Mamoru Miyano- SHINE (Review)

Mamoru kicks off this year with a new single for us. This single has a track featured in the third installment of the Uta no Prince-sama series, Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love Revolutions. His last single with the opening theme titled カノン was also good with some rock elements that were really well incorporated in his ” sound”, let’s hope that this time around it is also as good as the usual Mamoru. Also this single is only available on one edition. Without any further ado let’s start this review.

More information regarding the single:

Single: シャイン (Shine)
Label: King Records
Release date: 15/04/15
Genre: J-Pop

Tracklist

Track by track analysis:

1- シャイン

Starting off this single we have  シャイン, an electronic track with lots of synths and piano that easily mix well with the anime’s theme, and the reason behind it? Well it’s easy, because it was Elements Garden that created this song, so it is obvious that the synths and the amazing piano that has some more highlight here and there to be in this track. This time instead of betting on a more rock instrumental we have an electronic pop song that makes us addicted to it with the first time listening to it, and earlier I mentioned that SHINE wasn’t a pop/rock song but it definitely still has some guitars, they aren’t as powerful as in カノン, for example, but at the same time they fit in the instrumental perfectly so we don’t have any complaints. 5/5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs_GQEsSgPM

2-Be Mine

Be Mine is a slow tempo track with an instrumental that is completely relaxed. The drums and synths plus the bass make all this harmony that transform this track into a wonderful ballad by Mamoru. To some of you this track may make you remember the album Break a road with the R&B genre and all. The bass in this track is without a doubt really good, even though the instrumental is simple, and we cannot forget Mamoru’s vocal performance that was top-notch. 5/5

3- TRANSFORM

To end this single we have TRANSFORM, yet another electronic track with lots of distorted and “psychedelic” synths, synthetic drums and vocal manipulation. Certainly this track in for the dance floor, not quite like NEW ORDER but still good, though for some of you the synths and vocal distortions may be a little to much. Still in this track Mamoru has some managed to use his vocal potential to make us delighted and distracted from the instrumental.When reaching the chorus you’ll be surprised because it actually is very catchy, good and not overwhelming at all. This track is completely different from what we are used to listen from Mamo-chan but even if it was a surprise we cannot say that it was bad, maybe a little less of manipulation and synths on his voice would’ve sufficed. 4/5

Final rating:

Shine was definitely a good single with two amazing tracks and one that needed some fixes here and there. シャイン and Be Mine were great, the instrumental was good we had some guitars and the usual amount of synths and electronic elements, we even had a ballad that made us remember his first albums. Until this point everything was good, the problem is that TRANSFORM is a little too overly crowded track, especially by the synths and vocal manipulation, as I mentioned before it would’ve been a wonderful track if not for that. Certainly we know that this track is different from Mamoru‘s usual because it was created by a different person, other than Jin Nakamura or STY, which is a shame because the songs created by those two are almost never fails. All in all we could see that Mamoru was trying some new things here and there, but it still is a good single if we can bear to listen to a more “electronic-only” focused track. Definitely curious to listen to his future work and see what new things he’s added to his “sound”:

SHINE is already available for purchase on CDJAPAN for all overseas fans.