One of my dreams is to wake up being musically-gifted. I would like to have a perfect pitch and to be able to play different instruments excellently. I’d like to be a musical arranger. But, of course, that is impossible. All that I can play is the guitar and even with that, I’m not on the level of Sungha Jung, one of the people I follow on Youtube for their covers.
Confidently, I can say that I appreciate a lot of music and songs, though. (Err… heavy metal, rock, and the likes are not my thing, though.) I was also inspired by heyitszel’s OP/ED song of the week posts, so I decided to start a series of posts about different songs that I like. Of course, these songs are from different anime series and movies as well as Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese (maybe even Chinese and Thai) drama series and movies.
First on the list: Yakusoku wa Iranai.
does everyone get this lonely?
Say, do they embrace the pain
that’s even deeper than the darkness?It’s all been so that we
can shine,
I just know it!I… I love you.
I’m gazing at you with my heart.
I… I believe in you.
even on the coldest night.Say, even if they’re in love,
could the end someday come for them, too?
Say, could a feeling that’s even
clearer than the blue sky end up being abandoned?
The season-changing winds
Running along the streets
Forever
I… I love you.
I’m gazing at you with my heart.
I… I believe in you.
even on the coldest night.
Even if I lost tomorrow,
and even if I lost you, too,
I want to shine,
smiling as best as I can.
I call out to you now with my tears.
I don’t need promises or such things,
because of the precious
strength that you’ve given me.
I call out to you now with my eyes.
I don’t need promises or such things.
I reach out to you now with my eyes,
even on the coldest night.
Sang by Maaya Sakamoto and composed by Yoko Kanno, Yakusoku wa Iranai (lit. “No Need for Promises”) is the opening theme song for The Vision of Escaflowne, a 1996 anime series produced by Sunrise Studios.
The Vision of Escaflowne was shown on a local channel in the country in the early 2000s, but it re-aired on another channel when I was 10. We did not have an internet connection then and I was ignorant of things like downloading and surfing the Internet. Those were the times I did not care about that because I was contented with playing outside and watching dubbed anime series.
Anyway, around that time, I had my first mobile phone. (We’re just middle-class citizens from a third world country, you see.) It was a heavy Nokia model with the usual functioning applications plus a rear camera and an ability to connect to the Web. (Thanks to this, I was eventually introduced to the world of fan fictions.)
Nowadays, I use the voice recording feature of my phone to record lectures that should be heard again, but back then, I used it to record songs, particularly the opening and ending songs of the anime series that I loved.
I cannot remember how I came up with that idea, but I remember that I would turn the television on a few minutes before the anime series started. After the preceding show’s ending credits, I would ready my phone, position it in front of one of the television’s speaker, and wait till the commercial ended. I made sure to tell my younger brothers to be quiet. Then, I did all my best to time its record on the start of the song, all the while hoping that there’d be no other noises.
That was how I recorded Yakusoku wa Iranai. I remember it was a failure on the first few tries because I had a difficult time with the timing. Even so, I still used those failed recordings as my alarm. I remember jumping up and down when I managed to get a good recording of it.
Oh, how ignorant I was. But I guess because of those instances, this song became more meaningful to me. Moreover, I liked Maaya Sakamoto. Now, I hardly listen to this song not because I grew to dislike it, but because of the many other songs I listen to. From time to time, though, I happen to come across it and nostalgia has never failed to hit me yet.
Treasure Box 
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