

Now, I shall retreat into my humble abode (figuratively speaking - since I'm typing from it) and resume studying real hard for my A Levels! (hopefully)

P.P.S. For those who don't know, A Levels are kind of like SAT, with the difficulty of the SAT subject tests. If you still don't know what's a SAT, just think of my exams as a slightly more generalized form of a university entrance test.

See y'all in a month! (or until my procrastination skills get the better of me, ehehe)
aaronsine