Review by Stacy Livitsanis

Another great disco album finally makes it to CD. Arabian Nights is the second album by The Ritchie Family, including all-time classics "Baby I'm on Fire" and "The Best Disco in Town", plus a great long medley on what was Side 2 on vinyl, including the Lawrence of Arabia theme set to a disco beat. Love it! It's incredible that huge amounts of American music are only available on physical media in Japan. That all these supercool funk, soul and disco recordings are finally coming out on CD is awesome. Six months ago I had no albums by The Ritchie Family. Now I have five (hopefully the rest will come soon). Thanks CD Japan. Still the best online shop I've ever bought from.

The Hirogaru Sky Precure vocal album is a gorgeous collection of songs. I wish they'd put out two vocal albums for each Precure season like they used to, but I can't complain about what we have. Somehow, and it might be my love of the show overly influencing me, but Precure songs are better than most pop songs. As a musical extension of the world of the show, these songs have a unique appeal that today's pop songs simply don't have. On this album we have another version of "Share Shite", sung by Ami Ishii, who also sings the magnificent Hirogaru Sky opening song, which is only present here in the TV size version. This is a sneaky bit of mischief that goes back at least to Mahoutsukai Precure, where the vocal album doesn't have the full version (or any version) of the OP and ED songs. So you either buy the single, or wait a year until the Vocal Best album comes out. Or, if you're as obsessed with Precure music as I am, do both.

A gorgeous hardcover Precure picture book intended for younger readers - text is in hiragana only. None of the images are unique to this book, but it's still a lovely item. An automatic purchase for die-hard Precure collectors, but also recommended for children who may not know about the show, but who could be intrigued by the glittery cuteness shining out from every page.

Excellent TV drama soundtrack series from Harumi Fuuki continues. Vol 2 is even better, with a stronger mix of styles. More compositions inspired by traditional Japanese music too, which to my ignorant ears sounds fresh and exciting. With albums like this, where I haven't seen the show the music was written for, the score is left to conjure images and ideas on its own. I have no idea what Segodon is about, but I like to imagine it's a Butterfly Effect-type story about a foolish time traveler who finds himself back in various eras of Japan's history, meeting historical figures and mucking up the timeline, then coming back to present day Japan to see how history has been altered.

Ending song from the movie Precure All Stars F. Be ready to have the refrain "Ureshikute kira kira..." stuck in your head for days. Great song, lovely melody, perfect way to end the movie.

Erika Fukasawa contributes a massive, glorious soundtrack for the best Precure movie in years. Passionate, action-packed, wondrously melodic, I can't say enough good things about this album. Precure All Stars F was pretty much a perfect Precure movie, and Erika's score follows suit. The music for the beautiful montage is right up with Hayashi/Tachibana's montage music in the Star Twinkle movie. This also has the single longest piece of music yet composed for Precure with the 8-minute 37-second Track 32, which is the big, emotionally overwhelming climactic sequence with all the tear-inducing flashbacks. LOVE IT.

Naoki Sato, who wrote the music for the first five seasons of Precure, returns to the series for this spinoff. As a big fan of Sato in general, not only his Precure scores, it's fascinating to hear how he's developed as a composer since Yes Precure 5 GoGo in 2008. This score contains more of the cascading rhythmic/repetitive material Sato has been developing over the last ten years, but with the warmth and gentleness of his earlier Precure music. The results are sublime.

I love a sturdy special edition box, and this third Precure Vocal Best Box is another great release. Finally have a copy of Cosmic Mystery Girl from Star Twinkle Precure, sung by Sumire Uesaka. That song wasn't on the Star Twinkle Vocal Best. Disc 6 has a new ensemble version of "Share Shite", a song that has become an unofficial new Precure anthem. And if you really like it, there are EIGHTEEN separate versions of it on Disc 6, with each singer's solo version. Also has a new version of the All Stars DX theme song "Kira Kira Kawaii Precure". But sadly, there's no new version of the ultimate Precure Song "Eien no Tomodachi" from the All Stars New Stage movies, which is my nomination for the best anime song ever written, courtesy of Yasuharu Takanashi.

Erika Fukasawa's second soundtrack album for Hirogaru Sky Precure is 78 minutes of musical gold. She continues the series tradition for grand heroic themes, with several glorious moments of power, majesty and delight. Her main theme for Sora/Cure Sky could be mistaken for a new Superman theme. Very happy to add this album to my Precure collection. One of the best soundtracks in the series. Fukasawa is the seventh composer to write for Precure (for super nerds, the previous ones are Naoki Sato [1-5], Yasuharu Takanashi [6-9], Hiroshi Takaki [10-13], Yuki Hayashi [14-16], Asami Tachibana [Star Twinkle, co-composer with Hayashi] and Shiho Terada [17-19]).

This two-film soundtrack is one of the only Yoko Ueno albums still in print. Ueno is a fascinating musical talent, who has been making music since the 1980s in groups like Zabadak and Vita Nova, and contributing distinctive music and vocals to various projects. Probably the most well-remembered song of hers is Rasberry Heaven, the ending song from Azumanga Daioh. I don't know anything about the two films these scores were written for, as I bought this on Ueno's name alone. The music is nice but unmemorable. It's not as interesting as her solo albums, but as an Ueno completist, buying it was inevitable. The best tracks are those featuring Ueno's vocals, as she has a beautiful voice and uses multi-tracking to harmonise with herself, which sounds gorgeous.

Very glad to finally have this album on CD, after years of listening to low quality vinyl-rips on YouTube. It sounds fantastic. The Ritchie Family (nothing to do with Lionel) were one of the great disco groups of the 70s. They were a product of French music impresario Jacques Morali, who also created The Village People, but musically, The Ritchie Family were the far superior group. These were the indulgent days when one song would take up one whole side of a record, as on Donna Summer's albums. This is peak disco, with a rich, varied sound and lavish production, including drum arrangements by renowned Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji. Years of petty comments about disco music being terrible were swept away as soon as I heard albums like this.

As it says, all the opening and ending songs from every season of Precure, but only the 90-second 'TV size' versions. It's a nice set, but it's only for obsessives who must have every Precure soundtrack release. Why not put out a set with every full-length OP and ED as well? The DVD has every non-credit opening and ending, which is a nice extra to have, but why not a blu-ray? Every season of Precure exists in HD. The first three seasons (made in SD) were upscaled and released on blu-ray in 2023, so they could have easily made it a BD, but Toei cheapened out again. Come on, it's the 20th anniversary. Toei's been milking it all year, and they'll keep milking it in 2024, which is the actual 20th anniversary year. Well, what do they care? They still got my money.

Now THAT'S an album cover. This is from the days when a cover could compel you to take a chance on a record. Mangekyou is Yoshiko Sai's first album, from 1975. The cover already tells you this isn't going to be J-Pop. These songs are pure, raw, deeply emotional, brought vividly to life by Sai's resonant voice. The arrangements are sparse, sometimes with only one or two instruments backing Sai's vocals, which enhances her performance. A respite from typically overproduced hyperactive sentimental pop. I don't know of any female Japanese singers today who sing like this (if you do, please let me know). Sai was only 22 when this album was made, but she sounds vastly more mature than most female singers today, or even at the time, really.

Naoki Sato's score for Godzilla Minus One starkly shows the different approaches between Japan and Hollywood when it comes to film scoring. Compare this boldly minimalist, richly-textured, quietly brooding, drone-infused score with the hyper bombast of Tom Holkenborg's Godzilla Vs Kong. It's night and day. While I like some of Holkenborg's score, in a battle of Sato vs Holkenborg, Sato easily wins. Stomps on him, in fact. I say that because Holkenborg said in an interview that he thought Akira Ifukube's original Godzilla theme was laughable, and was surprised it was so highly regarded. Blasphemy! Tom, the original Godzilla theme, lovingly included here in a respectful homage, is iconic, memorable and enduring, which are three words no one will ever use to describe your very boring score for Godzilla Vs Kong. Show some respect for the giant whose shoulders you're standing on. Sato demonstrates that respect in his fascinating, multi-layered score for Godzilla Minus One.

Macross 7 fans can judge this album better than I can. I bought it as part of a reckless, obsessive quest to buy everything Yoko Kanno has ever been involved with. She wrote the final track, 'Angel Voice', which is the best song on the album. The other songs are perfectly fine. I'm at that stage where, having bought every major Kanno release (Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, etc.) I scroll further down the CD Japan search results and take the plunge into the albums I've never heard of.

Hiroyuki Sawano is not afraid to repeat ideas. You can recognise a Sawano score pretty quickly. Whilst his bombastic style invites fatuous descriptions like 'the Hans Zimmer of Japan', he can come up with flourishes that no one else would do. Fanfare of Adolescence if a perfectly fine Sawano soundtrack, full of relentless, intense, fast, repetitive rhythms. Track 3, 'Windwaves", stands out for pushing the intensity to even higher levels, with truly crazy hypnotic cyclical string playing that I wish had kept going, as it was starting to transport me to an altered state. A cheaper alternative to hallucinogenics. Fantastic stuff.

A superb soundtrack composed by Takatsugu Muramatsu (When Marnie Was There). Highly recommended if you like Joe Hisaishi's wonderful scores for Hayao Miyazaki's films, as this is very much in that tradition. Lovely melodies to transport you to another world.

Declaring my bias: I've bought and utterly adored every score Joe Hisaishi has written for Studio Ghibli, including all the Image albums and Symphony albums. Buying the soundtrack for The Boy and the Heron was obvious. But after listening to this CD I don't know what to make of it. It's very different from previous Hisaishi-Miyazaki scores. If you're expecting something that sounds like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, you definitely won't get it. The orchestrations are sparse, with a lot of solo piano, and a distinct lack of the warm, luscious melodies Hisaishi composed for previous Miyazaki films. This is closer to The Wind Rises - my least favourite Hisaishi-Miyazaki score. I haven't been able to see the film yet, so I don't know how the music fits, but the score hasn't left a positive first impression. It's the kind of album I'm not ready to put away yet. Have to give it another go.

Nicely affordable Precure character guidebook, covering Seasons 1-20, with a page of information about each Cure, including costumes, items, mascots and selected supporting characters. Intended for children, with all text written in hiragana - no kanji. There's no acknowledgement of behind the scenes facts (no voice actors are mentioned). It's handy for beginners of Japanese. Being obsessed with anime often inspires fans to learn the language. A book like this about a beloved show is a good way to prompt further study. Having mastered this, you can graduate to the more challenging books meant for casual adult readers. I appreciate having an all-in-one guide to every character. It helps to memorise names. If they released a Precure Guide to the Periodic Table, I'd be more likely to remember it.

A great album from Haruka Tomatsu, full of bright, energetic songs. I don't always buy the Limited Editions of albums (how often would you watch the 20 min DVD?), but this one has an impressive and more elaborate than usual photo booklet - including a pop-up design - with Haruka dressed up in various costumes. That's all well and cute, but the music is why I'm here, and this album does what this kind of music is supposed to do - make me smile and feel good.