what happened to hime trance?
The series sold extremely well in its first year, and was a hit among gyarus, even being advertised in Egg. But as the Japanese club music scene moved on from trance and eurobeat, sales began to decline all the way leading to Hime Trance 4’s release in 2010, ending the series.
3 years later in 2013, i-Dance’s parent label, Toshiba-EMI, went defunct and was absorbed into Universal Music Group. This formally ended any chances of the series carrying on or being revived, alongsides the aforementioned changes in the Japanese club music scene.
As for its parent series Dancemania, the final album in the mainline series wouldn’t release until 2015 with the digital-only album Dancemania - Let’s Party, marking the official end of an era.
the preservation state of hime trance
Hime Trance became a big hit upon its debut in January 2006, selling over 100,000 copies and earning gold certification. It was an instant hit among the gyaru community for featuring catchy songs and remixes of eurodance/pop songs popular among gyarus in clubs/venues. Many of these songs were compatible with *parapara*, the main forms of dancing among gyaru to eurobeat, trance, or techno.
The HEAVENS WiRE remix of “In My Heart” by Tsukasa, the 2nd track in the first album, was especially and hit, and her tracks appearing in every release granted Tsukasa high notability among gyaru to the point of being crowned “Queen of Hime Trance” by fans. It was enough to launch the release of Hime Trance Tsukasa Mix, an album entirely dedicated to remixes of her songs.
Dancemania also played a major role in supplying tracks for the iconic Dance Dance Revolution franchise, so much that the character Emi Tōshiba takes her name from the series’ record label. The Delaction remix of “Butterfly” by Smile.dk is one of the most notable tracks to be included in the games, and it first debuted on the first Hime Trance in 2006, before appearing in Trance Paradise 4 a couple months later.
But since the end of the series and the overall decline in popularity of gyaru in the 2010s, the series quickly became forgotten, and even 20 years after its release it has rarely been acknowledged anywhere, even on the internet. Not even the aforementioned relationship between Dancemania and DDR was able to save it. In addition, EMI never released Dancemania or any of its spinoff albums or projects outside of Japan, leaving them largely unknown or recognized by the rest of the world until video sharing sites such as YouTube and NND began to upload their tracks for the whole world to enjoy.
But asides from growing into obscurity in recent years, many of Hime Trance’s tracks are unknowingly in severe danger of venturing into lost media territory. And this doesn’t go just for this specific series.
The albums, like many other compilation CDs of eurobeat, trance and techno at the time, were mixed to crossfade/transition into one another to emulate the club experience, as DJs mixed music together in order to create a nonstop flow that could go on and on. This means that a song would usually have its beginning and ends chopped off, leaving the main gist of the song, and then crossfade into the next song. Usually, many of these songs would also receive special vinyl releases, which contained the full unmixed version of the song. Those that did NOT receive vinyl releases of any kind whatsoever might heavily point to the fact that the full version of the song (if it even exists), is lost and unavailable to the public, and only the main gist of the song that survives on these kinds of albums is all of what we have of them.
4 Skips vs. Floorbreaker’s “MA⭐️GI⭐️CA⭐️” is one of the unfortunate victims of this, and it appears that even its copyright information is unavailable. It appeared on Hime Trance 3 and Trance Paradise The Best 1999 ~ 2008, the latter of which it was cut down to an even shorter length.
While a good bit of J-Trance songs featured in these kinds of albums has been preserved on YouTube, not enough people have been preserving it. Think about what could happen to them if these preservation channels or uploads suddenly disappeared.
The majority of the artists who supplied songs for the series such as Tsukasa, Ari/Aya, Miu⭐️Miu, etc. also never gained any mainstream recognition whatsoever, and upon googling them, the first results are usually related to Hime Trance or whatever other compilation they have appeared in. The original versions of Tsukasa’s songs that were turned into remixes into the series have also failed to surface, such as “君へノ想イ” (which appeared as the SPACEY vs. garamonn remix on both BEST and Tsukasa Mix), and the original version lies on Tsukasa’s “deep blue” album, which has yet to be uploaded.
