Song of the Week
10/7/10 - "Galaxia Gorgeous"
Welcome to Song of the Week, Myu Corner's weekly feature on songs from SeraMyu. This week in another belated feature, we're covering a great song that glorifies the greatest Sailor Moon villain of all, Sailor Galaxia. The song? "Galaxia Gorgeous." The reason I'm featuring it? Galaxia-sama is coercing me to or she will take my Star Seed. (Just kidding. What would she want with my puny Star Seed?).
"Galaxia Gorgeous" first appeared in the musical Eien Densetsu, the third musical based on the Sailor Stars season, after Sailor Stars and its Kaiteiban. Since this musical was performed at or after the end of the Stars season airing on TV, it makes sense that a song focused on Galaxia, who dominates the latter half of that storyline, would appear. Basically, it consists of Galaxia and her minions gathered in her extremely golden palace (because of course the Golden Queen Galaxia must have an extremely golden palace) singing about how the Sailor Senshi are SO going down. Galaxia and the others aren't going to just attack the Earth, they're going to "crush, crush, crush, and demolish" it – because that, my dear fan, is just what Galaxia does. She doesn't care how much you try to save your planet; if she wants to take you down, then gosh darnit she's going to do absolutely everything in her power (and considering she can even resurrect Queen Beryl and the Shitennou and create a fake Endymion, she's got quite a lot of power) to take you down.
The song then appeared in Eien Densetsu (Kaiteiban), the last musical of the First Stage, and in the three other musicals that feature Galaxia, namely Shin Densetsu Kourin, Starlights*Ryuusei Densetsu, and Kakyuu-Ouhi Kourin - The Second Stage Final. (Its appearance in Final First Stage and Kakyuu Ouhi Kourin makes it one of the few songs to appear in more than one production stage final, besides "La Soldier" of course). It also appeared on the Best Songs Collection CD, one of only four villain songs to appear on that CD (well, five if you count "Onna Kaizoku no Sakusen" as a villain song, which I don't really). However, unlike other villain songs, it doesn't appear on the Dark Side Edition CD (though another Galaxia song, "Galaxia no Dokusai," does).
Galaxia has several other songs - the aforementioned "Galaxia no Dokusai," where she basically chews out her minions for not accomplishing what she wants, "Tenkuu no Utage" and "Yamikoso Utsukushii ~ Galaxia no Iradachi," joint songs with Beryl (in the second, she's just in the background telling Beryl that her love for Endymion is messing with their mission), and "Get Across the Moon," which joins "Galaxia Gorgeous" as a second "Galaxia and her minions" song in Starlights*Ryuusei Densetsu and Kakyuu-Ouhi Kourin ("Get Across the Moon" is also featured as a part of the full-cast medley "What For?! Shinjitsu no Kajitsu" in Kakyuu-Ouhi Kourin) - but "Galaxia Gorgeous" seems like the only one focused specifically on her, an image song if you will.
This song was performed by three different Galaxias - Matsumoto Tamami in Eien Densetsu and its Kaiteiban, Takemi in Shin Densetsu Kourin, and Sakaguchi Yumie in Starlights*Ryuusei Densetsu and Kakyuu-Ouhi Kourin. I saw Takemi's performance for the first time when researching this feature, and it just doesn't wow me, maybe because she's only 20 in this musical and also doesn't have the deep, low voice Tamami-san and Yumie-san have (and that Galaxia has in the anime, for that matter). It's a tough choice between Tamami-san and Yumie-san though; they're both really good. As older women (33 and 29 respectively as of their first myus), they carry the song better than Takemi. I like the staging of Yumie-san's a little better (Starlights and Kakyuu-Ouhi Kourin use the two-level stage to very good effect overall) and the echo on the last "Gorgeous" in her version is pretty awesome. Tamami-san's version, however, has lots more dancing (including a nice 360 twirl by Tamami-san herself) and uses more of the stage, including behind the mirrors where Kasahara Ryuuji as Chaos pops up to echo "Demolish" a couple times. In terms of singing, as I said, they both do very well. So I think I'll call it a tie there.
Well, that's all for this week. Tune in next Thursday to see the next Song of the Week! That is, if Galaxia-sama doesn't get to me first. *shudder*