Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, the music edition · 11:10pm Jun 20th, 2023
Hey, it's been longer than usual, and I still don't have the requisite two items I rated excellent or very good to do a new review blog yet. With a bunch of the spring shows about to end, I'll have plenty to review soon, so for now I'd like to talk about some animes that have really good music, after the break.
I do comment on how good the music is when I do a review, but that can get kind of buried. There have also been a couple of instances of people leaving a favorite song in the comments. I debated about this, but I'm not going to put links to the music for a couple of reasons. One, this would become one of those depressing blogs where I come back to it a year later and all the links are dead. And two, it takes a fair amount of work to go chase down all those videos on YT to paste links in. Suffice it to say, if any of these tunes interest you, then do a quick search on YT by show/movie title and song title or description, and it should be easy to find most of them.
First, what shows just had an excellent overall soundtrack that I've seen? Of course there's nothing where I loved every single song, but if even half of them caught my ear as notable, then it's a good indication.
Cowboy Bebop—this is a no-brainer. Yoko Kanno is a legend, and she was in top form here. The soundtrack is huge, too, especially for a show that was only 26 episodes and 1 movie. I have 3 of the OSTs, I'm pretty sure there was a 4th, plus there was a box set that included several songs that weren't on any of the OSTs. This is the gold standard, and it spans a bunch of genres.
Darker Than Black—Yoko Kanno again, though focuses more on rock/jazz. Still great. I've got 1 OST, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had more.
Macross and Macross Plus—yep, more Kanno. I grabbed 7 songs off one of the OSTs, and they're superb. Since I'm getting more into individual songs here, I'll call out my favorites, which were pop or jazz tunes. When I save files, I tend to make the filename the English translation of the title, but they may show up more readily on YT under the Japanese names (which I often don't have noted anymore), and this applies to this entire blog. Goodies were "Bad Dog" (cool jazzy tune that uses human voice to replace all the percussion effects), "Welcome to Sparefish," and "Voices."
FLCL is another legendary one. I saved a bunch of songs off their OST, my favorites being "One Life," "Ride on Shooting Star," "Stalker," and "River's Edge." That last one is very relaxing, and oddly enough, in all the times I've watched the show, I pay attention to see where they use it, and I've never been able to find it. I'm not sure they did use it.
Heat Guy J is one I recently recommended to Present Perfect, and she took a liking to it. It's got a lot of techno feel, though there are some lighter jazz tunes. They pull off such fusions as steel guitar/sitar/bagpipes, and make it work amazingly. I saved 7 tracks, so getting up there where it's too cumbersome to list them individually and I'll just say the whole thing is good.
Noein would probably only appeal to fans of classical, but what's there is great. I saved a bunch of songs, but as a great example, my favorite one, "Tomodachi no Tataki," is a totally legit short Baroque recorder sonata.
Noir had great mood music, and its sequel Madlax was even better. From the latter, I saved a couple of great songs that are kind of new age/classical, "Elenore" and "Hearts" (essentially an instrumental version of the same thing). Incidentally, "Elenore" is an example of an interesting phenomenon you see every so often in anime OSTs. I've tried to find a translation of the lyrics, but there doesn't appear to be one. I've encountered cases before where the composer made up gibberish lyrics or assembled some foreign language words whose individual meanings worked within the theme but weren't put together in a way that obeyed any syntax (a little further down, Girls' Last Tour appears to do this as well).
Maria Watches Over Us had a lot of good classical-ish music, plus a couple of very nice singing performances by the VAs. The only song I kept was the extended version of the closing song, "Sonata Blue," a cool and very legit classical saxophone piece.
meagalobox and megalobox 2: Nomad had a lot of great atmospheric rock/pop sound in the background. I saved "Bangaichi's Theme," "Celebration," and the closing credits song, "El Canto del Colibri."
Violet Evergarden—I didn't keep anything off this OST. It was an odd case of nothing feeling like I needed to have it, yet everything still feeling wonderfully atmospheric. Mostly classical-type music, and if you listen to the OST, most of the songs have typewriter effects (makes sense in the show's context), yet I don't recall any of the music that played during the show doing so.
Gunslinger Girl—I'm not sure they ever did an OST of the original series. In trying to get it, I bought the S2 OST, which isn't very good. But I did grab my favorite S1 tunes from YT. Mostly classical, these tunes... well, I wonder how much context matters. They're great on their own, but I also find a couple of them memorable for how well they worked with what was happening on screen. Standouts are "Bucolica," "Buon Ricordo," and "Ti Amo."
Akebi's Sailor Uniform struck me the same as Violet Evergarden, where I had a high opinion of it yet didn't want to keep any. Mostly classical-ish mood music.
Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea had lots of cool quirky background tunes, but yet another I didn't quite want to keep any single one of them.
Aria the Animation is one I haven't reviewed since I'm not finished with all the sequels, but it's very peaceful and relaxing music. Maybe more suited for background while doing something else, but if that's what you're looking for, this is a good one.
Flying Witch is also mostly relaxing, atmospheric stuff, but a little more upbeat. These are translated titles, but keepers for me were "Dreams and Roadside Happiness," "Nightfall Magic," and a wonderful gem of a harp tune (no doubt performed electronically, as it's too complex for a single harpist to play) called "Queen of the Night." The best YT upload I found of this had the entire OST as a single continuous video instead of separate songs, but there's an index in the listing info.
BNA pretty good synth music. The only one I kept was a very relaxing tune called "Reunion."
Carole & Tuesday mostly has a late 1970s to early 1980s light/folk rock sound, though some of the other bands have different styles, so there's also some modern pop, country, hip hop, and new age, but that main sound covers all the songs I kept, which were all great: "Hold Me Now," "Mother," "Lay it All on Me," "Lost My Way," and "Someday I'll Find My Way Home."
Girls' Last Tour is kind of new age/synth stuff and very atmospheric. I saved "Silent Journey" and one that Google Translate couldn't do much with that I have saved as "Hitomi Nirei Scene."
Takt Op. Destiny, being about music, had better do it well. It uses a lot of good stock recordings of pre-existing classical music (for that matter, so do Nodame Cantabile and its sequels), but its original music is also good. I'll lump Your Lie in April into this category as well.
Anonymous Noise has generally good Jpop songs, but two stood out to me: "Canary" and "Anonymous." There's also a pretty good one called "High School."
Then there are cases where I didn't necessarily like the music in general, just didn't find it noteworthy, or found it decent enough but not a standout, but then did really like one or two specific songs from it.
Jujutsu Kaisen has a great closing song, and the visuals are awesome to boot.
Skip and Loafer (still airing) has a really cute opener, and it's one of the cutest visuals I've seen, too. Same goes for Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku.
Hell's Paradise (still airing) has a real banger of an opener, but beware the visuals, if there are sensitive eyes about.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea has an oddball but cool opener.
The second half of Yuru Camp has a fun opener.
Let's Make a Mug Too: Second Kiln has a really cute opener called "Our Favorites."
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day has a cool opener called "Aoi Shiori."
Baccano! has a great opening song that fits well with its Roaring Twenties aesthetic.
Season 1 of Beastars had a pretty good opening song, and the visual was very unique to boot.
Berserk (1997) is known for its new-age-y sounding mood music. "Forces" is a good track, and "Gatsu's Theme" is very good.
I really liked the tune "Almost Another Day," the closing song to one of the seasons of Bleach, but I liked it less once I read the lyrics.
Durarara!! had a couple of songs I liked enough to save: "Green Memories" (an Irish sound) and "The Sought-After Extraordinary."
Ergo Proxy had a hell of an opening song, and the visuals were great too.
Flip Flappers had a really catchy opener called "Serendipity."
I like the music from that iconic scene in Ghost in the Shell where nothing is happening and Kusanagi is just going around the city.
The final season of Hell Girl had a great opener called "Noise."
Good opening song for Iroduku: The World in Colors.
The Disney version of Kiki's Delivery Service had a different closing song, a cool one called "I'm Gonna Fly."
Last Exile had generally good folksy-sounding music, and I saved out a couple of cool tunes called "A Morning in Norkia" and "To the Race."
Kokkoku has a bangin' opener by an artist I hadn't heard of before but who I now understand to be well known. Song is "Flashback" by MIYAVI.
Great opening song and visuals for Listeners. Song is "Into the Blue's."
Lycoris Recoil had fun opening and closing songs, both with good visuals.
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is an excellent movie anyway, but its closing song "Viator" was superb.
Paprika! has a really odd but great opening song. The composer released a slightly different version of it as well. Both are titled "The Girl in Byakkoya."
Paranoia Agent has a wild ride of an opening song.
The first closing song of Toradora! was a great tune, "Vanilla Salt."
And I'll end it on a great one. Wasteful Days of High School Girls is one of my favorite random comedies, and their opener "Wa! Moon! Dass! Cry!" was terrific. Not only is it a fun song, but the visuals are great. Unfortunately, the only time I'd found a good copy uploaded to YT was a while back, and it's gone. The next best one has it (for some reason) tiled 4 times in the player, but it's still big enough to see what's going on.
this takes me back to listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack on actual CD because my roommate had it and we'd just finished watching the series
and yes, Carole & Tuesday is fantastic, music-wise :D I could go on about anime music, but I mostly just have opening and closing themes from hundreds of random things I'll probably never watch :B
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That's not a bad place to be. Hell, I bet there are lots of good songs I miss because the shows they're from have no appeal to me.
Macross has excellent music. I don't count every song from Macross 7 as a hit, but it has SO MUCH MUSIC~! I'm always partial to Submarine Street, and Dakedo Baby, not to mention obviously Frontier with Lion! and Macross Delta's Giraffe Blues. I could've flooded the discord with just Macross tbh. Oh and more Saint Seiya.
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Did Kanno work on all those or just the two movies? And of course you'd bring up Saint Seiya again...
5734270 She only worked in the movies IRC. But yes, of course I would mention Saint Seiya. :)
The music;
Is another reason why I enjoy Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai so much. The pop-punk opening theme, the 1950s smooth jazz of the closing theme, the minimalist piano music during the show itself: it all fits together somehow.
Mike
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Still have that one on my to-watch list. I would have watched Komi by now except I’m waiting to see if they add a 3rd season.
Hadn’t seen you around these parts lately! I was beginning to wonder if you came by anymore, especially since you hadn’t chimed in on a couple series you previously said you liked a lot when I reviewed them (Carole & Tuesday, Blue Period).
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FimFiction's:
Still a regular part of my daily web cruising, but I've been busy with non-Pony stuff. At one point a month of so ago, I had 5 different writing projects out on submission and ended up with 3 rejections and 2 acceptances, a much better rate than I usually get. I'll post about the acceptances when they become actual objects...
Mike
Takt Op. Destiny was more about music than most "music animes."
Durarara was one of the first animes to ever strike me with a song I really liked. I guess the original Hellsing was another old one.
Dorohedoro is probably the anime from which I've bought the most music.
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As much as I liked Dorohedoro, the music didn't make an impression on me at all, good or bad. I ought to rewatch some of it just to pay better attention to the music. Seems a show like that would have a metal feel. If so, then I did notice Rust-Eater Bisco leaned to that genre a lot.