Regarding the title, Great Journey debuted live at 7th Live Glowing Rock 16th Feb 2020, and remains unreleased in full to this day. While the reasons of WHY would warrant an entire essay on itself, the fact is that the official lyrics are also only available in a photobook on a 29700 yen official BD Box and hence not many people may want to pay such money just to view the official lyrics. (It's the best CG Live in history though so it's totally worth your money... if it weren't sold out everywhere and being resold for over 50% markup...)

Preface

Normally I like to share a bit about the lyrics of songs I love (since I'm not musically inclined I leave that part to the experts) but today we're taking a look at a rare catch instead due to the the availability of this song.

Disclaimer: Translations have been kept very "raw" in hopes that even non japanese readers are able to have the opportunity to interpret the literature

Due to the terrible formatting for reddit tables, I decided to put the lyrics in a single image instead so that the english and japanese lyrics can be put nicely side by side. This also has the benefit of allowing me to color code the singers.

Lyrics & Translations

now this post could have ended here but you know I won't quit without writing exceedingly long posts for no reason.

Lyrics discussion (and Spoiler Warning)

As this song is the collaboration theme song for the Princess Connect Re;Dive x Starlight Stage collaboration, there will be instances where there might be spoilers regarding the event story being mentioned below! The collaboration event story is excellent and I highly recommend people (especially those who have enjoyed the original CG anime) to check it out. It's a very high quality work and definitely worth your time.

This song is pretty happening. Obviously its called Great Journey so there's a lot of themes of journeying and exploration. Starting in the second section you see the stars being mentioned which is a relatively common theme for new generations (perhaps partially due to Mio's Mitsuboshi and perpetual star themes)

Inquisitive people would like to ask the question "What's the wish they're looking to fulfill". In the collaboration story for princess connect redive they are adventurers looking to become idols. Great Journey is the song they were "awarded" for winning the idol audition/competition and so a lot of the song seems to be very closely tied to the story.

One thing I have to say about this song is how the high bpm and the choice of instrumentation in the composition ties in extremely well with the song theme and lyrics. The upbeat rhythm, violin and dramatic notes make for a very exciting piece, there's just something about this song that gets me excited every time. A perfect auditory metaphor for an exciting adventure while maintaining the overall cute theme of the song.

In the verse after the first chorus there is a very nice callback to 流れ星キセキ in the second line, to make it painfully obvious they wrote kiseki in katakana just like the song name.

The choruses of the song are also ordered in increasing level of confidence. From "I want to put on a smile" (or equally fair "I want to put a smile on [someone]") to a confident Are you believing in our power to make the world smile kind of tone is a very endearing progression.

I think the most interesting part of the song to talk about though is the bridge. Its the closest thing we have to tie in to the song with the story in the collab yet has only been heard in Glowing Rock (and the BD). In the collaboration story, newgen find themselves isekai'd into the world (the online game) that is priconne, they only remember being adventurers and don't recall anything about their idol past in the original world. Yet in the story they discover what they had in themselves all along. Progressively they go little by little from realizing they might have forgotten something right to the very climax of the plot where they remember everything. This bridge captures it all. It's a shame this song hasn't been released, because you'll never get to understand the full meaning of this part until you've watched both the live and also read the collab story.

Concluding this short look at the song, Great Journey is a song that I find very easy to immerse myself in and the lyrics while extremely simple are for whatever reason rather emotional. The song is very exciting and can light a fire in my heart. While not really a contender for best song of 2020 for me, this is one hell of a comeback piece from the composer of onegai cinderella and the lyricist for a big portion of the season 2 anime songs. (Speaking of which, I must remind everyone that it's been 4 years since we got any work from Uchida Tetsuya in this franchise since he left bandai namco to work for cygames several years ago. This song is almost like a loveletter to the series)