Yumiko Seki -- Yume Ippai （ゆめいっぱい）

It's amazing how much time has flown by since the cheeky anime girl from Shizuoka known formally as Momoko Sakura (aka Chibi Maruko-chan) first made that leap from the pages of her namesake author onto Sunday nights on Fuji-TV. I still see it from time to time on TV Japan on Sunday nights here. Apparently, she and her entire family have aged as much as the gang from Peanuts has.

Of course, when one thinks of music for "Chibi Maruko-chan"（ちびまる子ちゃん）, the first choice will always be the massively successful "Odoru Ponpokorin"（おどるポンポコリン...Dancing Ponpokoｒin) by B.B. Queens, the song that currently starts the program off. However, way back in 1990 when it first premiered, it was the ending theme. Instead, the opening theme was Yumiko Seki's（関ゆみ子） "Yume Ippai" (Full of Dreams).

The song had this interesting melodic mix of 60s British pop (when Seki launched into the lyrics, the tune reminded me of The Seekers' "Georgy Girl") and summertime Japanese pop of the 80s, namely the songs that TUBE had done. No surprise there since it was written by singer/songwriter Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子） and composed by Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, both compatriots of the famous summer band led by Nobuteru Maeda（前田亘輝）. And strangely enough, whenever I heard Seki's voice, I thought she had a hint of early Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子） in there.

For those who may not have seen the earliest years of "Chibi Maruko-chan", here are the original opening credits with Seki's "Yume Ippai". The credits are nostalgic in that Maruko appeared in somewhat rougher and more laid-back form than the usual frenetic hijinks she's involved in during the more recent openings, although the 1990 credits also had her enjoying her fantasies.

Yumiko Seki was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada and lived in a number of other places with her family such as the United States and Hong Kong before returning to Japan for good just in time to enter the graduating year of high school. Not long after that, she auditioned for the talent agency, Being Incorporated, in 1987 and passed. And in April 1990, her debut single "Yume Ippai" was released just a few months after the show had begun. The single peaked at a far more modest No. 50 compared to its sister song "Odoru Ponpokorin" which ended up as the No. 1 song of the year, but for me, because it is such a little-heard song now, it still occupies a good place in my heart and mind.

Seki would release only one more single and two albums over the next couple of years, but she did join a vocal group, Beaches, for a couple of years and has expanded into stage acting, songwriting, narrating work and even hatmaking. Currently, she is known as Yumiko Arima（有馬ゆみこ）.