So with April soon over, it’s time to acknowledge that Anime Instrumentality has passed its third year in existence, with all of the privileges that the milestone brings. For one, it puts us in a class alongside other blogs that somehow aren’t sensible enough to die at the commonly-observed two-year mark. Also, there are quite a few curmudgeony benefits that come with age that’ll explain a bit later.

But first, the reminiscing! That naturally leads into my attempts to come up with a series of posts that try to cover a wider topic so that they’ll bring some diversity to the steady stream of review after review after review. Last year’s focus was on all of the anime music, both BGM and OP/ED, from 2000-2009 (indexed here for your pleasure). That series was a whole lot of fun to write and people enjoyed the snippets that I put up. This year, as you can probably guess, the focus is on anime composers. In the interest of completeness, we’re finding that this series is actually very challenging to write about, mostly because listening to a composer’s entire discography is no small task. Still, we’re having fun with that and you can expect Taku Iwasaki’s profile to come out sometime in May.

A lot of other things happened too. The Aniblog Tourney brought us into the mainstream (and scaring away our hipster fanbase for good). I attended Anime Expo as a member of the press corps, albeit, for Original Sound Version (but still got an article about Megumi Nakajima and May’n as well as an abridged concert report out of it anyways). We also scored an interview with the jazz arranger, Rasmus Faber (and you really should check out his music!). Oh, and we also doubled our dedicated staff, adding Aftershok and Yu to the team, encouraged others to contribute guest posts, and through that, possibly discouraging anyone else from creating a site wholly devoted to anime music critiques/reviews. That last bit is kind of a shame, but what can you do?

I mentioned above that the three-year mark entitles me to certain benefits. Not to the point where I can pontificate like what Andy Rooney does every week (if Anime Instrumentality reaches the five-year mark, I’ll think about it then), but close. A few examples:

• When normal, average people take me out to karaoke, expecting me to join in and sing Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga songs with them, I’m allowed to be totally shameless in picking and singing anison while they look on, wide-eyed in shock, surprised that I can sing in Japanese (with the aid of Romanized lyrics written on a piece of paper). Besides, I’m not familiar with any Top40 song that’s come out in the last 20 years in the States anyways, so it’s a bit of a lost cause to expect me to know the tunes that everyone else knows.
• I can loudly proclaim that the music today is worse than the music from ten years ago, abetted by the idol phenomenon that prizes looks over ability and whose fans have the attention-span of a gnat as they move from idol to idol with no concept of loyalty. And then sheepishly admit that I don’t really listen to idol-pop. In all seriousness, the only issue I have with idols is their ubiquity. Sometimes, I wish they’d just go away, but most of the time, they’re pretty easy to ignore.
• Complain when shows with good music (I’m frowning at you, Cross Game) never get a soundtrack release. Complain when shows with good music only issue soundtrack releases bundled with the DVDs/Blu-rays. This latter issue is actually becoming more and more commonplace. While I can see why the bundling happens (I doubt soundtrack CDs sell all that well unless it’s for something like Macross Frontier), it absolutely drives me nuts all the same. Sometimes, we get lucky like we did with Working!! and Kara no Kyoukai’s soundtracks. Sometimes not. All I can say is that Madoka better have a standalone soundtrack release or I’ll quietly rage. Or find some more productive way of showing my displeasure.

So yes, Anime Instrumentality might be old, but it has not quite reached the point of being crotchety just yet. Either way, we look forwards to seeing faces old and new as we venture into our fourth year of existence!

When I say difficulty, I really do mean it. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned writing all these music reviews, it’s that the writing process never gets easier with time; you’d think it would with 2+ years under my belt. I don’t know how some of my peers in the anime blogosphere deal with it, but I’m always in awe at the folks who can turn out a post every day and still have them be insightful and enjoyable reads. I’m not one of those people, unfortunately, and so, continue to struggle. It’s a long process, though not an unpleasant one (otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it!), but I do encounter those rough patches from time to time.

Writing is ultimately a form of self-expression, but for me, it’s also a reflection of the clarity of my thinking process. And if what I’ve experienced tells me anything, it’s that my thinking process is messy. It’s not uncommon for me to write a jumble of paragraphs only to reread what I’ve written and find it nearly incomprehensible. Problems abound: repetitive phrases, utter incoherence, contradictory statements, superficial analysis, boring passages, the list goes on. I try to catch as many as I can, obviously, but I’m sure I don’t catch them all. If too many of those issues pop up though, then it’s time to head back to the drawing board so I can figure out how to refine and clarify my thoughts further or scrap it and start over if necessary. It’s important that my writing is coherent at the bare minimum even if it lacks the flourish that others possess.

So for those curious to see how messy my thinking process is, check out how my review of Makoto Shinkai’s Promise album unfolds on the TypeWith.me Time Slider. Just hit the play button to watch my thoughts evolve from a rough draft version to the final form. Do keep in mind that it’s pretty lengthy though, and you’ll only need sit through half of it to get an idea. Maybe this’ll give aspiring writers hope in the fact that even people who write extensively still have difficulties! We’ll see.

As promised in the thread title, I also perform an unboxing, this one of the Makoto Shinkai album. Though Pireze_icie at Hunting the Elusive has taken pictures of his copy, I decided to go ahead and do mine in video form. I do have a tendency to babble/ramble when I narrate, which is why this unboxing is close to 10 minutes long, but I hope you enjoy it!

I’ve also hit 250K views recently. Guess this post is an excuse to celebrate that arbitrary milestone.

Or, if you want to look at it another way, a list of N things that probably don’t relate to each other.

1. We’ve finally passed the 100-review mark!
That’s certainly a milestone if there ever was one.

Yes, we did just get through our two-year anniversary almost two months ago, but I think the 100-soundtrack review mark is just slightly more important because it gives us that psychological edge and confidence to surge onwards. It’s never easy driving oneself to write in such a narrow niche, but I’m optimistic about how things will turn out since the reception that this site has gotten has been really positive, and I look forward to interacting with readers old and new over this subject that I love so much. Heck, if I can get people to take heed of the BGM which often flies under the radar in anime, that’s all I can really ask for.

A big shoutout goes to Jen, who, despite joining in October of last year, has managed to provide roughly 10% of the reviews as well as an awesome concert report that I really wish I could have attended!

2. I get to look at the past, and what a frightening past it is.
Milestones are fun, looking back is also fun even if it can be totally embarrassing at times. A few weeks ago, Pontifus and I decided to plot out a way to relive the days of yore by having anime bloggers read each other’s posts. Out loud. As a recording.

Omisyth drew my name, and after long last, provided this gem of a reading of the post that announced my addition to the Nihon Review writing staff.

It really is kind of funny to look back upon this because, well, it feels almost… childish in the way I gushed out like that? And I don’t really do that a lot. Also, the way the relationship evolved has been odd too. I did post a blurb of my Ghost Hound review once, but that never happened again. The reason for that was because I felt kind of silly cross-posting; it never sat well with me, and so, I stopped. For that matter, I never posted another anime review here since then. I figured that if I was going to aim for a niche, I might as well go all in. No sense in splitting this blog’s focus to review anime and music when I can submit to whichever place is more suitable for such an item. In the long run, it works better with this arrangement.

Shoutouts in the post title is plural, so this one goes out to the Nihon Review staff for supporting me in this endeavor and with Shadowmage’s contribution in the form of Darker than Black 2′s OST which delivered some really enjoyable techno fare. I can’t say techno is ever at the top of my list of preferred listens, but that soundtrack nailed pretty much what I was hoping for: creative trance/techno, which is, unfortunately, still a rarity.

3. VGMdb is up, and running, and looking strong.
I’ve groused about how disorganized the anime music community seems to be. We can’t seem to get all the facts straight. My point of comparison? The video game music community.

Sure, the two are joined together by the fact that both are nerdy pursuits, both have some crossovers (Disgaea, Devil May Cry, Tales series), and some people engage in both. When you look at the music front, the video game music community is way ahead. When new game albums come out, there always seems to be a decent translation of the track titles, composer info, arrangers, and performers. When new anime albums come out, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. I’ve had to deal with my fair share of incorrect track titles (the Paprika soundtrack is but one notorious example) and composer credits, especially when two composers work on the same anime.

With VGMdb now well-prepared to take on anime albums, I’m hoping to see that gap bridged. Already, the site has seen quite a stream of submissions, from the likes of me tossing in the Angel Beats! music to others making sure that well-known stuff like the soundtracks for Fullmetal Alchemist are well-accounted for.

As someone who has this OCD-ish tendency to make sure that information is correct and organized well, I look forward to seeing the database grow further. MyAnimeList, for all its faults, has been incredibly useful and the same goes to Anime News Network’s database. An anime music equivalent that allows people to search out album information in a language they can read and understand while allowing them to organize their anime/game music collection is something I’ve been hoping to see, so the progress that’s been made on that front has me pretty excited.

They could always use more help though, so if you’ve spare time, do contribute!

4. T.H.A.T. Anime Blog manages to frag us in the Anime Blog Tourney about a week ago.
There was a surprise, but the result of that matchup wasn’t one of them. I did absolutely no campaigning and figured to partake on a passive level. As for T.H.A.T., they certainly deserve the win since Impz has done a great job organizing his team and keep abreast of the new and old anime by providing a comprehensive level of coverage that’s only equaled by the likes of Sea Slugs, Tenka Seiha, Star-Crossed, and Random Curiosity. Their content is also not limited to just episodics, and so, there’s something in it for everyone to read and enjoy. Before I go on about what I thought was a surprise, I just want to wish all remaining competitors well and that I’ll still pull for Baka-Raptor to win it all.

So what was a surprise as far as this blog is concerned? Probably how positive the responses were to the content on here. I guess I had expected more ambivalent responses, so seeing that people were pretty enthusiastic about this particular corner of the anime fandom does give me the motivation and energy to keep this up. Last shoutout, then, goes to all of those who read this site and have given their support. Thanks for making this journey such an enjoyable one!

Time has a weird way of sneaking up on you sometimes. It’s always moving at the same steady rate, but when you turn around to really keep tabs on it, it already seems to have skipped ahead a few months, leaving you to wonder what exactly you’ve achieved while time went on its merry jaunt.

You might be surprised or shocked by what you see since you can never really where you’ll end up. At least, that’s the impression I’ve gotten writing about anime music soundtracks for this site. When I started, there was no grand, cosmic imperative telling me that “THOU SHALT WRITE ABOUT ANIME MUSIC”; it was borne out of a desire to simply connect the music to the material so as to enrich the anime experience on a more personal level. Because of its subjective nature, there’s really not much concrete stuff to go off of in writing about why I liked or dislike a given song or album and I figured to make the best of it. Early on, I often wondered what the hell I was doing since this seemed like a trivial diversion at best. After all, shouldn’t I be concerned about securing my future through more concrete endeavors like trying to get a job promotion? Why burn my spare time doing this?

My simple answer is that I enjoy sharing the joys that I’ve gotten from listening to anime scores and either visualizing the fantastic scenes before me or just reminiscing fondly upon the series’ unforgettable moments. Soundtracks, particularly those for video games and anime, have been something that has always been with me. While I was younger, armed with a cassette tape, I’d play through Final Fantasy VI just to record the music. Once I got into anime, I’d also pay attention to the background music. I might not be eccentric enough to try to record it, but I suppose this blog is the present-day incarnation of that particular obsession. And I do hope that all of you have been able to glean something out of this effort.

Needless to say, I’ve gotten a lot more than I bargained for, given this blog’s modest beginnings. The opportunities that have popped up through channels like the Eminence Symphony Orchestra which then got me connected to Jayson Napolitano, Patrick Gann and the others at Original Sound Version are the more visible aspects of where Anime Instrumentality has taken me. No less important is the interaction with the anime fans, whether it’s here, on other people’s blogs, or elsewhere, and I’m constantly learning something new each day. Whether you’ve left a short comment calling my attention to a soundtrack that merits a look or introducing music that would otherwise not have reached my ears via MALKeionbu, it’s been a great experience all around. There were some tough times like when I had to balance working life with writing on this blog, but on the whole, it’s been gratifying. I look forward to seeing new faces and palling around with the familiar folks over this coming year.

Anniversaries give me a reason to add something new. Last year, we had the MALKeionbu set up so that it’s become a place for people to hang out and show to others some anime track that’s caught their ear. This year… well, I’m not completely sure, but the staff and I are working on something and with due time and effort, I do hope to see it materialize soon.

No, I’m not referring to the unboxing video that I made for ARIA the Box, but if you’re curious as to what was in the soundtrack collection holds, look no further:

Until then, I hope to see you around this corner of the anime fandom! Here’s to a wonderful, memorable year 3!

I’ve been fairly busy lately with three reviews on my plate: two soundtracks for this blog and a single for OriginalSoundVersion where I’ve pretty much settled in as their J-pop reviewer even if I prioritize on anime-related songs. Combine all of that with the workload from my day job, and that doesn’t leave me with a huge chunk of time.

Anyways, that was me trying to say that despite the catchy title, this isn’t going to be a regular column or anything. There are a couple things that caught my attention last week, and I just thought that I’d combine them all here for the sake of convenience. Take a look after the jump.

One thing that I do want to promote is Peter Shillito’s radio show for The Cat, which records out of Crewe and Nantwich in the UK. His show, titled “Neko Desu,” focuses on anime music, mostly OP/ED stuff rather than BGM, but it promises to be an hour long and should have some interesting songs for people to check out. I found out about this through his twitter request for music and I think one of my suggestions got picked. Which one it is, I don’t know, but I’ll certainly look forward to finding out. After all, a man who likes Hidamari Sketch and anime music can’t be all bad.

The inaugural broadcast starts at 10 PM this Wednesday GMT which you can tune in here. So for folks living in the West Coast of the US, that would be 2 PM local time.

Jeriaska over at GameSetWatch posted an interview he had conducted with composer Kenji Kawai. Kawai’s background should be pretty well known to anime fans since he scored the soundtrack to shows such as Seirei no Moribito and Eden of the East and this interview focuses on his game compositions and film scores moreso than the works that he’s produced for TV series.

Much of the information given here isn’t really all too new. One question that I did find interesting was when Jeriaska asked:

Question: There is a haunting female chorus that appears in the intro of both Ghost in the Shell films. Was there a particular motivation behind finding this sound that so many viewers associate with the films?

Answer: At first the director had requested primitive drum sounds. I felt it would be even more effective if there were a chorus on top of it, something in a Bulgarian style. There are folk singers with very distinctive voices in Japan, and that’s who we found for the vocal roles.

It turned out to be quite different from my original concept of a Bulgarian style. This vocal section was extremely challenging to get right because Japanese folk songs traditionally do not have a chorus. They aren’t set to these particular rhythms, either.

Directly after the movie was released I noticed no one mentioned the music. That made me a little worried. Now that I think about it, I guess no one could critique it because it was such an unusual kind of music that no one had ever heard before. Innocence was basically a direct continuation of Ghost in the Shell, so I retained almost the exact same style.

Piece in question can be heard here.

First off, it gives a bit of an insight into the music composition process for anime series for those of you who aren’t aware of how the it all works. The other thing is that it’s indicative of Kawai’s ability to bring out the haunting atmosphere really well through the use of the chorus in general. I’m not a huge fan of his by a long shot, but the music he composed for Fate/Stay Night had a pretty good mixture of creepy and tragedy floating about and I feel that he’s at his best when he’s channeling that heavy atmosphere (it didn’t work in the case of Higurashi however).

Finally, if you wanted to know about the inner workings of the Japanese music industry with all its warts and corruption schemes, you can check out the interview that Tokyo Damage Report conducted with SATOH-SAN, a former Visual Kei record executive. While a lot of this is more on what visual-kei bands go through, it wouldn’t surprise me if a significant chunk of this applied to J-pop either, like that line about how the labels focus more on image than the actual musical content. That might explain why so many terrible artists are still given the opportunity to torment us with their singing, but I guess my niche would be dissolved if all the music that gets released were all good.

My second favorite part deals with the fans and the urgent need for all fans to be taken in by the fantasy that visual-kei bands have created for themselves so that they will attend the band’s concerts. Even better is how far aggressive fans will go in order to gain the status of the #1 fan of a given band. Fisticuffs aren’t unknown and their other activities described in the interview feel like something sports hooligans would do.

In other words, the antics in Detroit Metal City are funny, but its depiction might be frighteningly accurate.

Hat tip goes out to JPMeyer for that last article via GRSI.

Over the next few weeks, save for maybe a few short reviews scattered here or there, I’ll be taking a break from individual soundtracks to look back on this past decade from the anime music enthusiast’s standpoint. This sort of reflection is appropriate; after all, it was around 2000 that I became interested in the medium and from there, the interest grew until it’s become the monstrosity that it is now. It all started with the Record of the Lodoss War OVA, expanded with shows like Cowboy Bebop and the Kenshin Tsuiokuhen OVA, and from there, the rest is history. Along the way, I also seem to have picked up a huge obsession for anime music, a habit which has given me a lot of new music to listen to but has also seemingly stunted my musical growth in other genres. Oh well, we all have our vices, right?

Each decade post will focus on one year and will include my thoughts on the music from the shows that were released in that particular year, both the intro/outro themes and the actual soundtracks themselves. Seeing how the soundtrack march will continue onwards, I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to reviewing the great soundtracks of the past, so I figure that now’s a good time as any to ramble on and give those albums their due.

Other writers out there have beaten me to the anime music decades list punch and you can find those below. Do give them a read and enjoy their thoughts on what albums or OP/EDs are worth checking out for those new to the fold or which ones are worth reminiscing over if you’ve been at this hobby for quite some time.

Good Reads:

j1m0ne has already tossed down her list of 15 anisong/seiyuu albums that have come out during the last decade. I was delighted to see a few on there that I recognized like Haruka Shimotsuki’s Tindharia no Tane. Others I need to check out, like Nana Mizuki’s ALIVE & KICKING and Yui Makino’s Tenkyu no Ongaku.

Liz Ohanesian over on the LA Weekly’s West Coast Sound blog Synthful has also published her own list of 10 OP/ED themes of this decade. Narrowing such a big list down to 10 is no mean feat, and all of the OP/EDs featured are those that I can say I approve of.

If you made a post with a similar focus and I missed you, do let me know!

This will be fairly short and sweet and will mostly serve to update people on my activities and why this blog isn’t as updated as often as it should be. I think there are only two or three people who already know about this (family doesn’t count), so it’s about time I made this a general announcement. I have been working on building up a decent amount of content on the Eminence Symphony Orchestra’s website. My primary duties on that site are to submit anime soundtrack reviews, the occasional anime music feature article, and of course, anime music news snippets that I’ve gathered from around the web. Aside from the news articles, these are things that I’ve regularly posted about on this blog, so in that regard, it’s not exactly a new experience. What does excite me though is being able to mesh with artists like Minorin and composers so as to expose the English-speaking fan community to them.

So the obvious question will be what will change on this site. The short answer: not much. Though one would think that by contributing to Eminence, my output on here will see a decline, I’ve been contributing since February and have been doing so consistently since then. So no, there will not be any change of pace as far as output goes for Anime Instrumentality. After all, it is kind of nice to be able to have my own space where I can do things like post music clips alongside the reviews to be able to give the reader an idea of what the soundtrack sounds like. It’s not something that has been implemented on Eminence’s site (and I don’t know if it ever will) and seeing the positive response that step has garnered on here, it’s worth having a webspace where I have the freedom to do just that.

And of course, my other sphere of activity will continue on. The #MALKeionbu (the MyAnimeList Anime Music Piece of the Week Club for the uninitiated) has been going strong and Omo’s post discussing how fun it is to be exposed to new artists and composers captures my sentiments exactly. It’s definitely been an enjoyable voyage of discovery every week and I have always managed to learn something new, whether it’s some piece that flew under my radar or even rediscovering some old melodies that I’ve forgotten.

Taken in sum, this represents a tremendous opportunity. The potential for raising a greater amount of awareness of anime music is just too good to pass up and by contributing to the Eminence website, this blog, and the MALKeionbu, I really hope to see a stronger, more active anime music community.

Also, for those who haven’t done so already, you should follow me on Twitter at zzeroparticle (and for that matter, Eminence has a Twitter account as well). Sending me a message through AIM to the nick zzeroparticle works as well. Hope to see some familiar faces poke around the Eminence website!