This is definitely one of my most favourite BACK-ON songs, although at the time of its release, the song certainly caused some concern amongst the fans that preferred the ‘rock’ side of the band, as it had a very ‘electronic dance’ feel to it. A PV was never released for the song, and it was promoted on TV with a 15-second CM featuring Kenji03 against an urban backdrop, fitting as the song was the ending theme for the TV series Shinjuku Swan.

As usual, you can find the lyrics below (after the cut-off) with the original kanji, romaji and karaoke versions of the lyrics as well! If you haven’t heard the song yet, visit our Music page and scroll to the end for our pop-out radio and listen to it.

By the way, we do occasionally amend the spelling of the original English lyrics if we believe it to be appropriate. But as always, if you spot any mistakes, please let us know either by commenting below or via the contact form.

Finally, if you would like to post these lyrics elsewhere, please kindly link back to this page. :)

This breaking news was first spotted by Sesshy on Back-on’s official blog, and it was subsequently posted onto their official Myspace in English. They were both accompanied by a picture of the band with the cast and Hitomi Shimatani at the press conference that was held by the production team of Keitai Sousakan 7 to launch the show.

We will be covering the drama in more depth in another post. For a quick low-down of the facts (info courtesy of August Ragone, The Good, The Bad, and Godzilla 続・夕陽の呉爾羅):

The 51-episode series revolves around Kieta, a high school freshman who joins “Anchor” (the digital-crime-fighting organisation) and is given the transformer-phone, Phonebraver 7, to help thwart the plans of an internet-based crime organisation.

The main role is played by 19 year-old Masataka Kubota, and is supported by actors Mickey Curtis (Agitator), Yuko Ito (Bubble Fiction), Kanji Tsuda (Japan Sink), Natsuki Okamoto (Arch Angels), Satoshi Matsuda (Kamen Rider Ryuki), and Nao Nagasawa (Hurricanger).

From left: Takashi Miike, Nao Nagasawa, Yuko Ito, Masataka Kubota,
Kanji Tsuda, Satoshi Matsuda, Natsuki Okamoto (Source: Nippon Cinema)

Some big names are involved with the project, including:

• Takashi Miike (三池崇史), the supervising director for KS7 who is famous for directing Great Yokai War and the Alive or Dead series.
• Mamoru Oshii (押井守), the director behind Ghost in the Shell.
• Shusuke Kaneko (金子修介), a well known director who most recently worked on the live movie version of Death Note.

In addition to the ‘all-star’ director group, TV Tokyo also recruited Hitomi Shimatani to sing the opening theme song. Apparently the new song is called WAKE YOU UP. There are reports that the singer may even guest-star in the series as well. (Author’s note: Will Back-on guest-star too?)

Alas we can’t see very much of the band from the photo posted on their blogs, but with a big thanks to bebekjelek, we can share some really good closeups of the band from the press conference that you can see below:

As a super-special bonus, we’ve kindly been given permission to post even more photos from the event that were taken by David Michaud of LeJapon.fr, a freelance photographer who hails from France and is based in Japan. The full-sized versions of the thumbnails (and more photos) can all been seen in the BOO Gallery – KS7 Press Conference, and aside from the excellent group photos, there are also individual pictures (closeups!) of Kenji03 and Teeda! I would really encourage everyone to view the photos in full, since thumbnails really don’t do them enough justice!

The commercial ‘tie-in’, or the transformer-robot-phone(s) Phonebraver (the Toshiba 815T PB) is actually receiving a tonne of attention in its own right, as it is probably the first ‘hybrid’ toy transformer and phone. The initial report on Gizmodo Japan was swiftly picked up by the US Gizmodo, before Akihabara News posted their report from the press conference.

With all this promotion going on, it is quite unbelievable that all the blogs and news site (such as Variety Japan, Tokyograph etc.) never actually mentioned that Back-on are singing the ending theme for the drama. I’m guessing that this is because of all the big names that have dominated the headlines, but as a fellow fan, I’m sure you find this rather disappointing as well!

However, (even if I am biased!) I think their music will speak for itself when the drama is premiered on April 2nd 2008. This is the second time that Back-on‘s music will feature as main theme for a J-drama (the first being Shinjuku Swan) but given the wide ranging publicity given to Keitai Sousakan 7 and the fact that it is a prime-time kid-friendly show (contrasting especially with Shinjuku Swan) it is more than likely to be a major breakthrough for Back-on reaching the mainstream. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! :)

This is particularly in response to the original blog post by Back-on‘s staff asking for feedback and comments, where I believe Back-on staff promised that comments would receive replies if they posted within a certain timeframe, and Teeda for instance, has made an amazing effort to say hi to everyone!

You might be interested in knowing that both Teeda and Kenji03 have stopped writing in their own blogs, and that Back-on’s Official Blog is now their main blogging platform, so it’s a fantastic resource for interesting pictures and videos from the band!

We’ll try and give you more information about these posts in the future, but Back-on did include some photos of the singles in the shops (HMV for instance) that you can see below:

They also took pictures with some lucky CD staff member(s)!

Last but not least, if you’re wondering what the songs sound like, we’ve been able to listen to samples of each track on both CDs (courtesy of Hmv.co.jp) which we are now making available below as a mix-zip file below! So included 45 second samples are:

• flower (Myspace preview) – as it’s better quality
• ZERO
• Colors
• Butterfly (Myspace preview)
• Spark
• DRIVE (Shutokou Remix)

Please bear in mind that these are song samples so the quality is unfortunately not very good (aside from flower and Butterfly previews from Back-on’s Myspace, which were both made available in a previous post) but hopefully it is enough to give everyone a quick preview! Personally, aside from the title tracks, I’m loving the sample of ZERO and Colors! Which songs do you like?

Mixed Samples

• the CM (Commercial) on Back-on’s Myspace,
• which is also available on Youtube courtesy of blueblueblue
• and also the ending credits of 新宿スワン(Shinjuku Swan) first uploaded by gangangan03 and then blueblueblue on Youtube!
• we’ve also uploaded a trailer or preview video sourced from the official Shinjuku Swan website as well!
  

So in essence: 5 videos in one news post! You can click on the individual links above to watch the videos, or as usual, it is possible to watch the three different videos below (we’ve picked the best available formats where possible):

Butterfly (Single) – Commercial Message

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Shinjuku Swan (Ending Credits)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Shinjuku Swan (Trailer/Preview)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

p/s: The video preview for 新宿スワン (Shinjuku Swan) is available for direct viewing via the official Shinjuku Swan website. I would recommend viewing the original video, as the resolution hasn’t been resized by Youtube.

p/s2: You can now see quick screenshots of some videos at Baidu, courtesy of the webmistress kenji03!

The first images that we received (last week) were courtesy of avalonstar12/Tsubame, which you can find below:

which coincided with the preview clip release of the flower pv, and you can now see larger versions of the single covers in our Gallery by clicking on the images above or viewing some larger thumbnails below, courtesy of Amazon.co.jp!

I love both designs, especially after hearing previews of both songs – now available on Back-on’s Myspace! In case you weren’t aware of it already, flower is the new ED for the anime Eyeshield 21; and Butterfly is the theme song for the new j-drama Shinjuku Swan, where the latter is about:

Shiratori Tatsuhiko, a young man who becomes a scout for Shinjuku’s red light district

where the synopsis is from the D-addicts’ Wiki. Personally, I really do think that the two new singles will actually be even more popular than Back-on‘s most recent release BLAZE LINE/a day dreaming…, because if the previews are anything to go by: the songs are *really* good, particularly the chorus imho! Some fans have already suggested that the singles may build up to a full album release by Back-on, so hopefully that will happen soon!