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Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Popular Are Anime Songs In Japan?
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KH91
Posts: 6176 |
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Well, you gotta give them props on how they advertise anime songs(and songs in general). For example: Milky Bunny's "I wish." The 10th opening of Fairy Tail.
https://youtu.be/YkCvu7hdnjk |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Right. SMAP and TOKIO certainly started out getting pushes from anime (they even make appearances in Hime-chan no Ribon and Kodomo no Omocha, respectively) but you certainly wouldn't call them anime songs now. Same for L'arc~en~Ciel or TM Revolution, despite their relatively high number of anime theme songs. Nana Mizuki and AKB48, as mentioned, is the closest thing to one that counts as both. (People are generally familiar with Cruel Angel's Thesis, but do they know who sings it?) One of the problems is that any sufficiently successful band, even one that started out doing anime songs, ceases to be boxed in the "anime song" genre.
Kōhaku is another good indicator of what actual Japanese people listen to, and the acts listed above have all appeared multiple times there. |
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bobob101
 Posts: 201 |
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I will counter this by saying that when I walked through Shinjuku everyday by the giant tv near the giant Godzilla statue, almost everyday for almost a solid month they were playing SAO's op Crossing Field. While this was a definite advertisement more for LiSA and whatever album she was pimping, it is clear that you will encounter anime music in more places than American cartoons. I have never heard the Adventure Time theme in any convenience store, but I did here some anime tunes at a couple Lawsons I went too.
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minakichan
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Anison make Oricon top 10 not too infrequently though... Heck, there's iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls on the daily single right now http://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/js/d/2015-09-27/
Plus, look how many anison and Vocaloid songs are among the top teen karaoke tracks: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/12/23/vocaloid-takes-over-teen-karaoke-scene-11-of-2014s-top-20-songs-synthetic/ Even people as mainstream as Johnny's do some anison or tie-ins. I'm not saying that your typical late night anime theme song sung by the female lead is a Japanese everyman anthem, but when the line between anison and normal music is blurred, anison aren't that unpopular. Even Cruel Angel's Thesis aside, plenty of normal people at least know Guren no Yumiya. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2246 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Anisong seems to be disproportionally popular for karaoke.
If you look at the karaoke song listing there's a LOT of it compared to the selection of CDs in stores. Especially people like to sign karaoke of older anime songs that they grew up with. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2268 |
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Maaya Sakamoto ISN'T well-known? o.O I feel like she pops up in A LOT of big name video games; she was friggin' Lightning for crying out loud! Or is that also still too niche?
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Adamanto
Posts: 154 |
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Do you know who Steve Downes is? |
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Maidenoftheredhand
 Posts: 2634 |
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When I was in Japan too I constantly heard anime songs playing. |
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Lili-Hime
 Posts: 569 |
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Never been to Japan but I frequent a lot of Mitsuwa's and other Japanese grocery stores in SoCal and music used in anime plays a lot... and I mean a lot. Also game theme songs like Eyes on Me. I doubt they're trying to appeal to weeabo/otaku as 90% of the people in these stores are Japanese families just buying groceries. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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I don't know what the person who asked the question was expecting, but I didn't feel a shortage of anime song in my surroundings while I was in Japan. While I didn't listen to the radio all that much in the three months I've spent there, just by going to supermarkets, convenience stores and cafés I must have heard the ED to Blood Blockade Battlefront at least five times, the OP to Castle Town Dandelion at least three times and possibly even some songs from the Love Live! movie. I never really got used to it - it would startle me every single time ("Um... I'm not supposed to be hearing this in public, what's going on?!"). And as for karaoke, aside from the really seedy, borderline hostess club-like karaoke bars, all places I went to had a really big and up-to-date anison collection. The songs may not be 100% mainstream, but it didn't exactly feel marginal either.
Also, my experience might not have been really representative in this, but I spent most of my time in the Osaka area and went to Tokyo for just a couple of days and it seemed to me that the latter city featured posters advertising anime a lot more prominently. I did go there for the Comiket and stay at a hostel in Akihabara, but even when sightseeing far away from these otaku spots I would just run into those posters much more frequently than I did in Osaka. |
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MetalUpa1014
 Posts: 283 Location: USA |
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I happen to be a fan of Porno Graffitti. I'm not entirely sure how popular they are in Japan, but they have a lot of hit albums that have reached pretty high on the Oricon charts.
They did the OP for Fullmetal Alchemist as well as the main theme for the live-action Ace Attorney movie. |
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jirg1901
Posts: 150 |
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Of course they do, they got it foisted on them in an awkward out of place Kohaku performance. Maybe I should blame it for them cutting down anime content to an irrelevant Nana x TMR repeat last year.
I feel like that's underselling Sakamoto a bit as well. She's a regular Oricon top 10 charter and has ranked weekly #1 once. But if you used Masami Okui or Yukari Tamura the message would be the same. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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I know who he is.I do not play halo but i am familiar with him.Plus he is a reasonable good DJ. I could understand that it can be a hit and miss genre thing when it comes to anime related things. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I think Nana Mizuki's one of those seiyuu-slash-singers that you can say has "crossed over" to the mainstream, but, then again, she was trained from a young age as an Enka singer, so it's almost as accurate to say that Nana Mizuki's a singer who successfully crossed over to be an anime voice actress.
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Jackanapes
Posts: 119 |
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I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Muse. They've had like 8 gold singles and albums and three consecutive gold singles in the span of a month. I readt that they were the 6th most popular music act in all of Japan last year beating out some heavyweights at that. The week their second best of album went on sale they were the 2nd best selling album in the world beating out even the likes of Taylor Swift.
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