What is this, Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da’s 27th single in the past two years? (/checks) Oh, no, it’s only the fifth. I lose track!

So welcome to my ever-grinding conundrum, gang. I love Zenkimi with every little shred of my heart, but all of those releases eventually get wadded together in my brain, and I start to lose track of what’s what, and then I start to pay attention to the extremely bright video and wonder why each member’s signature weapon is animated into the thing, and it feels so familiar that I wonder why I’m enjoying it so much:

I’m sitting here and watching this — again! — and thinking to myself, something like 90 percent of all Zenkimi songs follow the same formula, with those blistery synths on repetitive (like, since Day 1 repetitive) phrases, a predictable but unreliable structure (“here’s a random extra line in that verse!”), rollicking beats and traded-off vocal bursts between the members. It should get boring at some point! And yet here we are.

I used to think it was that syva was sort of magically empowered to create ear worms, but maybe it’s not even that. Like, maybe it’s that syva’s real gift is finding ever-new ways to mix up each song’s elements to make something just unique enough to keep us coming back, like some kind of diabolical master brewer who refuses to add any new ingredients but has mastered ways of changing proportions and techniques to keep making new stuff out of old hat.

Anyway, it’s impressive, and while I’m not in a hurry to add this one to my all-time Zenkimi playlist (I do have limits, after all), I can’t help but give it yet another spin.