A link to Part 1.
Best Score
Usually I do not include pre-existing music in these lists I have done before, but it is a rare case for there to be an anime entirely designed around music, as was the case of Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003), a tie-in production for the seminal Daft Punk album Discovery (2001). This feature length animated production, involving the legendary Leiji Matsumoto, was designed around the album, originally starting off with a handful of musical videos for the first tracks, included here alongside the completely long play being depicted visually in a narrative. This is a great anime from the 2000s, and the album is a great one. It is only here as, to be fair, letting originally music have the higher spots feels more fairer, but this was an acclaimed album for good reason.
But, I encountered some great work this year, even with series that I was already a fan of. Ping Pong the Animation (2014) is an underrated Masaaki Yuasa production, literally a show about ping pong but also really a tale of young men trying to find themselves. It is easy to ignore in its incredible aesthetic style and the narrative that Kensuke Ushio's score is a diverse and inventive piece to match the show. Revue Starlight (2018), is as inventive but in a very different way. For starters, knowing this show is part of a huge media franchise, it is wonderful knowing, when adapting it to animation, it was allowed to be like Ping Pong an aesthetically rich show, also about young adults (girls in this case) finding themselves in a music academy. The difference to Ping Pong is that, whilst it would have been awesome in Yuasa's show it had happened, the cast do not play characters who sung in the middle of ping pong games as the female cast in Revue Starlight. Here, alongside the main score, you have the added aspect that, their emotional states depicted as weapon duels, Revue Starlight is also a musical among its many genres with a lot of singing. And all of it is great.
Admittedly, this was the year I covered The Vision of Escaflowne (1996) and Macross Plus (1994-5), so there is however an obvious figure who was going to dominate this. We can practically call this part of these amateur awards the Yoko Kanno award, as she is the composer for both and they are both legendary anime as much for their soundtracks. Escaflowne is a wonderfully diverse work in score, but if one has to come out on top, Macross Plus is as high as a bar as you get in terms of how good you can make music for animation. With the possible exception of Brain Powerd (1998), an attempt by Yoshiyuki Tomino post Neon Genesis Evangelion to make a mecha show in its shadow, I think every time I cover an anime Kanno was the composer or involved in a large capacity, she is going to dominate this segment in regards to anime scores. She is that good at her craft.
Best Song
Speaking of which, yes Yoko Kanno is going to dominate this list too, but we have some admirable candidates here too. Honourable mention has to go to "Cutey Honey" by les 5-4-3-2-1, for the OVA series New Cutey Honey (1994-5). This is specifically for the first version for the first four episodes, a catchy character based song which is, as pure pop, an earworm. les 5-4-3-2-1 sadly did not last a long time, disbanding in 1996, but with their work easily found on iTunes, a very idiosyncratic Shibuya-kei pop band fixated on older French pop influences that, thanks to this song, have now gotten a Western anime fan very interested in their work.
Another mention, as it was a re-review and thus cannot qualify, is Another (2012), an awkwardly titled anime which is still a peculiar mess but I have come to like immensely. As a Tsutomu Mizushima horror work, where his broadness in that genre is a factor to its entertainment, I have come to reconsider the show in mind to this. But I think no one should complain about its good aspects, such as "Kyōmu Densen" ("Nightmare Contagion") by ALI PROJECT, a delightfully morbid ditty from the lyrics alone let alone its nightmare carnival sound. Even the opening credits animation, full of grim reflections of the real violence that you will see in the show, matches the words perfectly. Not surprisingly, fitting the material, ALI PROJECT is a rock band which fully embraces a gothic aristocrat onstage persona in the costumes, so the show found the perfect musicians to get the tone right. Sadly, the anime version does not include the brief military drum-like bridge, but again with their work easy to find, a fascinating band is now opened to me here.
Everything else that got on the list is, frankly, a heavy hitter. Starting off, for example, entering the world of Dear Brother (1991-2), as angst ridden as you can get for a high school melodrama, fittingly got Kin no Utsuwa, Gin no Utsuwa by Satomi Takada as the opening credit song. With instrumentation like glass, literally at points, with lyrics as bittersweet to match, this is a perfect entry for each episode.
Closing out each episode, She: The Ultimate Weapon (2002) is a deeply flawed show, at times grim for the sake of grim with an odd and at times unwieldy premise, of a romance in an unending war with a girlfriend who is now a war machine. Nonetheless, I will argue the one perfect choice was Sayonara by Yuria Yato - an utterly beautiful song for a show which is told, and does not pull its punches upon, as "the last love song in the universe". The guitar solo is an odd choice in the full version, but the orchestral bombast is in itself beautiful to say the least.
Contrasting this, but still emotionally rich, is Bokura ni Tsuite by merengue, the first version the best but all versions good, for Ping Pong the Animated Series (2014). Life affirming, with its poppy electronic aspect, is the best way to talk of the song, befitting a feel good show which is yet about young men finding themselves. It is as distinct and eccentric in its full version as the shortened version in the Masaaki Yuasa show.
The Vision of Escaflowne (1996) is going to be evoked with this aspect later on, when I get to voice acting, but in both cases, yes Yoko Kanno is a huge virtue to the show, but the opening song "Yakusoku wa Iranai (No Need for Promises)" by Maaya Sakamoto has to rely on its vocalist too. Whilst she would become a prolific voice actress and singer in her career to the modern day, it is striking for me to know, with little work beforehand, a sixteen year old was not only cast as the lead female heroine, who the show is entirely about, but also the voice actress also sung the opening song alongside one or two insert songs. Yoko Kanno's music on the song is incredible, but a perfect vocalist for the song with the perfect instrumentation probably makes this one of the best songs for an anime opening, for one of the best animated series ever made least for myself.
And it only does not get the top spot because Macross Plus (1994-5) has not one but two incredible ending songs with Yoko Kanno's involvement. Even the English dub version of one for me is incredibly good, just to show how good the music was. As Escaflowne is actually a fantasy mecha show about giant sword fighting robots, but is about romance and drama, this is a sci-fi action show with robots which transform into planes but, set around a romantic triangle of the central cast, this is a pulp genre narrative given the gravitas and emotional heft of a great tale. The music is a huge part of this, and "After, in the Dark" by Mai Yamane, and Voices, either the original by Akino Arai, or for me even the performance by Michelle Flynn for the Manga UK release done in English, are two haunting end songs, one for three episodes an epic, the final episode ending on a haunting ballad which the lead heroine has as a motif. Together they are a huge thing for any anime to have in terms of leaving a lasting mark.
To Be Continued in Part 3....
No comments:
Post a Comment