クールになれ！～Keep On Our Love～ (Stay Cool! ~Keep On Our Love~)

Keiichi character song! Not as thick with spoilers as many of the others, but be careful anyway.

The best part is right at the end of the part in the lyric booklet. This is not what we call keeping your cool. Also note that you get "KOOL" if you abbreviate "Keep On Our Love." I'm still not sure what "Shock & Down" is supposed to mean, though.

There are a few lines in this song that aren't in the lyric booklet. Any time something appears in this color and in (parentheses), it's spoken and not in the booklet. There don't seem to be any official sources indicating what these lines are, so I've pieced them together as well as I could between listening and Googling.

¹ Moe (萌え) is one of those otaku words that doesn't have a good English equivalent, but basically it refers to a quirky trait or feature that makes a character or character type wildly popular with a certain portion of the fanbase. While unusual behaviors (like Rena's かぁいい mode) or speaking quirks (like Rika's typical overuse of (な)のです) qualify as moe, Keiichi's usage of the term here likely refers to the fetishy costumes the losers in their club activities usually end up wearing as their preferred form of penalty game. Typical outfits include maid uniforms, animal ears and tails, gym blouse and shorts, the provocative waitress outfit from local restaurant Angel Mort, various combinations of such things, and of course Keiichi's ever-popular swan dress, complete with a swan head and neck for added embarrassment.

² 両手に花 (ryoute ni hana, literally "a flower in each hand") is an idiom used when someone benefits from two fortunate happenings at the same time, or, somewhat similarly, to a man being flanked by two beautiful women. 両手に鬼 (ryoute ni oni, literally "a demon in each hand") twists the idiom. Either way, the two flowers and/or demons are Rena and Mion. Tomitake even uses the idiom in an early episode when he sees the three of them together, though it should be clear enough anyway.

³ Why 1500 seconds, which is, incidentally, 25 minutes? Though I can't recall the phrase coming up in the anime, it apparently keeps surfacing in other Higurashi media, usually in the form of "just give me 1500 seconds and I can..." This comes up everywhere from Keiichi's murder of Satoko's uncle in Tatarigoroshi-hen (chapter 3) to the efforts to buy some time at the end of Minagoroshi-hen (chapter 7). It's just one of several phrases and ideas that keep appearing across multiple chapters, suggesting that even the characters who aren't Rika do, in fact, retain echoes of memories of past loops even when they aren't consciously aware of it.

⁴ The kanji 水鉄砲 (mizudeppou, water pistol) are given the reading マシンガン (MASHIN GAN, machine gun). I kept the written meaning, but changed the verb to "bombarded" (rather than merely targeted) to maintain the intensity. On a side note, this last stanza has a line for each of the other club members: Mion with her crazy games, Satoko and her troubles with Child Protection Services, Rena and her rightfully feared "cyute mode" ("cute" deliberately misspelled to mirror her lisping of かわいい as かぁいい), and of course Rika with her mysteriously dropping voice. As I noted in my opening remarks, Keiichi sounds increasingly distressed as the stanza progresses.

⁵ Refer to 圭一・大石の噂の事件簿ＡＢＣ if you don't get the reference.

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