(errata for the previous post)
My amazing ability to forget the most random things in my absentmindedness never ceases to amaze me. 90% of the reason I started the “best themes of 2008” post was to post this, and, yet, I completely forgot to. I get caught up in everything else I forget that I haven’t done something and don’t realize it until I wake up the next morning.
Anyway, without further ado:
Ishikawa Chiaki – Prototype [Mobile Suit Gundam 00 s2 ED1] (PV)
Ever since I watched Simoun I’ve been in love with Ishikawa Chiaki’s songs and vocals. This became much more pronounced the following year when I watched Bokurano and found myself listening to the TV-rip version of Uninstall for a week. Straight. Literally. The same 1:30 of music over and over and over and over again. And it didn’t drive me crazy. I couldn’t stop.
Granted, that provided for a strange experience when the full length version surfaced three months later, so I was bound and determined not to do the same to Prototype, which I fell in love with the minute I heard it in episode, and then forgot all about it until I watched episode 3 with the full ED animation and I had to literally stop myself from sitting around watching the ED on repeat for hours on end, in order not to ruin what would eventually be a nearly 6-minute opus magnum.*
That, friends, is the power of Ishikawa Chiaki. I love Kajiura Yuki, yes, and See-Saw was great, but Chiaki seems to have taken the best parts of Kajiura and made them better. Chiaki manages to top herself at least once a year, and this cycle is madness and is going to ruin me for music forever. Or maybe I’m just a Ishikawa Chiaki fanboy. Hell, I ordered the single for no apparent reason. I consider importing singles one of the most difficult things to convince me of, as cost + international shipping usually makes it not worth it, except for the best of the best–which Prototype is.
We’ll just say that, rather than forgetting, I was merely saving the best for last, and building tension without actively doing anything! I would have done an edit, but that seems cheating after all this time, and, besides, why not give Prototype its own post? That seems more fitting than letting it slum with the lesser OP/EDs.**
* misusing Latin in an effort to sound cool, no doubt
** joke, I think
Anime wa Bakuhatsu da! 
I’m a sucker for ‘Prototype’ too. Pragmatically speaking, it also helps remind me to stay around for the extra content between the ED sequence and the preview.
Ishikawa is great as a singer, and amazing as a song writer. I personally loved Prototype from moment it was leaked in the net, but the song really blew me away when I saw the lyrics. And alot of her songs are like that too.