“With the violet that flows from your fingertips, let us paint a small dream, just for us two.”

The picture is from the game City of Heroes, featuring my imaginary girlfriend’s imaginary sister, in this case as imaginary heroine Yubisaki Violeta.  There is a story behind that name, of course. That’s the topic of today’s entry.  (The guy next to her is me, the Eternal Newbie.)

The anime Umi Monogatari (“Sea Story”)  is nothing to write home about. It is a pretty standard magical girl anime, which will probably be liked by grade school and middle school girls, and the occasional other person who likes to watch girls who are technically not underage but certainly look like it, hug and say “I love you” to other seemingly underage girls when not transforming into magical priestesses to save the world from eternal darkness and sorrow.  There are probably people who get a kick out of that.  But what I like about it is the opening song, Violet by Marble.  Luckily the song can be bought separately now.  Or you could listen to it here, at least for now.   If you do, you can probably understand why I love it, even though the singer is not amazing by Japanese pop standards.

Yes, it is excessively innocent.  Even if you don’t understand a word of Japanese (which is slightly less than even me) you should be able to feel it in your heart.  As for the lyrics, what I think I understand is something like (in the shorter form used in the opening song):

You…  you… Heart… peace… You too… you too… peace… It is good, just like this (?) … Time… forget… that’s why. Fingertips… violet… small dream… draw (?)… two people alone… Happy(?)… sky.

In my defense, Japanese songs are even more cryptic than everyday conversations, which themselves are held in a language that has evolved apart from ours since the deep of the last Ice Age, when our ancestors were too buys hunting woolly mammoths to study linguistics. Anyway, the voices in my head have opinions on the lyrics, but they may be wrong. I am sure I got the spirit of it right though.

As proof I present you with the animals, who have no linguistic capabilities at all, but do have a spirit of sorts.  As I was walking from my home, humming the song too myself, I passed the neighbor’s cat.  Well, one of them.  This is unusual.  When I come anywhere near, the cats run for their lives, except the kittens.  They have good reason, for the previous inhabitants of the house (up to three and a half year ago) hated them with a vengeance and would chase them for their lives.  However, as I was wordlessly (or nearly so, see the scarcity of words as seen above) humming to myself, the cat made no effort to move at all, but let me walk straight past it so close that I had to take care to not step on any part of it.

Curious, I walked through a small park on my way from the bus station in the city to work. (Not today, obviously, since today is Sunday.) Ahead of me were a modest group of crows, eating something vaguely vegetarian that someone had left on the ground.  Seeing me, they started to take wing.  I, on the other hand, started to sing Violet.  Hearing this, the crows immediately fell at ease and settled to the ground, letting me walk right through their congregation as if I belonged there.  It was a pretty amazing experience.

It probably would not work on humans, more’s the pity.  Or would it? Feel free to listen and chime in with your opinion.