Today’s song of the day isn’t that special on its own, but it comes with a story. Strap in — or don’t, I won’t tell you how to spend your Sunday.
This song was featured in the fourth season of Boku no Hero Academia, and it was the second English song. Even in the Japanese dub, the song played in English, just like Japanese songs stay in Japanese when you watch the English dub.
When anime uses a song and attributes it to a character, they will either say “Character Name Starring Singer Name” or “Character Name C/V Singer Name,” though the latter is typically when it’s the voice actor, or seiyuu. Chrissy Costanza was relatively unknown when the episode aired with (parts of) this song. The full song was released later, and that’s why it has clips from the show to pad it out.
Chrissy Costanza went on to release a solo album, then joined a band, Against the Current. They both have good material. They don’t sound rough like this one. I still love it, because I understand the context.
The context is, the song is about Kyouka Jirou, the student hero known as Earphone Jack. Her parents are musicians, and she feared they would oppose her entry into hero work, because it’s dangerous and they’re proud musicians. However, they supported her, and the song is a tribute to that.
The song is also a tribute to a little girl, Eri, that Jirou’s classmates rescued from the Japanese mafia. This child has never smiled because she has the super power of being able to revert people to an earlier form. She accidentally killed one or both of her parents, and the mob took her in, to experiment on her, by cutting her open for her blood and using another super power to put her back together. It’s kind of screwed up.
So they rescue her, they put on a school music festival, she’s in the crowd with one of the heroes who rescued her, and she breaks out smiling during the show.
Four seasons later, the fandom has gotten weird and the author has gotten death threats because people are shipping the two main guys — honestly, Deku just gets shipped with everyone — because he doesn’t officially have a partner. And Japan is super conservative, and conservative snowflakes can’t handle the possibility that the main guy may not be 100% straight.
Initially the author deflects, says these are high school kids fighting real villains, they don’t have time to hook up. He ends up writing a bonus chapter that implies more relationship between the main girl and the main guy. IMO it’s still up in the air, but the bigots run with it, saying bigotry wins and diversity/LGBTQ+ loses. It’s really unfortunate... but again, Japan is super conservative, and fans suck sometimes.
The bonus chapter gets made into an episode and the shit comes back around again, the fandom again splitting over whether the main guy is straight or it’s open to interpretation.
The latest bonus episode is only six minutes, but it’s Eri, now in high school herself, and she performs a cover of this song. Again, a new singer is used to sing as Eri, named Myka Morton. So, in my opinion, the true ending of the series doesn’t have anything to do with who’s hooking up with who, it’s the young girl the heroes saved when she was a child, posting it forward and inspiring the next generation of heroes.
Here’s that new version. They call it the tenth anniversary. Of the anime, not the original song. It’s a bit unclear.
I think the original is generally better, but a couple of lines have been tweaked and they work better in the new version.
I’ve oversimplified a lot of things because it’s a very long show with over a hundred named characters and a lot of moving parts I didn’t want to spend more time explaining. The fans know. Those who aren’t fans don’t really care, and if they’re interested, I didn’t spoil anything big.
I didn’t have a stake in the fight. I was shipping the main guy with the frog girl, because they’re both principled nerds and they both have green hair. So please don’t assume I’m with one of the big ships. I know my ship never had any wind in its sails. I still supported it.
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