Forum - View topicWhy does anime have strong musical production values? With its best being as good as high art films?
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Samuknight
Posts: 35 |
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Esp in light of how even legendary classics that start off damn strong like Hokuto No Ken but later takes a huge hit in writing that the story becomes very stupid still manage to come up with new musical scores late in the series that are almost always just as good as those in the peak of the series and even osts before the series grew the beard are so good they continue to be used late after jumping the shark?
I mean even pre-90s TV shows including legendary classics like Knightrider in general don't have any instrumental ost as memorable because its often so cheap stuff. The only good thing you can find are vocal songs and a few iconic themes like the original Charlie's Angels and Star Trek and maybe a few high budget miniseries here and there scored by award winning movie composers like North and South (which had the same composer as the Rocky movies). Outside of those even beloved classics of live action TV such as Bonanza all have crap instrumental music. Why is this? Esp since anime as a whole is seen as an underground nerdy even childish hobby back in Japan and a lot of long running popular series such as Gundam use stock footage and other tricks to save on animation costs because of very limited budgets? Yet somehow composers like Yoko Kanno manage to make music so artistically well done they are even worthy of being in the same ballpark as the stuff typically done by composers who have won Oscars for best film score like John Barry and Maurice Jarre? Even terrible anime have music that can at least match laughably bad B movies! Anime composing was so far ahead of live action TV shows (which as a whole only started reaching movie level quality starting around 2002-03)! |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6581 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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Anime is notable for its lack of animation. If you don't have much visual activity occurring on screen then the use of effective sound effects and, especially, a great musical soundtrack can add enormously to the emotional impact.
Good examples of this can be seen in the early soundtracks from Yuki Kajiura working with Koichi Mashimo - Eat Man, Noir and .hack. Mashimo puts the Kajiura soundtrack high in the mix so that it powerfully sets the mood, despite the almost total lack of action on screen. Kajiura's soundtracks are sometimes better than the anime they're accompanying. Another who does this is Mamoru Oshii with Kenji Kawai. Oshii himself said that Kawai is responsible for 50% of his film's success and that he couldn't work without him. Other favourites like Yoko Kanno (as you mention), Kou Otani, Michiru Ooshima and, more recently, Kevin Penkin also add emotional clout to their anime. I suppose you could say its an economical way to make up for anime's limitations. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4788 |
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In addition to Erinnundra's excellent point, I think one of the general stylistic hallmarks of anime is its propensity for Big Emotions (for lack of a better term). Characters often wear their hearts on their sleeves, and there's an emphasis on eliciting a particular strong response from the viewer. A strong soundtrack is one of the most effective ways of doing that.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10013 Location: Virginia |
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I suspect you are overthinking it. I'm not sure when the practice of having a musical score that was a thing in itself but it is currently part of the culture of anime. I would assume that it is part because it is expected ("we've always done it this way") and part because it has become an industry in itself. The entire music industry seems to be involved with anime and there doesn't seem to be any negative aspects.
The US TV industry did try using music for more than just background but apparently gave up early. I once had albums of music from two TV shows that I can remember. Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky. If memory serves both were scored by Henry Mancini. Popular music and musicians tended to stay away from TV as it was thought to be "selling out". I gather that current programming does use a fair amount of popular music but I can't confirm that as I don't follow much broadcast TV. And for what it is worth, Bonanza did put out an album of Christmas music. I would recommend care in attempting to hear it though. |
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