As Seen on TV: 5 Songs from Spring 2024 Dramas
Blogging about the music in this season's Japanese dramas, from Kenshi Yonezu, Aimer and more
As Seen on TV is a side column of This Side of Japan dedicated to music featured on Japanese TV shows. You can return to the main newsletter here.
Going to be honest here, my readers, I’m not excited about too many dramas this season. I already had a less-than-usual amount on my Plan to Watch list, and a majority of those failed to fully grab me. Maybe I have to dip into the medical ones in hopes I can add to my week’s TV rotation? If you do have recommendations, please pass it to me. But the upside is a release of fun pop tunes regardless of my feelings on their respective shows, one of them really growing on me as a top favorite of the year.
Here are 5 songs from this season’s drama shows, plus my feelings on each.
“Sayonara Mata Itsuka!” by Kenshi Yonezu [Sony]
…from Tora Ni Tsubasa (Monday through Fridays, 8 a.m.; NHK)
What I’ve learned to love about asadoras is its elaborate telling of life in its totality. Keeping up with 15-minute episodes airing 8 a.m. Monday through Friday for a span of 6 months can surely be a commitment, but this long haul is a feature, not a bug, to the format. You arrive at its last airing week of a 120-something episode run in March or October and really feel how much has transpired in the life of its central character. So when Kenshi Yonezu inquires “will you remember it, 100 years from now,” in the theme song for the latest morning serial, Tora Ni Tsubasa, his lyrics seems to echo this big-picture perspective inherent in these shows.
Perhaps like many of us, Yonezu apparently went in with this idea of asadora themes being gentle, ballad-like music. These songs had to accompany an early-morning viewing, after all—nothing too loud and busy like, say, his twitchy rock number with millennium parade—while pleasing a whole range of audiences across the country as the program aired on NHK. Yet after getting a glimpse of the show’s main character, he was convinced he had to up the tempo a notch to properly suit her headstrong attitude. Sairi Ito plays Torako, a college girl learning law during the early Showa era when women faced much inequality in society. Yonezu’s song had to carry itself just as bright and confident.
What the singer-songwriter ends up with in “Sayonara Mata Itsuka!” is a breezy song that doesn’t so much roll with the punches than it just simply goes with the flow. For how grand its perspective which encompasses a literal century, the lyrics sees him gaze into a seemingly endless road with disarming ease. He sums up a good chunk of life as thus: “Fall in love with someone / get broken again / and soon off in our ways.” And hawking a blood-filled loogie at the sky in between. The overall shrugging tone in response, if not the song’s easy-going piano soul, reminds me of Fujii Kaze and his similar “keep on carry on” attitude towards life’s complexities. “The hell do I know,” is Yonezu’s own answer after wondering if anyone will remember anything 100 years from now. So, he posits, what is there to lose?
Listen to it on Spotify.
“Roller Coaster” by SIRUP, SUMIN & A.G.O. [Suppage]
…from RoOT (Tuesdays, 12 a.m.; TV Tokyo)
As a K-pop fan, it was a delight to see SUMIN be part of a tie-up song for a drama. “Roller Coaster” reunites the singer-songwriter with SIRUP for a dusky R&B cut that sets the mood for an incognito, late-night affair—a vibe much fitting its attached crime-mystery series, RoOT. Those who’ve enjoyed the 2021 hit anime ODDTAXI should find the story familiar with the show based on its spinoff manga Root of ODDTAXI, where it follows a pair of detectives pursuing the missing-person case central to the main anime. It’s a chic buddy-cop series tied through the dynamic between that duo: Ryota Bando as the clumsy, know-it-all newbie Sato offsets the stony cool of Yuumi Kawai’s Rena with needed humor. And especially for those already familiar with its background story, it helps the presentation is stylish from its cinematic direction and, of course, choice in music1.
Listen to it on Spotify.
“Ningen To Shite” by Shiina Ringo [Universal]
…from Destiny (Tuesdays, 9 p.m.; TV Asahi)
Destiny could not win me, not even through Satomi Ishihara, who returns to a TV drama after a 3-year hiatus, nor Shiina Ringo. The script for this thriller-mystery somehow seemed both over- and under-cooked, too overwrought when delivering heaviness to a scene and too thin on actual character- or plot-building. It felt like a chore to get through the extensive prologue of a pilot episode, which unfolded like a corny college soap. And so it landed dead on arrival when the string-laden “Ningen To Shite” cued up to sync with Ishihara’s Kanade finally bumping into Kazuya Kamenashi’s Masaki, her former boyfriend and catalyst to the central mystery, after the latter gone missing for a decade. There was no sense of payoff, nothing to redeem. At least we can enjoy Shiina Ringo’s jazzy musing on life and justice on its own.
Listen to it on Spotify.
“haruka” by Aimer [Sony]
…from Karakai Jozu No Takagisan (Tuesdays, 12 a.m.; TBS)
Perhaps the TV drama adaptation of Karakai Jozu No Takagisan could’ve been more anime than it already is. The titular Takagi’s classroom flirtation with her victim Nishikata is so innocent, I can’t help but find it charming, and the show overall could’ve played out this wholesome middle-school romance straightly as a piece of colorful, cheesy pop. But instead of a twee pop song to complement the teen-comic cuteness, this deeply sentimental Aimer song arrives at the end of every episode to add a cinematic sweep found more in romance blockbusters, framing the series as a piece of a bigger work.
Part of the emotional weightiness is likely by design: this TV series coincides with the release of the theatrical adaptation, starring Mei Nagano as Takagi, that’s set a decade after this original story. And Aimer’s nostalgic lyrics in “haruka” further frame its attached show as events of a recent past: “A sky from a vast memory, a light that shines on us / I want to keep on laughing like this forever,” she sings in the chorus as the guitars swell and the strings weep. Takagi’s teasing toward Nishikata are adorable, harmless acts, like poking fun at the sensitive boy for wanting to share earbuds so they can listen to a pop song together. But with Aimer’s moving song, you get the feeling it’s all building up to something far more essential in the life of Nishikata.
Listen to it on Spotify.
“I wonder” by Da-iCE [Avex Trax]
…from Kururi ~Darega Watashi To Koi Wo Shita~ (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.; TBS)
Out of all of the golden-time dramas I checked out from this spring season, Kururi ~Darega Watashi To Koi Wo Shita~ is the lone show I’ve picked up for my weekly watching routine. While the other hyped, romance-driven drama is not it, this one serves pop humor and rom-com sweetness at the right dose for me. Kururi follows Makoto (Meru Nukumi) at the center of a love triangle—or a love square? She has quite the attention from the boys in her life—while trying to recover her memories lost from a head injury. She’s picking up the pieces about her past self as she forges a path to a new and hopefully better life. Hence, the lyrics in “I wonder,” the show’s brassy theme song by Da-iCE: “Let me know what’s true / When I can meet my true self / a lovely future where I can be loved / should arrive.” Will Kururi finally sell me on Da-iCE by the end of its run? We shall see.
Listen to it on Spotify.
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I also recommend its opening theme, “Chikagoro,” by Bialystocks and, if you’re an idol fan, the song “Chojokoigensho” by its fictional idol group Mystery Kiss.