New single to be released September 21, 2016

Oku Hanako’s staff have just announced that a new single will be released on September 21!

■奥華子リリース情報
2016年9月21日(水)
ニューシングル「思い出になれ/愛という宝物」リリース決定！！！
奥華子初となるダブルA面シングルで新たなスタートを切ります。ぜひご期待ください！

— 奥華子 official (@okuhanakostaff) July 18, 2016

I expected the single to be Honobono Yukou / ほのぼの行こう, but that’s apparently not the case. From the Tweet, it looks like it’s going to be Oku Hanako’s first double A-side single, with the two A-sides being Omoide ni Nare / 思い出になれ (“Become a Memory”) and Ai to Iu Takaramono / 愛という宝物 (“A Treasure Called Love”). According to an official announcement post, “Ai to Iu Takaramono” is the “2016 cross fm official GREEN campaign song”.

No other information has been released yet, but I expect the cover art to be released in about a month.

I don’t know about you, but this being a double A-side single makes me very excited. I especially want to hear “Ai to Iu Takaramono”. They’re probably going to be both moderately to heavily arranged. I don’t know if there will be a more lightly-arranged/hikigatari song to balance it out, this being a double A-side and all, but it’s still something to look forward to. EDIT: According to the announcement post, there will indeed be other songs.

Fan-translated and instrumental covers of Kawaranai Mono / 変わらないもの

July 15, 2016 was the tenth anniversary of “Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo” / 時をかける少女 (“tokikake”; English title: “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”), the movie that made Oku Hanako famous. If you recall, her songs Garnet / ガーネット and Kawaranai Mono / 変わらないもの were made as the theme and insert songs respectively.

As with any song, someone is bound to make a cover. Many are mediocre and potentially ear-scratching, but there will always be some that stand out from the rest.

In honour of the tenth anniversary of the movie, I’ve compiled what I think are the best and most interesting fan covers of Kawaranai Mono / 変わらないもの. About half of these are actually not in Japanese; instead, they’re fan-translated covers. The other half are instrumental covers.

If this is not a song that you can listen to over and over again without getting tired, I highly suggest taking breaks in between songs. It’s a really good song and you wouldn’t want to ruin it for yourself.

---

Playlist

This post is broken up into multiple pages to speed up loading times.

1. Moni (English)
2. SallyJanuary (German)
3. Syu214 (Solo Guitar)
4. viiAkano (Filipino)
5. DYLZAL/Draconequus (Electric Guitar)
6. Kyle Landry (Solo Piano)
7. Bonus

---

Moni (English)

Since this is an English blog, we begin the playlist with an English cover by Moni. I honestly think this is good enough to replace the original in the English dub if they wanted to dub the songs as well (although I’m glad they didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about Oku-san).

The YouTube version has sound effects from the movie. The SoundCloud version is clean.

[HD] (Re-upload) ENGLISH The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – Kawaranai Mono {Moni} by Monistar [YouTube]

The lyrics used in this cover are brilliant and I commend Moni and Jerry for their efforts. It is a very liberal translation of the original song, but it still captures the intent and the emotion of the original. Plus, it follows the meaning of the original almost line to line.

Next: SallyJanuary (German)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7