Often, by the time they start their professional careers, Japanese musicians had already found their shtick early, and keep at it for however long. I've heard multiple bands where, without looking it up, I could tell who'd written which song. Its a fantastic flipside to western bands to be able to clearly pick out each artist's personality.
Maki Fujii never had much of an image as pop songweaver. In Soft Ballet he was primarily the dark/industrial pillar of their sound. But he didn't get there for lack of trying: one of the singles for their second album, Document, was an attempt of his to write a hit. Unfortunately, Escape didn't take off, and he resigned himself to mostly harsher fare and deep cuts. His career beyond that band has been marked by a general continuation of that trend, but one project bucked the trend in a major way.
Following the trails of a cover for a 1996 various artists tribute album to the band Japan, Fujii spearheaded a pop duo, with himself as writer-arranger-keyboardist while someone else fronted as singer. She Shell released two singles in 1999, each one with a different woman on vocals, and they lay bare how great he can be making pop. The lead tracks of each CD display a great grasp of melody and song structure while snuggly fitting the trends of the era. "Flesh" is delightfully cozy while "Sin" is a fantastic example of tension and release in composition.
Neither of those song titles seem like a straightforward match to what I just described, and here I wish my grasp of Japanese was better so I could understand the lyrics. The other tracks on each disc—who interestingly parallel one another with overall style choices per song—do paint a more layered picture of what Fujii was going for. That darkness is still part and parcel of his sound, and he fully leaned into it, Reep in particular double dipping with a Leonard Cohen cover. Unusually there's near-country guitar as well, which blends well in the arrangements. But each one also has the second song ("Fairy" and "Flagment") going for an "edge of consciousness" mood in their sound that I can't think of any other examples of, and at times get to me more than the chart-friendly openers.
Of interest is that Sin reportedly was planned to have a remix contest for its title track. It never happened, but they gave the isolated elements as a hard panned secret track on the single itself, after a few minutes of silence that follow the last labeled song. Such separation is a rarity to get from Japanese music (how I wish Guitar Hero and RockBand had taken off there...), which makes this release stand out so much more. Listening to a straight rip of the disc can be truly inconvenient (the final song, silence & isolated parts are all one CD track), so with help from an acquaintance I got a version that separates it all nicely, which you can listen to here.
Despite this strong launch and Fujii's pedigree, the only other She Shell releases was an uninteresting remix of an Ayumi Hamasaki song and a remix of a song by a Yoshiki produced band I couldn't find. A few years later he formed Suilen, following a similar format to She Shell, but with a single vocalist, multiple albums across some years of activity and an appearance on Hellsing Ultimate. But by then he'd turned his back on this sort of variety and went all in the darker stylings.
Its been somewhat hard to find good info on Fujii online. The dude has gone through multiple years-long hiatuses in his career—he's been MIA since an out of nowhere February 2022 solo show, in fact—and seems willing to kill projects if his mood flips on them. I've no idea what exactly led to She Shell having to switch singers or why it didn't go forward, but it was fantastic during the brief window of time it was a going concern.
Music nerds can prattle on about best albums all day long, but Sin in particular gets to me just as much as some albums. Its only 4 tracks long, but each one is "top shelf" material, and they all go together fabulously as one artistic package. The only other single that impacted me the same way was Coaltar of the Deepers' Dear Future. In a way, the rarity of these makes me treasure them even more.