Every book its reader; every album its listener.

Hello! Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. it’s time once again for another installment of the J-Music Exchange/Rate! That’s right, your monthly pair of album reviews are here once more this September, brought to you by me and Al as always. If you’ve been following the series and have been waiting for this month’s entry, then by all means, go ahead and check out the theme down below. But if this happens to be your first time joining us and you’re not quite sure what this whole thing is aboutー

The Exchange/Rate is a tandem album review series conducted every month by yours truly alongside my good friend and fellow Japanese music fan Al (from Omunibasu). Each month we decide on a specific theme with which our reviews would revolve around. We then pick out albums from our respective libraries which we think best coincides with that theme. We will then give the album we chose to the other person and vice versa (exchange), after which we then listen to and subsequently review the album we were given (rate). This project has not only allowed us to explore music beyond our libraries, but it provides an opportunity for us to see our favorite albums from a different point of view. It is our hope that this series is able to do the same for you and that you either find a new artist to try out and/or we offer you a fresh take on one of *your* favorite albums 

Al and I take turns deciding the theme each month, and for September the choice was mine, and it’s gonna be albums that we like but find hard to recommend. Over the years of running the Monthly Recommendation Roundup, I’ve definitely had moments where I’d come across a song I personally enjoyed but would hesitate to recommend to others. Maybe the vocals aren’t the easiest on the ears, maybe the style leans a little too avant-garde; there are plenty of different reasons why something might click with me but not necessarily with everyone else. That’s the kind of nuance I wanted to capture with this theme.

To that end, I went ahead and gave Al an album that I personally find tough to sell people on in 2&’s 2 (you can check out Al’s review of that one over at the Omunibasu Substack!). In return, Al handed me singer-songwriter azusa’s self-titled debut album to listen to and share my thoughts on with you all today.

Let’s run it!

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After a four-year stint as a member of the vocal unit Sparkling☆Point beginning in 2003, Mitsu Azusa (満梓) made her solo singer-songwriter debut under the stage name azusa in 2008. By 2010 she had signed with PONY CANYON, releasing her first single i Love as the opening theme for the anime Amagami SS. Her second single, Kimi no Mama de followed later that same year. In 2013, she announced a suspension of her activities through her blog, citing the start of a new chapter in her life. Today, azusa resides in Malaysia with her family, where she is the mother of two daughters.

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(＊Spotify link to the full album)

CDJapan Affiliate Link(s):
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＜T ｒａｃｋｌｉｓｔ＞

０１・明日晴れたら/ashita haretara
０２・i Love
０３・マングローブの森/mangrove no mori
０４・夢ノート/yume note
０５・ふーるふーる/furu furu
０６・真夏のフォトグラフ/manatsu no photograph
０７・ナミダアメ/namida ame
０８・Two of us
０９・好きよ/suki yo
１０・君のままで/kimi no mama de
１１・Just be a friend
１２・夏祭り/natsu matsuri
１３・フラワー/flower
１４・stories ～azusa self-cover-ver.～

Ａｌ：The anime series Amagami SS holds an incredibly special place in my heart. Not only because I still think it’s my favorite romance anime of all-time but it happened to be the catalyst for my personal blogging journey, when I randomly decided to write a review about it on my old site back in 2016. That post is long gone now and I’m sure it wasn’t a great piece of writing, but even to this day, I have an immense amount of appreciation for how much Amagami and everything about it (especially Kaoru) influenced me as a blogger and a fan of all things Japanese entertainment.

And one of the most memorable aspects of this series was the featured music, particularly the opening themes that were performed by the ever-so-lovely azusa.

At least for me, “i Love” will forever be a winter holiday classic and a song that never ceases to give me goosebumps, especially when listening to azusa’s gorgeous vocal performance. And as I began to dive deeper into the rest of her music, it really is a case of ‘what you hear is what you get’, since many of her other songs share that soft, serene, light-hearted tone that the Amagami themes did a good job expressing. There’s a ton of beautiful piano ballads to choose from, and even her trying out a few different genres/styles like folk (“Manglobe no Mori”), jazz (“Suki yo”), light rock (“Namida ame”), or whatever she was cooking in “Two of us”… it’s a great collection of songs that truly encapsulate azusa’s specific talent and demeanor.

However… as much as I really enjoy her music, this album in particular can definitely feel ‘one dimensional’. To the point where I believe that once you’ve listened to a few songs (maybe even just the more popular anison-related ones), you’ve kinda gotten the whole gist of what azusa’s about, and particularly her specific vocal styling. Don’t get me wrong; I think her music is very lovely and this self-titled release is something a lot of people should check out for that exact reason. But I have a feeling some may end up tuning out halfway through because of how same-y, and maybe even, simple-sounding these songs can be. Even so, I think it’s quite fitting to bring this album up, considering the Amagami anime is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, as well as the recent bombshell announcement that azusa will be making her first appearance in a loooong time at a special event in December, which is such an incredible way to end off 2025.

＜Ｓｏｎｇｓ　ｏｆ　Ｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔ＞

０２・i Love
I think it bears noting that, contrary to how I’d usually kick off a review, I won’t actually be starting with the first track of the album this time, but rather its second. That’s because if there’s one song here that some, if not most, of you might recognize, it would be i Love here. The reason being, of course, that it served as the ending theme to the popular anime Amagami SS. And fittingly enough, the song itself sounds exactly like you’d expect a prototypical romance anime ED to sound. You’ve got that gentle, swaying tempo, sweet melodic lines, and an overall softness that perfectly complements any sort of heart-fluttering scene rolling into the credits. Even if you’ve never actually watched Amagami, it carries that familiar air that immediately makes you go, “yep, this is totally an anime ending theme.”

More than just being a recognizable anime song, though, I think i Love also does a solid job of representing what azusa as an album has to offer. Not so much in the sense of setting the tone for the rest of the tracklist as I traditionally would say (though it does that too), but more in the way it serves as a kind of blueprint for azusa’s artistry as presented here. The light instrumentation, the easygoing arrangement, the soft delivery; this is the predominant style and mood you’ll encounter across much of the album. I’ll circle back and expand on this later when I go over my overall thoughts on azusa as a whole, but for now I think it’s fair to say this album is pretty much full of tracks that carry that same sort of “anison”-like sound to it.

０６・真夏のフォトグラフ/manatsu no photograph
Something worth pointing out here is that there are actually three tracks in total (counting i Love) on this album that were used as anime themes. The fourth track, Yume Note, was the opening theme to Moshidora; a show I even talked about on here well over a decade ago back when this was still more of an anime blog (lol, talk about full circle). Then there’s the sixth track here, Manatsu no Photograph, which gives us yet another tie-in, this time as the ending theme to Astarotte no Omocha. While that show I would say is arguably the least popular of the three, I’d actually argue this theme song ends up being the more compelling track between them, at least from a purely sound perspective. The biggest reason why is that Manatsu no Photograph just feels oddly more polished than anything else; not just among the anime tie-ins, but really across the entire album.

There’s a very noticeable depth to the production here that you just don’t quite hear elsewhere on azusa, and honestly, it’s kind of strange. It almost feels like this track was mixed and mastered separately from the rest of the album. Where a lot of the other songs come off a bit thin by comparison, at times sounding almost like azusa is singing over a backing track, this one stands out for having an arrangement that really feels like the instruments were actually recorded and polished in a studio setting. There’s a sense of presence to it that’s hard to put into words. The drum beats and piano resound and reverberate in a way that feels organic, letting the sound hollow out and envelop the space around you. That added weight and dimension, in turn, provides a nice contrasting balance to azusa’s otherwise light and airy singing.

０７・ナミダアメ/namida ame
Namida Ame, the seventh track off the album, ends up being one of the more curious moments on azusa. I say that because I actually find this middle stretch of the album to be pretty interesting in general. Traditionally, this spot is where albums tend to give listeners a bit of breathing room, or some kind of reprieve if you’ve been listening straight from track one without stopping (like how I personally would go about listening to an album). That can take a bunch of different forms: a short interstitial track, an instrumental, or even a softer, more subdued track to offset all the energy that’s both come that’s come before and all that’s still to follow. More often than not, these “breaks” make for a refreshing change of pace, and sometimes they even end up being my favorite moments on an album because of it.

What’s neat about Namida Ame is that in a lot of ways it almost plays like the inverse of that idea. Instead of mellowing things out, it stands out as one of the record’s edgier, cooler moments, with it being that the only track here to bring electric guitars into the mix. That said, it’s not like azusa suddenly veers off into full-on girls rock territory. The song still carries that same anime-theme-like structure that defines much of the album, so while the texture feels different, the underlying blueprint remains intact. In a way, it kind of sounds like one of her songs was simply transposed and given a rock arrangement (which, funnily enough, is something that already happened with Yume Note). I imagine that’s more or less what we have here, and while it does come across as fresh relative to the rest of the tracklist, there’s also a slight sense of disjointedness where I’m not entirely sure this sound is the best fit for azusa’s singing style.

０８・Two of us
The eighth track, Two of us, continues the idea I mentioned earlier about the middle stretch of azusa acting as a bit of a breather by intentionally breaking from what the rest of the album tends to offer. Where Namida Ame shifted gears by leaning into edgier textures while still sounding like it could slot into a romance anime ending, Two of us goes in the opposite, and perhaps more expected direction. It slows things down considerably, adopting more of a pop/R&B sensibility than anything else we’ve heard so far, and in doing so ends up as the least anison-sounding track of the bunch. Which, sounds a bit weird to be pointing out in isolation, but if you’d recall what I said earlier about the predominant sound of azusa, this track comes across as quite the outlier.

Two of us feels like the only real glimpse we get of azusa as an artist outside of the anison framing we’ve established for her up to this point. The track rides on this simple, old-school urban boom-bap type beat that, in my opinion, works wonders in bringing out a more relaxed and subdued side to her singing; particularly her low notes which we didn’t get to hear a whole lot of if at all in the album’s earlier tracks. Paired with the groove in the arrangement, it ends up complementing her voice surprisingly well (actually reminds me a little bit of an old favorite of mine in CICADA, funnily enough). Whether or not she would have even wanted to pursue this lane is another matter entirely, but I’d argue she could’ve found some success leaning further into this kind of sound if given the chance. At the very least, it left me intrigued about the possibilities.

＜Ｗｈａｔ　Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｏｆ　ａｚｕｓａ＞

When we talk about albums that are adjacent to, if not directly tied to, anison by virtue of their performers, the conversation more often than not circles back to the idea of a “grab bag”, or an assortment of styles and sounds thrown together, as we’ve taken to calling them here on the Exchange/Rate. At the very least, that tends to be the expectation coming in. Honestly, that was also what I assumed I’d be getting into when Al pitched azusa’s azusa my way. To my surprise, though, it is not a “grab bag.” Not even in the slightest. I would even go so far as to say that at the extreme, and perhaps as its most defining characteristic at that, is azusa is an album that virtually has no surprises.

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? I think the answer depends almost entirely on whether you’re a fan of the predominant sound that azusa brings to the table here. If I were to boil it down into a singular mold for the sake of this review, I’d classify the songs as love songs straight out of the late ’90s to early 2000s. They’re lighthearted, earnest, and generally pretty straightforward. And, as I’ve kept pointing out, they all lean heavily into that anison-esque vibe. In many ways, they’re textbook examples of what you’d expect from that space. The same can be said even for the non-anime tie-in tracks: whether it’s Mangrove no Mori or Suki yo or really just about anything else on the record, you could imagine almost any of these songs slotting in as an anime ending without much trouble.

This brings up a rather unique conundrum, one that I very rarely, if ever, run into when writing a review, and it comes down to the album’s sheer uniformity (which, perhaps, is exactly why Al flagged this as a tough one to recommend for this month’s theme). Put simply: if you enjoy these kinds of songs, then azusa is absolutely for you. But by that same token, if you don’t naturally gravitate toward this style of music, I find it hard to recommend. That is to say, if you weren’t already a fan of this sound coming in, I don’t think this album does much to convince you otherwise. There’s nothing particularly novel or groundbreaking in what azusa is doing here (in my humble opinion), and I can’t really point to a single track that might change someone’s mind.

＜Ｍｙ　Ｒａｔｉｎｇ＞


３.２５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ ５

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６.５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ １０

A couple of things worth noting, which may or may not change your perception of this album, is that all of the songs on azusa were both written and composed by azusa herself. That’s praise-worthy in and of itself, considering that songs in this space are more often handled by seasoned arrangers and songwriting teams. Even more so when you factor in that she was signed under PONY CANYON at the time and that this was her first major-label debut. It really does put into perspective how promising she must have been viewed back then, maybe even positioned as a potential staple in the anison world. Another thing to keep in mind is that azusa came out in 2011, which could very well explain why the tracks might sound “dated” now, even though, in context, this style would’ve felt more contemporary when they came out.

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What do you guys think of azusa? Let me know down in the comments!
And while you’re at it, I’d love to hear which albums you enjoy but find hard to recommend; drop a link below, we’re curious to check them out!

Before I let you go, don’t forget to catch Al’s review of 2&’s 2 over at the Omunibasu Substack if you haven’t already.

Happy listening!