News
1st Anime Album in 11 Years to Rank in Japan's Top 3
posted on by Egan Loo
The original soundtrack for the Macross Frontier science-fiction anime series has reached #3 on Oricon's next weekly chart of all albums sold in Japan. The 72,000 sold copies make Macross Frontier Original Soundtrack I: Nyan Fro the first anime soundtrack to reach the chart's top 3 rankings in nearly 11 years. The last anime album to reach #3 or higher was The End of Evangelion soundtrack, which was first released on September 26, 1997. More sales of the Macross Frontier soundtrack are expected as many music stores across Japan had sold out and had to reorder more copies.
Popular composer Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Macross Plus) worked on all 24 tracks on the Macross Frontier album. The album also features the "Triangler" opening theme from Maaya Sakamoto (Escaflowne, Cardcaptor Sakura) and the "Diamond Crevasse" ending theme from May'n (May Nakabayashi). Both songs reached #3 on Oricon's weekly charts of all singles sold in Japan. At one point in May, both singles ranked in the top 10 in the same week. At least two more singles are scheduled for release with May'n and one of Macross Frontier's main voice actresses, newcomer Megumi Nakajima.
Macross Frontier is the latest sequel to the Macross space opera series. Like the first Macross series, it features a space war, love triangles, three-mode transformable fighters, and pop music. The first Macross series spawned a film, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and Mari Iijima's movie theme "Do You Remember Love?" became a top-10 single for six straight weeks as well as a top-40 song for all of 1984. At least six Macross albums (including the Macross: Do You Remember Love? soundtrack album) have placed on Oricon's weekly top-10 charts for all albums sold in Japan. (Evangelion has also placed six albums on the Oricon weekly top-10 album charts.)
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
