The One Where I Ran Out Of Musical Puns For My Titles
Originally, I conceived of this whole set of articles as a single piece. Then, I decided it should be a ‘trilogy’, in which we’d already covered my favorite opening and ending themes from all the anime I’ve seen so far. Yesterday’s article turned into an extensive coverage of my favorite OST pieces from shows directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, and didn’t leave me room to finish discussing some of the my other favorite series’ OSTs.
Welcome to “12 Days of AniTAY 2020”, a writing challenge in which I look to have an article a day for 12 days leading up to Christmas, all centered in some way on anime or anime-related topics. You can find re-posts of my 2018 and 2019 series (posted originally on the late TAY and AniTAY Kinja sites) now here on Medium.
I honestly think I’ve run out of things about my background with music to ramble on about to serve as an introduction for this article. Instead, I want to cover a little bit about how I get more “into” various anime OSTs. The first, most obvious step is, I have to watch the show. Typically, I begin by noticing the openings and/or endings that I really like. As I noted in yesterday’s article, I next have to be “grabbed” by one or more parts of the music — this may be easier when the music is not running completely in the background, so that I’m not in the middle of trying to both read the subtitles and listen to the music at the same time, or if I’m able to do a re-watch (or an original watch, in the case of all 3 of the Watanabe shows from yesterday) of the dubbed version.
And sometimes, something just has to really jump out and stick with me. For example, I mentioned in my article on online conventions about seeing a video with Yuki Kajiura, who composed the series music for the Sword Art Online franchise (along with other programs), and how interesting hearing her history and composing philosophy and seeing her actually at work during recording was. And there’s certainly been some bits of music from all those SAO series that I’ve enjoyed, or felt moved by. But it hasn’t all ‘stuck’ with me — mainly just the openings/endings, and one or two specific pieces. For example, “Goodbye, Again and Again,” while I’m admittedly biased a bit by how it gets used in the series, perfectly expresses sadness and loneliness and similar moods:
Other series, their music just may not jump out at me at all. For instance, Re:Zero’s first season had a number of different opening and ending themes, and used them so sporadically, that none of them made a single impression on me whatsoever. Another very anime-specific thing are “character songs”, songs usually sung in-character by the voice actors and actresses. I’ve never really been “into” following up on those. I’ve tried listening to a few here and there (Spotify has a whole boatload of them for My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU for example), but without knowing anything about what the lyrics mean, and them not having been part of the show (typically), I don’t feel any connections to them. There may come one someday that proves me wrong, but not so far.
But when something does jump out, whether openings, endings, individual songs, or whole soundtracks, I try to follow up, with YouTube, other means, etc., to be able to listen locally, or sometimes on Spotify (which is decent but not great for openings and endings, and hit or miss with some of the other stuff). In a few cases, while I may not have realized as much about the soundtrack in its entirety on initial viewing, a follow-up listening of the soundtrack itself gives me a more informed picture. Odds are good I still won’t like every song in the list, but for my favorite shows, there’s usually at least several parts that I can pull out and listen to over and over. And on rare occasions, I love virtually the entire soundtrack, such as with my first contender for “favorite anime OST, non-Watanabe division.”
Yuru Camp△
I whole-heartedly, unabashedly, love Yuru Camp. And am eagerly awaiting its second season. There are many shows that I love with much moe, and Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, but this was Cute Girls Doing Camping Things.
Besides a love for the moe and CGDCT, I also really like the whole relaxed (and relaxing) feel of the show. There’s no real “stakes” to things, so I can just somehow watch and enjoy and you never worry about “will they be able to do [thing]?” (I feel similarly about a show from this past year, Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater, about an after-school fishing club — just such a great, relaxing little show where really, nothing’s truly at stake to get too worked up over.) Additionally, Yuru Camp was also a source of personal comfort/escape when, two months into its original airing, I fell and broke my ankle rather badly, so being able to ‘turn off’ and just relax with this show (along with some others) was a great help in dealing with a rather dark period of pain and ensuing depression.
One of the things that makes this show so comforting and relaxing is its whole soundtrack. Go ahead, play that video above. That one’s only 55 minutes long. I’ll wait. I can’t even properly describe it, but it has both “relaxing” parts and even downright “lazy” (but in a good way) parts, that combine to just… be chill. It starts with the “Yuru Camp Theme”, and ends with a short version of “Fuyu Biyori” (which I included in my favorite endings) — both of which I got to hear Eri Sasaki, singer of the “Fuyu Biyori” play live in concert last year (source of the admittedly poor quality photo at the top). Is it possible to be a fan of a singer after just one song? I say, hell yes. And I particularly love “Solo Camp” — so much so that I’ve actually used the following “10 hour loop” video several times for background music while working:
It’s just, well, perfectly “chill”, and good for “music to enjoy, but that stays in the background and doesn’t intrude”. The one thing the “combined” OST video above doesn’t have is the opening, “Shiny Days” by Asaka, which I like for its bounciness, although it didn’t quite make my “openings” article:
Anyway, the new series is I believe supposed to be coming next season (I can’t wait), and will again feature an opening from Asaka (above) there, and an ending from Eri Sasaki, so I have high hopes that the rest of the soundtrack will again be fantastic. (There was also a season of short episodes, which was fun, involving the camping club running around town doing a ‘stamp tour’ or whatever you’d call it, getting a stamp at certain different “landmark” locations or businesses around the area. Cute show, good soundtrack, not quite as memorable as the main series, however.)
Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon
Ahh, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid (and all her dragon friends who eventually show up). From the opening “Aozora no Rhapsody” (one of my favorites), through all the stuff along the way, to the “Chorogons” singing the ending “Ishukan Communication,” there’s not much about about this soundtrack. I even use the first song in the video above as my daily alarm on my phone. Unlike Yuru Camp, though, this one’s more about enjoying the overall bouncy beats and good time energy. Another series whose second season I’m absolutely waiting for (although sadly delayed an unknown amount by the terrible arson attack on Kyoto Animation in 2019).
K-On!
Here again, I take the franchise as a whole. Also, this makes my list in large part on the strength not just of the openings and endings, which are great, and typically fall into Yui-led openings, appropriate for a school-level skills band, while the Mio-led endings give the feel of “Houkago Tea Time” and the keions having made it as a ‘real’ band, with a more grownup kind of sound and lyrics, and professional music videos and everything. But it’s the group’s songs throughout that also make it so much fun. My absolute favorite is still “Fuwa Fuwa Time” (the Mio and Yui duet version for preference):
Then there’s all four of the original keions combining to sing “Tenshi ni Fureta yo!”:
But really, all the ‘insert’ songs the girls sing are great, even in the “cassette tape” versions (part of a plot point in a late episode by the girls to record their music for future “Light Music Club” members to be able to hear, a dynamic, complete with discussion between songs between the group, that carried over into an actual released album):
Angel Beats
Finally, Angel Beats was another series that I enjoy (despite some serious pacing issues in the second half), that combine some excellent insert songs, including songs by the band-within-the-show “Girls Dead Monster”, including my personal favorite, “My Song”. Once again, it’s something about those mournful ones that really gets me:
And speaking of moving, while this is definitely one of those “if you know the scene, you know why I’m crying” pieces of music, well, that’s exactly what it is:
And the main ending, “Brave Song,” which was another one that just missed out on my list of top endings. A bittersweet song about putting on the brave face to get through.
I always think of the opening “My Soul Your Beats” as being basically Tachibana’s song, while “Brave Song” is more Yuri’s. I suppose it can also apply to Tachibana as well, but in my headcanon, that’s how it breaks down — opening for Angel, ending for Yurippe. Honestly, if I’m wrong about that, I kind of don’t want to be corrected.
Honestly, I could probably carry this list further, but at that point, I’d mostly be relaying series where I love the opening and ending themes combined particularly much, but don’t necessarily have a good feel for the rest of the actual soundtrack. As another example similar to Sword Art Online, while having become a big fan of the Fate franchise (as I will no doubt discuss in a later article, and have mentioned in past years’ pieces), the music apart from the openings and endings has yet to really make more of an impression on me. I know it’s there, it’s undoubtedly doing a decent job, but… I probably wouldn’t be able to pick any songs from it out of a random shuffle of anime soundtracks.
So, we’ve finally reached the ‘end’ (if it can ever be said to truly end, as I hope to discover even more anime music to really enjoy outside of the shows themselves) of my lists of favorite songs. Thanks to all who came along for this ride. I hope that maybe you’ve discovered something new and interesting to listen to, or at least ponder, and maybe figure out what if anything makes up your own preferences for anime themes and soundtracks, and why that may be. Until then, keep watching and keep listening.
