Cover art for the Sasameki Koto original soundtrack
♫ 蓮実重臣 - ほっとした瞬間
♫ 蓮実重臣 - キス
♫ 蓮実重臣 - J•O•S•H•I•B•U

back in the primordial streaming soup of the late aughts, simulcasting was barely a thing that existed at all. more people, dare I say, have probably seen natsu no arashi than would have otherwise known it even exists because it was, in early 2009, one of like six shows you could stream legally at the time. sasameki koto was, and I suppose still is, exactly the show that wears that halo for me, as it now sits somewhere at the bottom of my memory hole among shows that I can remember being fond of yet can’t really articulate why or even what story beats they hit. yuri did strangely well in the initial streaming racket — shows like natsumemo, aoi hana, and saki if you focused your goggles right, were all bunched up as early gets — so I probably watched more yuri than you would otherwise expect for even a fair weather fan of the time. maybe I should really be calling it “shoujo ai” if I’m going to be talking about an era this far back, but I digress. the truth was, if you had any belief that the simulcast model should succeed, you sampled pretty much whatever there was to watch back then, when it was still possible to imagine watching all of a dozen or two available shows.

sasameki koto, as I’m able to recite it, was one of those melodramas that never had any hope of resolving in a one cour adaptation. most people around to invoke it seem to prefer the manga for that reason. what I do more clearly remember, like a familiar smell that wafts by when you return to your hometown every few years, is how it dressed and carried itself. the soundtrack, with swelling strings, soaring chorus vocals, and dancing piano riffs, is nothing short of a perfect accompaniment for teenage love that seems grander than it actually is, and it’s one of those high watermarks that exists probably only for myself. composed by the late shigeomi hasumi, a japanese-belgian pianist that worked in many different commercial contexts, it’s a little more restrained than the experimental ambience he accomplished with PACIFIC 231. that sound, after first being honed by haruomi hosono on his personal label, would later be lended to other equally forgotten japanese dramas, which makes the choice to have him helm sasameki at the very least more thoughtful than what you can usually expect to sus out from production credits. for as full as his work feels and sounds, the components involved are tremendously simple, and I’m not sure you could describe “love” to much more of an exact spec than that.

curiously, the liner notes credit umeda high school girl’s choir for the vocals, which is obviously a cheeky nod to the name of the school in the series. only recently did I discover tucked away in the special thanks section is that this was actually the suginami children’s choir, an elite group that has cycled through generations of kids over the last 50 years spanning three years old up to university age. with sasameki, using a junior choir does feel like a meaningful authenticity that envelopes a story otherwise written, directed, and performed by adults, and that itself would have probably been satisfying enough to learn if I wasn’t also the kind of person that finds themselves down winding paths always trying to satisfy some further curiosity. while it already tickled me enough to know that children performed for a late night anime, one that aired in a 2 AM timeslot certainly well past any reasonable bedtime, it was maybe most surprising to find out that they also performed that one insert song from utena, the opening for galaxy express 999, and, of all things, a second season ED for seitokai yakuindomo, making them the innocent shield for some of the crassest late night anime has gotten in the modern broadcast era. maybe it isn’t so odd, then, to learn that they show up here as well.