The lowkey cringe I had while typing up the title for this song but just hold on, I have a story for all of this. This one is particularly dear to me for both sentimental and stupid reasons.

“My Sweetheart” was the opening song for the anime, Tokyo Mew Mew, something that I was really into as a kid.

Hopefully not surprising news to any of my friends who know me (if this is your first time hearing about this, I’m sorry) but I was an anime weeb growing up. Early/mid-2000s to early 2010s was a top tier time for me to be really into anime. I remember watching anime episodes back on the early days of Youtube when Youtube had a 10-minute limit on videos and so people uploaded episodes in parts, usually titled like, “Naruto Episode 47 Part 1/3” or something like that.

It wasn’t long before I discovered that torrenting and anime streaming websites were a thing.

Anyway, I was probably 9 years old at the time, a lil anime weebnugget in the making. One anime that I was super into was Tokyo Mew Mew. This show was about a group of five girls who get infused with the DNA of endangered animals and transform into a magical girl crew called “Mew Mews” with superpowers to fight against aliens and protect the Earth.

Also they’re named after food.

Yeah, as I pause and think about it, I was in way too deep into this anime. The first manga I bought at Borders (RIP Borders) was the seven volume set for Tokyo Mew Mew. I have a distinct memory of my mom telling me to not read in the van and wait until we got home.

Sooo what is the point of this?

Right so, remember what I mentioned earlier about being on the early days of Youtube? There was also not a huge library for anime sheet music. I really wanted to learn how to play “My Sweetheart” on the piano but there was no sheet music available.

So I figured it out myself after recognizing the tune from the singer and converting it into notes onto the piano.

“My Sweetheart” was the first song I transposed and the catalyst for me discovering that I had perfect pitch.

I don’t think I fully realized it at the time but in hindsight, having perfect pitch was a game changer of how I approached music. It ended up opening up a ton of possibilities to me, where I was no longer limited to playing what I had sheet music for but I could play anything.

Anime, my mom’s Asian dramas, video games, movies.

The option to play these things gave me a deeper appreciation for what I can do with an instrument as well as music itself. Music can actually be fun.

At a young age where I found piano practice tedious and at times boring, having the option to play songs that I liked gave me motivation to continue learning piano until I got a little older to start appreciating the classical music that I did have to learn in my piano lessons.

There is a good chance that I would have given up early on with not just piano but playing instruments in general, were it not for my perfect pitch.

tl;dr As stupid as it sounds, I seriously have to thank anime for convincing me not to give up piano early and triggering my perfect pitch.

As a tribute to that, I revisited the song that sort of kicked off everything.

Something new I added was the descending run of notes in the intro, which is something that my younger self never figured out. To make a “sparkle” effect, I did a simple 3-2-1-3 descending pattern down the keys. It ended up sounding much smoother than I expected. I was a bit proud of myself for making that addition.

Something else I encountered was me being surprised by how many key changes there were in the short span of this song, particularly at 20 seconds, 43 seconds and 55 seconds. I vaguely remember my younger self did struggle a bit with this, even with the melody. I think I did a half-decent job handling the modulation changes

The song speeds up at around 1 minute so I switched the LH to a a series of eighth note patterns, rather than quarter notes, which worked as the song reached its “hype” part.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun revisiting this song. In a weird way, this song didn’t take very long to put together because it seemed that I already knew it. My nine-year-old self would’ve been so stoked.