Out of all the songs and singles that have made up the initial six or seven j-pop cassette mixes that first introduced me to the larger world of j-music, I’ve managed to acquire just about all of them, whether they be the actual CD singles, or in rarer instances, good MP3 copies of the songs, but there’s one that has ALWAYS eluded me, and that would be HARE NOCHI PARADE sung by the fictional group TOKYO POLICEWOMAN DUO.
On the orginal tape, Hare Nochi Parade was sandwiched between “I Miss You” By Imai Miki and “Sweet Home” by Kyoko Koizumi. Over the years I’ve gotten ahold of all the other songs on CD, and have basically recreated that original cassette in digital format, but it’s ALWAYS a sore point to me when listening to the CD version of original J-Pop Mix #4 when I expect Hare Nochi Parade to start, and it instead goes directly to Sweet Home!!
Now, I knew from past experiences collecting CoCo, Ribbon, Nishida Hikaru and the like that if I was missing a single or album, I could usually count on OTOKICHI PREMIUM to come to my rescue, but sadly, this time, when I typed “Tokyo Policewoman Duo” into the search engines, all I got was this discouraging message:
With that option gone, I wondered if there was any chance that someone was selling the song on eBay or Amazon. EBay didn’t offer up anything, but I was surprised to see that Amazon had in fact listed a complete TOKYO POLICEWOMAN DUO Soundtrack CD for sale. It didn’t show me a picture of the album (warning!), and it didn’t list the songs either, but I went ahead and ordered it because I figured, “How Many TPD albums could there be? The song HAD to be on that soundtrack!”
Well, I was wrong, DEAD wrong, as it turns out! A few days later while exploring online for information about the CD I’d just ordered, (a move I admit I shoulda done BEFORE trying to buy anything!) I found out that The Tokyo Policewoman Duo series had spawned a whole MESS of CDS, and I had no way of knowing which one I had ordered until the CD arrived at my home! All I could do was pray that the CD I bought had Hare Nochi Parade on it!
A week later my purchase arrived, but Hare Nochi Parade was NOT on the CD, and in fact I’d half expected it, anyway. Sigh.
So I was essentially back to square one, but one thing I DID find was that a site I came across referred to the Tokyo Policewoman Duo series as “Taiho Shichauzo”, a name that I recognized as the title of the Sachie Hara/ Misaki Ito comedy “You’re Under Arrest”! WAIT A MINUTE…was that live action BASED on the Tokyo Policewoman Duo anime series? WOW! I never knew that!
A thought then occurred to me: Maybe I couldn’t find Tokyo Policewoman Duo in the Otokichi Premium search engine ‘cause it was listed under Taiho Shichauzo? It was worth a shot! So I went back to the Otokichi site and typed in the new name, and whaddaya know? A whole CRAPLOAD of results came up!!!
Crossing my fingers and clicking on the third line simply listed as Taiho Shichauzo, I was excited beyond belief when what should come up but the Holy Grail itself:
You best believe that I got RIGHT ON THAT THING and ordered that single IMMEDIATELY, and when that package arrived a week later, I wasted NO TIME slapping that disc into my computer and began BLASTING that song for all it was worth! The song was even better than I remembered, and I found myself just smiling like crazy, it was sooooo GOOD!
Lend Your Ears to Hare Nochi Parade:
The voices of the two girls singing are just awesome: full of sweetness and bravado, it really captures the heart of the show and hits me in the right spot, and while we’re talking about the vocalists here, I wonder: Exactly who are the artists singing Hare Nochi Parade?
The album credits the Tokyo Policewoman Duo characters Tsujimoto Natsumi & Kobayakawa Miyuki as the singers, but are the Seiyuu who provide the voices for the show (Tamagawa Sakiko and Hiramatsu Akiko) also singing this tune? I do know that the actors who provide the voices for Tenchi Muyo DO provide the vocals for their songs as well, It would be great to know for sure who’s singing Hare Nochi Parade, the vocals on this song ROCK!
Slightly reminiscent of anime series MOLDIVER’s theme song, the melody takes you soaring as the girls take turns trading off verses, but the catchy kicker comes when they both sing together during the choruses, and whenever the song goes to the line:
Mune ga Ding-Dong, Sawagu yo...
I INSTANTLY get goosebumps and find myself just BESIDE MYSELF with giddiness! Ah, man, this song takes me back to those glory days of J-pop, all the fun and wonderment of pure, distilled anime poppiness!!!
EDIT:
Git some info about the girls singing on this track! from the highly informative Usagi.org!
They state:
The Tokyo Police-Woman Duo (T.P.D.) is made up of Hiramatsu Akiko and Tamagawa Sakiko!
They are the voice actresses in the anime Taiho Shichauzo!
So the mystery is solved at LAST!
