Lyrical Deep Dive: Kaze Series 2/4 銀のイルカと熱い風 - The binding thread of the seasons

The MASTER SEASONS series of CD Albums tells a love story in 4 parts across 4 seasons, separated by several years. The first album came out in August 9th 2017 and the final part of the story was released on April 14th 2018. All 4 songs feature lyrics written by Mori Yuriko and feature the kanji for wind 風 (kaze) in the title. Together they represent one of the most unique collections of literature in all of Cinderella Girls. Gin no iruka to atsui kaze (literally "Silver dolphin and hot wind") is the 1st installment to the series, but chronologically the 2nd part.

Gin no Iruka to Atsui Kaze is composed by 俊龍 (Shunryuu) who is notable for not using LINE having recently worked on songs like パ・リ・ラ and 君のステージ衣装本当は…. They’re no stranger to the franchise with dozens of songs under their belt.

I would recommend completing the reading on Twintail no Kaze first as we will be going over some timeline information. This technically isn’t required since it was released as the first song, but it would help build a cohesive explanation as I aim to cover the rest of the series. A quick recap to cover where we were when we left off:

The couple met during winter of elementary school around 4th or 5th grade and then approximately 1 year has passed since the start of the story up until the end point of the song in Twintail no Kaze.

Standard fare: Translations are not meant to be perfect English and comprehensible sentences to give the reader who may not understand Japanese a chance to derive meaning from the original literature with the original contextual clues, instead of having someone else already making that interpretation for you. Read the discussion under each section for some suggestion on the interpretations.

はじまれ　はじまり　僕らの夏

Start the beginning of our summer!

The song starts with the sound of waves and water which sets the scene for the song. It's rather obvious that the song is designed to be the summer songs and the effect is meant to give you the idea of summer. What follows is the opening line and then the iconic guitar rift of this song which is regrettably absent in the game version.

The starting sound effect is meant to draw your mind towards things related to summer. In particular, the sound of crashing waves gives you the idea of things like beaches.

Also the male pronoun used in the sentence. This is the only clue we have up to this point on the gender of the character!

バスを降りて走った
時間まだ早いのに
だってワクワク　初のデートさ
右手振った君にクギ付け

[I] alighted from the bus and ran
Even though its still early [time wise]
Getting nervous, [It's the] first date after all
[I] fix my eyes on the you that is swinging your right hand

Now the real start of the song. From this we immediately learn several major pieces of information. Why is the character in such a hurry? What is the occasion? Just like that, we get all the information unloaded on us. In this case, the subject of the song is meeting up with their partner for their first date, and that's the exciting occasion that they're rushing for.

アクアリウムでイルカが跳ぶ
見るフリ　だけど意識は君だけに

In the aquarium, dolphins leap
[I] pretend to look, but [my] consciousness has only you

The next key information here is the location. Here we learn something about an aquarium. This would be the location of the date.

はじまれ　ヒカリの夏
はじまれ　フタリの夏
最高最上　自分史上
はじめて　ちゃんと言おう
はじめて　瞳を見て
前から　ホントは好きだったと

Start, light of summer
Start, two people of summer
Supreme, best myself in history
For the first time, [I] can earnestly declare
For the first time, [I] look at [your] eyes
From the beginning, the truth was that I really liked you

The phrasing here sounds very odd in english, but it follows a very interesting sentence structure that you will find repeating in the chorus here. You can observe that lines 1,2,4,5 are all very similar in structure. はじまれ is the imperative form of the intransitive verb 始まる which means "to begin". Usually verb forms with まる signal that its an intransitive verb and the transitive version would be める (a gross oversimplification, but this isn't a formal Japanese class) and we see in lines 4 and 5 something that would resemble a verb derived from the transitive verb 始める. But if only the world was that simple. はじめて（初めて） is an exception that means "For the first time". The interesting part is mostly the structure and nuance to the pattern used here.

Line 3 sounds super weird, but it resembles expressions used to describe the best time of their life. Lines 4 onwards talks about the depth of the love this guy has for the other character. Remember that this was supposed to be the first entry in the series, so we wouldn't have any idea how these characters have met or how they got to this point.

But now we do, because we went through the winter entry first. In Twintail no Kaze, we note how the love between the would-be couple is mostly unrequited. The male lead makes no attempt to convey their feelings to the other party. He just has a major crush on the other party. This back half of the chorus in that sense represents a progression in their relationship.

僕とつき合ってと汗かいたら
君がうなずいてた
熱い風の中

Would you associate with me? [I asked] and became sweaty then
You nodded
In the hot wind

Welcome to the first line of this part which is the worst line to translate in the whole song. 僕とつき合って is like asking "will you associate with me [male]". It's like asking someone out, or it could be as intimate as something like asking if they would be their lifelong partner. と acts as a connective particle, joining two halves of the sentence. 汗 is sweat and かいたら is the conditional form for... 　 actually half a dozen verbs with a dozen meanings. The one we're looking for is 掻く which means "to perspire" when used with sweat. The main reason this sentence translates weirdly is because it omits about half a boatload of details between the two sentence halves and ends on a conditional, meaning the resulting effect of the perspiration is in the clause that follows.

Anyway rant aside, the segment continues the trend of developing the relationship. It shows that the guy and girl are ready to take their relationship to another level. It's not quite explicitly defined in terms of what extent, but it's clear by the writing that the relationship will not be ending on this first date.

ショップで君が見てた
ネックレスをあげよう
silverドルフィン　2頭いっしょに
並ぶデザイン　僕らみたいだ

In the shop […]
The necklace you saw [I] gave
Silver dolphin, two heads together
Matching design, just like us

What kind of shop is this? Well, if you remember earlier, the setting was an aquarium, so this must be a kind of souvenir store. So here we get introduced to one major element of the series which is the silver dolphin necklace. You could actually buy one in real life, they had Movic produce the design and it's about 2.3cm large. In case you missed it, the design is being worn on the cover of the albums, and also in the ingame event and ingame cover. It makes sense that winter does not feature this necklace, because it's in the past. The heart shaped design and the pair of dolphins becomes a pretty nice symbol of the character's love.

ありがとう！って目を見張った
眩しいそんな笑顔によく似合う

Thank you! [you said as you] opened your eyes wide
That dazzling smile suits you very well

We can infer from the context that the male lead bought the necklace as a gift to the girl and she was taken aback by the gesture which made her very happy. Since the whole series is being written by the same person, the whole trend of very clear and vivid descriptions of scenes continues even in this song.

はじまれ　イルカの夏
はじまれ　ボクラの夏
からかうみたいな魚の群れ
見つめて　手をつないだ
見つめて　名前呼んだ
呼び捨て　なんだか照れるけどね

Start, dolphin of summer
Start, our summer
Prank-like group of fishes
Gaze and link our hands together
Gaze and call [your] name
Calling [your] name directly somehow makes you blush huh

Here we see that the patterns established in the first chorus continue. We begin with the identical verb used in the first chorus, but change to a different (but still transitive) verb that still uses め. (In this case, there's no valid verb 見つまて, but the point is mostly about the literature technique used.)

This is also yet another instance of the male pronoun being used in the song. We have 2 other instances up to this point, but the "our" in the 2nd line is using the male pronoun version.

Line 3 sounds weird, but I believe its mean to sound like "the groups of fishes looked like they were teasing us" which is a meaning you derive from the words used in the context.

Also the final line is awkward to phrase in english as well due to having no concise way of capturing all the nuances. 呼び捨て is the act of calling someone without any title suffix, which is extremely casual and considered impolite. These suffixes could be a job title or in most cases, common titles like "san" or "chan". In Japanese society, the more formally you refer to or address someone, the more distant you are in the relationship. For example, addressing someone with their family name is more formal and appropriate than calling them by their first name without prior permission. Therefore this act of not only calling their name but omitting any titles is a symbol of how close the male lead thinks he is to the girl. There's also an element of bravery on display here because something like that also requires a degree of confidence that it won't backfire and result in your social humiliation. It makes it a bit clearer why the girl seems overwhelmed by the guy's actions.

空と海の色も輝いてる
君と歩き出した
碧い風の中

The sky and the color of the sea is sparkling
Walking out with you
In the middle of the hot wind

So a fancy thought. Up to this point the setting of the song has been an Aquarium, but here there is also a mention of a sea that's sparkling. It is a bit of a stretch to imagine the enclosure of an aquarium being a sea. Well it appears that Japan is in no shortage of aquariums with dolphins that face the sea, located right on the edge of the perimeter of it's islands. Just a few include Aqua World (formally Ibaraki Prefectural Oarai Aquarium), Marine World Uminonakamichi (located in Fukuoka) and Kamogawa Sea World (located in Chiba). It seems that this isn't terribly rare for an aquarium to be right up against some coastline you could walk as well if you really wanted to. This obviously makes sense for logistics reasons, but I thought I should point this out anyway.

ギュッと　握ったら
ギュッと　握り返す
掌の中で
つながった未来
もう放さない
どこまでも

When [I] grasp tightly
[You] grasp tightly back
In the palm of the hand […]
[…] the connected future
can no longer be let go [of]
no matter where

And now the song takes a turn for the worse, as we go down the highly degenerate world of HANDHOLDING. Okay perhaps this is a bit too late to make this joke as that was already covered in the 2nd chorus. But this is what the song is really about. Twintail no Kaze describes unrequited love between the guy and the girl. The crush that the guy has ends as just that. Somewhere between then and now, their relationship has taken many steps forwards, climaxing in this first date where it's an official recognition of the start of a relationship, a promise of a future together. As much as it can be said about how Twintail no Kaze was the event that put the wheels into motion, Gin no Iruka to Atsui Kaze is the event that seals the destiny of these two characters. After all, it takes two hands to clap and both parties to make a healthy relationship work.

はじまれ　ヒカリの夏
はじまれ　フタリの夏
最高最上　自分史上
はじめて　ちゃんと言おう
はじめて　瞳を見て
前から　誰より大好きだと
はじまれ　はじまり　僕らの夏

Start, light of summer
Start, two people of summer
Supreme, best myself in history
For the first time, [I] can earnestly declare
For the first time, [I] look at [your] eyes
From the beginning, the truth was that I really liked you
Start the beginning of our summer!

Here is the victory lap for this song. There are some changes in lyric arrangement here. We have the very first line of the song at the end of the 1st chorus instead. This creates the declaration of the new beginning that was started by the couple's steps taken towards deepening their relationship. They're officially lovers, and the future, just like the summer, is bright.

空と海の色も輝いてる
君と歩き出した
碧い風の中

The sky and the color of the sea is sparkling
Walking out with you
In the middle of the hot wind

This concludes Gin no Iruka to Atsui Kaze. "But wait zhu you haven't mentioned anything about the timeline!", you scream. Well, you see the reason for that is that the song doesn't mention anything about the timeline either. The minimum gap between the two songs is about 6 months, considering the gap from winter to the summer, but otherwise the song does not give us any clues about exactly how many years this is after Twintail no Kaze, nor does Twintail no Kaze give any clues in the reverse direction.

There are a few reasons for this. Gin no iruka to atsui kaze is meant to be the first entry in the series. The lack of any continuity (or requirement of continuity) is probably intentional by design so that it stands alone as a complete piece, before we got the next album a couple months later for us to join the dots. This piece tells a story of a first date, a successful first date that brought these two individuals together.

The timeline so far stands as follows

1. Twintail no Kaze (spans about 1 year)
   At least 6 months
2. Gin no iruka to Atsui Kaze (spans about a singular day)

Join us next time as we tackle the 3rd installment in the series, and things will truly start taking off from this point I promise.