|
|
 MangaLife Round-Table #1, part 1: Anime Music
Written by Barb Lien-Cooper
This is the first half of the first installment of a new occasional feature here at MangaLife-- the Round-Table. Essentially, we start off with a relevant topic, and our staffers sound off on it. Our first topic: What anime music do you love?
Barbara Lien-Cooper:
Here we go, me first, with a less-than-complete (by a long shot!) list of anime-related songs/themes that I like, inspired by the fact that my husband just started playing some anime-related music on his computer while he edits Manga Life [It was Hare no Guu, incidentally. And Dai-Guard. —P]. Because, as fellow and sister anime fans, you already know that anime music often rocks.
--Rune Soldier Louie (opening [“Twinkle Trick”]): The Bangles would still have chart topping hits if they could come up with as catchy a theme song as this girl group extravaganza, that’s all I have to say about the subject.
--Witch Hunter Robin (opening): Urban Cool. Dark, compelling, but still pop as all get out. One of the few anime soundtracks I actually own.
--Cowboy Bebop (opening and closing): One of the only other anime soundtrack I own. Whenever I feel down, the opening theme (Tank!) usually lifts me up. From the countdown at the start to the horns all over the place, every time I hear the song, I miss the series. That’s a good theme song for you. Of course, just as magnificient is the dark, smoky end song, “The Real Folk Blues”, which is truly haunting. The whole soundtrack is great, especially when you have a long drive somewhere ahead of you.
--Fruits Basket (closing): Whenever I hear “A Small Prayer” theme song at the end, I get a little catch in my throat. It’s so pretty and so innocent. Then again, Momiji’s little song during the hot-springs episode is enough to bring tears to my eyes every last time I hear it. I’ve seen Fruits more times than I’d like to admit…and the music has a lot to do with it. It’s incredibly difficult to hear the opening theme song (in either Japanese or English, I’m not fussy) and not want to sit down and watch the show yet again.
Athena and Alethea Nibley:
Testing, testing… Let’s see, what music are we listening to these days?
--Voice (ending theme from Tide-Line Blue): We first saw Tide-Line Blue in raw Japanese, and we could only understand about half the dialogue, but the show made us happy every time we saw it, and part of that was the ending theme. It’s just so happy and upbeat! And! the second DVD from Bandai has a music video of it with the singer, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, being absolutely adorable. We can’t help but smile when we think of it.
Ysabet MacFarlane:
Fruits Basket (“For Fruits Basket”, opening theme): Furuba was my favorite anime briefly, before I discovered how much more I like the manga, and I still have a huge soft spot for it. This opening theme is soft and full of the melancholy/hopeful combination that’s so much a part of the series. I should admit that I have a bit of trouble listening to the song on its own now; the vibe of the song makes it hard to listen to it and not remember when Ritsuko Okazaki (the composer/singer) died, just over four years ago. She did beautiful work, and I find it a little eerie to sit and listen to her voice. (This is less true for her work on the Princess Tutu themes, but I think that’s because I watched Tutu a fair bit later.)
--NANA (various): Anna Tsuchiya and OLIVIA provide the vocals for the “Black Stones” and “Trapnest” songs, respectively, and they did some great work on this series. My favorites are two opening songs, “rose” and “Wish”, and the first ending song, “a little pain”.
Joy Kim:
--Cowboy Bebop (“Memory”): It’s hard to say anything new about the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack at this point; Yoko Kanno’s work for that series is justly renowned for being a key part of the series’ overall feel. Aside from the opening and ending themes, which Barb’s already written about, I also especially like the track “Memory,” the music box-like theme that always plays during Spike’s memories of Julia.
James Hanrahan:
Well I feel a bit out of my depth commenting here. You guys love your anime themes so much! I like them too but I am very bad about learning the names of vocalists, titles, and composers, especially on newer series. I'm kind of an old fart, I guess.I grew up in Japan from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. The only composer I really learned the name of in those days was Yuji Ohno, the jazz musician that scored pretty much every Lupin III series and inspired Yoko Kanno.
Pretty much everything I watched as a kid usually had a theme sung by Ichiro Mizuki or Isao Sasaki. These two guys are the twin kings of anime action themes, providing lead vocals on nearly every shonen style anime, covering the various SuperRobots (pre-Gundam robots) and live action tokusatsu heroes. Just wiki these two guys and see how they did the songs on... everything. The lyrics of those songs leaned heavily toward the goofy, but to this day, those two guys' voices say `theme song' to me.
Park Cooper
--Hare and Guu: Hare and Guu, or, as Alethea and Athena Nibley call it, Trippy Trippy Jungle, has always had a delightful opening theme. The original closing theme is also pleasant, although most of that is due to the good feeling one has seeing all the characters again during the closing credits. The closing theme of Hare and Guu: Deluxe, however, is phenomenal, a total tribute to the Stax Motown sound, with horns, dance moves, period costumes, all totally evoking the Stax era better than anyone in America or Britain could do today if they tried. I don’t know how Hare and Guu pulled that off. Aside from the pure coolness, I’m not even sure why they chose to, since the Stax feel has absolutely, I mean seriously, nothing whatsoever to do with the feel of Hare and Guu. Unlike the opening theme, which has a nice tropical feel.
--Princess Nine: I believe it was the Warsaw Philharmonic they got in to do the music for this series about girls playing baseball (no, not softball, but baseball, just like the boys), and it’s incredibly effective. I think the best track on the soundtrack is the one for when the main character learns to throw her father’s legendary “Lightning Ball.” In the anime, the Lightning Ball is always accompanied by the sound of a jet taking off. Sound over the top? It’s not. The soundtrack is so powerful—and I don’t mean LOUD, I mean POWERFUL, like Phil Spector’s “River Deep Mountain High”-- it took me a few Lightning Balls before I noticed they were sticking the jet take-off in there.
To Be Concluded...
: :
|
30 August 2010
MangaLife: On Culture
Share 25 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: I Put A Spell On You
Share 11 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Filters
Share 6 August 2010
Maybe You're Not Using It Right :On Japanese Load Words
Share
|
