GARNiDELiA is a popular Japanese music duo featuring a young man, Toku, and a woman, MARiA. Their new single, “Aikotoba (the meaning of love),” is a very bright and happy song, which is a contrast to their usual slow and mellow sound.

This change in sound may be due to the fact that “Aikotoba” is the theme song of a fall 2017 anime show, “Anime Gataris.” Being a theme song of an anime that focuses on a comedic and predictable theme, it is necessary to make the song correlate with the theme of the anime.

The music video for “Aikotoba” features lead singer MARiA wearing a plaid, yellow long-sleeved crop top, choker necklace, and bell bottom pants of the same pattern. Her hair is blond and has a rainbow tie along with a large bow, that has the same yellow plaid pattern as the rest of the clothes. The clothes are from a style that is currently popular in Harajuku, a district in Tokyo. I would like to see more of these outfits in her other videos, because she usually dresses in black and gothic attire and I think based on her skin tone, the yellow gives her a flashy and captivating vibe.

In the middle of the video, she switches her hair with a more vibrant rainbow ribbon, which is split into “twintails” and changes her outfit with men’s distressed jeans. Japanese culture is extremely dignified, so they call what we call pigtails, twintails. The standards of Japanese culture explain that a lady’s hair should not be referred to as a twirl on the rear end of a pig.

She spends most of the video interacting with other Japanese girls that were chosen to be shown in the video based on their dancing skills. She focuses on Geisha-type dance moves that show a large similarity to ancient Japanese folklore dances, due to their importance in Japanese society.

The playful, nonchalant mood of Aikotoba is much more peaceful compared to their other single, “Hysteric Bullet,” which was also released this year.  

“Aikotoba” describes the feelings and meaning of first love throughout the song. With a strong electronic beat, the feel of the song makes it a catchy tune to listen to while working out at the gym or relaxing  “Aikotoba” is easily one of GARNiDELiA’s best singles in the past three years, because they use the beat to give an extra boost to MARiA’s voice, which is usually shaded over by mediocre slow music. This change in the sound of her voice gives the song more of an overall impact.