Monday Melodic Musings: The Galaxy Express 999 feat. Niklas Gabrielsson

If you’ve been following us for awhile, it’s probably not too hard to figure us out as big fans of the Platina Jazz anime theme arrangement series. Rasmus Faber and his crew have done great work over the years and their creative interpretations continue to breathe new life into anime themes both new and old, giving us something to marvel at in every measure and phrase.

With the coming of Platina Jazz vol. 3, we’re treated to tracks in the vein of Trigun’s fabulously awesome dueling sax duet in “H.T” and Clannad’s “In the Palm of a Tiny Hand” (Seriously, how does anyone jazzify that piece? It works though, and really well!). And they’ve taken the additional step of creating a music video that departs from the usual depiction of a jazz session as they take to the streets and trains. You can check out Niklas Gabrielsson’s photogeneticity as he performs “The Galaxy Express 999” after the jump:

You’d be completely forgiven if you found yourself swooning over the dapper sensibilities and charm that Gabrielsson exudes in the performance of that song as he meanders about the cityscape, searching as he goes. The lines are a tad hammy, as Aftershok observes, but the delivery has an upbeatness that’s hard to resist as Gabrielsson exhorts us to pursue our passions, hopes, and dreams. So in watching the video, I found myself enthralled, certainly, but also slightly amused.

Now, there’s nothing in the song that’s explicitly funny per se, at least, not until you take a step back and look at it in the context of the functional role most opening and ending themes play within an anime. And the most common function is that of a glorified music video meant to promote a song and the group performing it, and, of course, the actual anime itself. The next step is to bear that function in mind and apply it to this situation: to wit, we have 1) a music video meant to promote 2) an arrangement of an anime opening theme which in itself exists to 3) promote that particular anime by giving the audience an idea of what the show’s all about. How meta is that?

We clearly need to go deeper.