Hot off the heels of the wonderfully entertaining NAOMI, I was totally in love with leggy actress Norika Fujiwara, and was keen to see anything with her in it! The Japanese magazine JUNON would quarterly publish the upcoming new dramas, and there was a new Norika starring vehicle called HAPPY MANIA that I was just dying to see!
The drama told the tale of pretty and smart Norika and her selfishly clueless best friend (played with delicious dimness by Izumi Inamori fresh off her equally ditsy performance as Momo in Long Vacation) as they deal with with work, new loves and the jealous feelings that are sure to arise when they begin rooming with each other!
Well, though I prayed and prayed, neither KIKU nor NGN decided to pick up Happy Mania, and so I was inevitably forced to rent it from Japan Video and watch it completely unsubbed, a task to be sure, and in fact was probably only the second or third time in my life I’d ever done so! But as this was a full-throttle slapstick comedy, it was quite easy to follow, and I enjoyed it immensely!
One of the cherries in each episode was the super, super cute opening sequence of Norika and Izumi moving around a couch in their flat to the equally cute tune of a song called “Love Love Power”, which, though sung by a duo called “Funny Gene” sounded like it could have been sung by Norika and Izumi themselves! It was short, maybe only a half a minute clip, but I loved it so much, I NEEDED to have that song!
The following day, I went down to Tower Records and asked the J-pop buyer if he could order that Funny Gene single for me. He happily agreed to, but to my alarm, also added that since he trusted my judgement, he’d order 15 copies for the store! I was like, “Thanks for the compliment, but I REALLY DOUBT that there are gonna be that many people wanting to buy this song. It’s just this silly song, and besides, this drama isn’t even showing in Hawaii…”, but he waved his hand off and ordered 15 copies anyway.
Well, in a few weeks, I got my single, and though I loved it, it was really unsettling seeing those additional 14 copies just sitting in the j-pop rack, ‘cause I knew that I was probably the only one who was going to buy one! And sure enough, in a few months, I saw those same 14 copies go to red tag and then outta the store, a guilt I still harbor to this day!
Ah well, you can listen to this, the one copy that DID get purchased that day, the super fun and happy LOVE LOVE POWER, the theme for the zany HAPPY MANIA!
