let me be your White Nut

Some vintage J-Pop today, courtesy of the 1987 anime series, Akai Koudan Zillion (English: Red Photon Zillion or Red Optical Bullet Zillion, depending on the translator). A co-production between Tatsunoko and Sega, Zillion's story centered around a group of teens, "The White Nights" (often mistranslated as "White Nuts") fighting off an alien invasion with special Laser Tag pistols modeled after the Sega Master System's light gun. The general consensus from anime enthusiasts is that the series was pretty lousy, and based on the few dubbed episodes I've been able to see, I have to grudgingly agree. (That didn't stop me from buying an original animation cel featuring the token female White Knight, Apple, however.)

Lousy or not, the anime series was responsible for an excellent action-adventure game (and a forgettable shooter-platformer sequel) for Sega's Master System console, as well as a soundtrack album with some excellent J-Pop songs sung by Yuhki Risa. "Pure Stone" was the opening theme song for the anime. "Push!", a much stronger track than "Pure Stone", is one of my favorite 80's anime songs, along with the music from the original Bubblegum Crisis OAVs and Eve's songs from Megazone 23. (Surprisingly decent 8-bit versions of both songs are used in the first Zillion videogame, by the way.)