was released on December 10, 2003. The title is 瞳の中の迷宮. It's pronounced 'Hitomi no Naka no Meikyuu', and can be translated as 'The Maze in Your Eyes'. The c/w track is titled 'solitude'.
The PV is a making-of style, featuring shots of Aiko messing around backstage, carrying an umbrella in the rain, being made-up on the set, and a closeup shot of her lip-synching the song. Some of the shots are professional but others show a candid side of her which of course is very, very cute. She was 17 when this was filmed.
I believe that her parents are shown in the video; one shot shows a woman carrying some items a few steps behind her, backstage. Another very quick shot shows what appears to be that same woman on one side of Aiko, and a really handsome guy on the other side (which could be her father *or* older brother, I don't know for sure). They look like proud family members, they bear a resemblance to Aiko, and why would the video include a closeup shot of random people at this important moment unless they were proud family members?
The single was featured as the opening theme of the anime 'Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito' (Yami, Hat, and Traveller's Book). Aiko voiced the character 'Reira', some sources I've seen refer to her as 'Layla Mars'. I can't confirm this from the show; Aiko's character is only referred to as 'Reira'. According to the translator's notes, the Reira character was not in the video game but was created specifically for the TV series.
Aiko's character appears in episodes 10 and 11 of the 13-episode series. A synopsis of this series follows:
Hatsumi is a mysterious and flawlessly beautiful young blond librarian who has the power to 'travel through' books. She can live in a book's 'world' with that book's characters, but whenever she has a 16th birthday, she disappears and leaves the characters behind.
One of the characters left behind was Hatsuki, who fell in love with her and now is obsessively trying to track her down, but is always one step behind.
When Hatsuki arrives in a new book, the characters will always give some clue as to what Hatsumi (the one being chased) was doing while she lived in that book. Because she is so beautiful and because there are always mysterious circumstances surrounding her arrival and sudden departure, Hatsumi becomes a legend in every world she visits.
In one of the stories, Hatsumi suddenly arrives as 'Rurau' on a giant spaceship which is full of children travelling on a 200-year journey towards a new home planet. She then leaves just as suddenly, floating out into space all by herself.
Some years later, Reira (Aiko) is a child travelling on that spaceship as it reaches the new home planet. She admires Rurau's legend and wonders what it would be like to float off into the loneliness of space like Rurau once did.
The ship is controlled by an omnipotent computer which acts as the parental figure of Reira and all the children on the ship. The adults on the ship all died a decade ago but remain in their beds, decaying, while the ship's computer simulates their voices.
An emergency is called and Reira bravely volunteers to fix a CO2 tank outside the ship. However, she accidentally severs the tether line and floats off just like Rurau.
Instead of disappearing or dying a horrible death, her boy-crush Ramuro uses a jet-pack to save her and they fly back to the ship together. There they are readying shuttles which will land on the new planet, called 'Rurau', a name picked by Reira.
As a housewarming gift, Reira gets vials of DNA taken from Earth animals, so that they can be recreated on the new planet.
I've suspended my disbelief about everything else, but I have a hard time believing that Aiko could clone animals. You never know, I guess.
Subtitled videos of this series, including the opening which uses the single, are available at youTube and probably elsewhere.
The series has a decidedly mature tone and is centered around a lesbian relationship. It's not violent but there are some conflicts. Throughout, there are many shots of ideally-drawn women's bodies with the least amount of clothing possible.
Even Aiko's character lays in bed with a sheet barely draped over her. I won't give away how the series ends, and I haven't watched it recently enough to be confident in teling you about it anyway. But if Hatsuki finally succeeds in finding Hatsumi, you'd really want to watch what happens next, in excruciating detail. They don't show it to you, but after 7 hours of this series, you can imagine it.
[Original post date 2009-Jan-11] Yes, I wrote this 5 years ago.
