'I finally found the best anime song of my lifetime!' DJ Hiroyuki Deguchi selected 10 gems of anime songs! Just shut up and listen to anime songs! In 2022 Winter

Hello to the 10 million anime song fans in Japan. I am Hiroyuki Deguchi, a wandering bassist and DJ who plays a lot of anime songs and special effects songs. It's time for "Just Shut Up and Listen to Anime Songs", a column in which I choose 10 anime songs from this season's anime broadcasts based on my own prejudice. It's time for "Just Shut Up and Listen to Anime Songs!

I'm very sorry to say that this is a personal matter, but I'd like to advertise an anime song related job I did.

I played the bass for three songs in Hiroko Moriguchi's "GUNDAM SONG COVERS 3," which will be released on March 9, 2022. The songs I played are,

Meteor / "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED" insert song

Turn A Turn / with Daisuke Kaminaga (Japanese instrument band) / "Holy Gundam" opening theme

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam" Medley

Zeta, Toki wo Koete - Ai wo Mizu no Hoshi e Ai wo Komete / with Maya Ayukawa (BONUS TRACK) / opening theme of "Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

This is 3 tracks (4 songs). Usually, the recording process starts with memorizing the songs, but this time, all of the songs are familiar to me, or perhaps I know them too well, so the process was very enjoyable. I never thought that all the anime songs I have listened to would be connected in this way and help me in many ways. In a way, this is the moment when anime songs changed my life. I am glad I love anime songs!

This is a masterpiece cover album that will remain in the history of Gundam music, so please pick it up and spread the word on social networking sites that it was "very good! and spread the word on SNS!

I apologize for the sudden publicity.

Now to the main topic. We have selected 10 anime songs from this season's anime titles!

Vanitas no Teki (2nd season)

ED "salvation/Monononcle

Saiyuki RELOAD -ZEROIN

OP "Kamimo hotokemo/GRANRODEO

Slow Loop

ED "Shuwashuwa/Three ∞ Loop

The dress-up doll falls in love

ED "Koi no Yukue / Akase Akari

Tribe Nine

ED "Infocus/Void_Chords feat.

Ninjara

OP "MAYBY BABY/Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

Hakozume: Police Box Girls Strike Back

OP "I gotta know / Nariko Azuki

Isekai Bishojo Ukekiku Ojisan to

OP "Dawn Salaryman/Yoshiki Fukuyama

Heike Monogatari

OP "Hikaru toki / Sheep Literature

ED "unified perspective/agraph feat.

I say "10 songs of this season," but there is one that I chose both OP and ED from one work, but I will explain about that later! I was really worried about it this time, too.

I think the overall tempo of songs has been decreasing recently, and I felt this trend this time as well. Instead of songs that push through at a fast tempo, many of the songs had a solid groove, good melody, and strength of the music itself, so it would be hard to fit them in 10 songs! It's a bit of a problem, isn't it? That's why we had a hard time deciding which songs to choose.

So, the theme for this year's selection was simply "good songs.

What makes a song good? What is the definition of a good song?

There are some parts that are not fully explained, but please read the explanation!

Hakozume ~Koban Joshi no Gyakushuu~ (Police Box Girls Strike Back)

OP "I have to know / Nariko Azuki

Since it was dramatized earlier, many of you may have started from the drama.

Among the recent works on the theme of occupations or working people, this work is particularly down-to-earth and realistic. Since this is a story about work, the work is characterized by a serious and heavy sense of reality lying within its cheerful atmosphere.

The melody is reminiscent of anime songs from the late 90's and has a nostalgic feel to it, giving the song a sparkling atmosphere that is fresh for the younger generation, and appealing to the aunts and uncles, The interesting thing about this song is that it gives different impressions to different generations, with the familiar melody for the older generation.

The lyrics, which express the feelings of the main character in a straightforward manner, are also wonderful.

Tribe Nine

ED "Infocus/Void_Chords feat. LIO

Including the ending video, the cool sense of style is one of the best this season.

Void_Chords' song arrangement, in which the hard electro beats are balanced perfectly with the emotional vocals, is once again superb. From jazz to alterna, breakbeats to funk, Void_Chords is able to take on genres in any direction, in a sense, without restraint, and make them uniquely original.

This time, the groove of electro funk comes out strongly, and the song is very groovy. However, it is not a simple funk beat, and the arrangement is not a simple funk beat, but rather an extreme slow and steady one, which enhances the sense of freedom of the beat in the chorus.

Slow Loop

ED "Shwashwa/Three ∞ Loop"

This is a song by "Three∞Loop," a unit of three voice actors who play the main cast members.

When the characters are in charge of the music, the worldview of the anime work and the music are firmly connected, and the ending (and of course the opening) becomes part of the main story of the anime, rather than a stand-alone song. This is the true appeal of an anime song performed by a voice actor unit that plays the main cast. It is both an anime song and the main story, both the main story and an anime song.

The melody stands out because it is not overly flashy or noisy, and the singing of each character and the individuality of the song is very easy to hear, giving the song a solid core of strength in its transparency.

The bolero-like snare pattern in the chorus and the analog synth back melody are refreshing yet extremely sad. The simple ensemble perfectly depicts the world of the work.

That dress-up doll falls in love.

ED "Koi no Yukue / Akase Akari

This is a surprisingly cute song. The coquettish song, lyrics, and melody have the destructive power to attract men and women alike.

It is not a song sung with overwhelming skill, so you may think, "I could sing this at karaoke too! You may think, "I can sing at karaoke too!" However, since the character of the voice dominates the song, it is rather a more difficult category than the type of singing. Singing skills can be improved with practice, but there is no way to practice the character of the voice. In music, talent is not just being able to play an instrument well, but also being able to transform physical characteristics into musical expression. The wonderful thing about this song is that Akari Akase's overwhelming cuteness explodes in a musical direction and becomes the center of the song.

Well, leaving aside the logic behind, we can only bow down before this overwhelming cuteness.

Vanitas's Memoirs (Cool 2)

ED "Salvation/Monononcle

R&B, hip-hop, jazz, electro, it's a song that gives different impressions to different listeners. If you ask me what the correct genre is, they are all correct.

It is R&B, hip-hop, jazz, and electro. It's probably a combination of other different genres. None of it is lightly allusive, but it captures the true core of the music in a terrific way. In other words, the musical roots and backgrounds are wide-ranging and all unusually deep.

The arrangements and sounds of the songs are in line with recent trends in Western music, but the melodies have a unique oriental atmosphere, which strangely leads to a 90's JPOP-like quality that is both wonderfully original and terrifying.

Ninjara

OP "MAYBY BABY/Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

Ninjara" started as an action game for the Nintendo Switch, was made into a web animation, and now has finally been adapted into a TV animation. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's "Ninjari Banban" was used in the game's TV commercial, and the song's pop style matched perfectly with the game's worldview, in which pop cartoon-style characters are on a lively rampage. The same song was also used in the web animation that immediately followed the game, so the image of "Ninjara = NINJARIBANBAN" remained strong in the minds of the audience.

The song was written while the image of "Ninjara = Ninjabanban" was strong, but it is amazing. The song eliminates any easy-to-understand Japanese motifs, does not include complicated musical development, and is completed with the strongest dance music that can be understood anywhere in the world by pursuing pop music.

If you look at the world view of the works and characters, Japanese motifs would naturally fit in, but that has already been done with "NINJARIBANBAN," so if you want to update the work, the music expresses the fun and essence of the work itself, which is casual and pop, rather than the world view of the work itself - if you think of it that way, you can see that "MAYBE" is a pop-oriented song without any Japanese motifs. It is no wonder that "Maybaby Baby", which is a pop song without any Japanese motifs, matches "Ninjara". It is amazing.

Saiyuki Reload - Zero-in

OP "Kamimo hotokemo/GRANRODEO

I never thought I would see a new "Saiyuki" anime in 2022, the year of 2022! Many of you must have thought so. I am one of them.

The combination of danceable 16-minute rhythms and sounds based on continental scales has created a bizarre and excessively oriental worldview. It is wonderful that a certain sense of overkill matches the worldview of "Saiyuki. The light beat that plunges forward and the carefully used pauses between the upper mono instruments complement each other in perfect balance.

In "Treasure Pleasure," the opening song of "Hanma Baki" sung by GRANRODEO in the previous cool, everyone in both the rhythm and upper instruments rushed forward to a 16-bit beat in a super aggressive in-fighter style. I think GRANRODEO's overwhelming individuality can be found in the many ways of arranging and expressing each song, even when they take a similar approach.

The "Uncle Uncle" and the "Otherworldly Bishojo Incarnation

OP "Dawn Salaryman/Yoshiki Fukuyama

A trusted and proven hot anime song that is immediately recognizable at first listen as Yoshiki Fukuyama's melody, Yoshiki Fukuyama's sound, and Yoshiki Fukuyama's music lyrics. The sound of Yoshiki Fukuyama is everywhere, without pandering to the latest trends in music.

What exactly is the Fukuyama sound? It is a strong commitment to being a band and respect for British rock.

The music is less flashy than recent anime songs, as it does not use any programmed performance data, such as typed or synchronized performances. However, the dynamism of rock music that is created when human breaths combine with each other is a swirling groove that cannot be reproduced with pre-programmed data, and this undulating ensemble is the key to Fukuyama's sound.

Respect for British rock is, simply put, respect for the Beatles, and there are parts of this song that seem to be in the Beatles' manner. For example, the progression of the A melody (mainly the guitar) is reminiscent of "I've Just Seen A Face.

A phrase reminiscent of the Beatles enters the music created by a rock boy who loves the Beatles. This is the origin or essence of the creative process.

In Yoshiki Fukuyama's anime songs, the creativity and the band's initial impulses remain as fresh as when they were teenagers, and we can always go back to our teenage years and feel our hearts burning hot.

... Heike Monogatari

OP "Hikaru toki/Youko bungaku" (When it glows/Youko bungaku)

ED "unified perspective/agraph feat.

Lastly, "If I had to choose the best anime song of the season, this would be it! So, I'll start with "The Tale of the Heike"!

Since the beginning of this column, I've been trying to write "one song from one anime work", but this work has both OP and ED that are so great that I'm in trouble! It's impossible to pick just one song! Who decided to choose only one song from one work? Ignore that! I followed my heart's voice and selected both.

The ED "unified perspective," with its decadent sound, inchoate development, and blithely spun rap, left a strong impression on me. The sound is the exact opposite of the easy approach that one would expect from a historical anime with a Japanese melody or a sound based mainly on Japanese instruments.

However, despite the fact that the music is not quite the right direction for a historical anime, it fits the work to a frightening degree and has made all previous anime songs for historical works a thing of the past.

The sense of desolation that suddenly appears after "The Tale of the Heike," in which the characters are vividly depicted, is exactly the same as the sense of desolation that Biwa Houshi expresses when he says, "The world is changing, and all that flourishes will eventually perish," after the Heike clan, which had reached the peak of its prosperity, is destroyed and there is no one left in it.

It may be too much of a leap to say that this is a modern Biwa-hoji's song, but there is no doubt that the essence of the Tale of the Heike, if set to music as it is, would be "unified perspective".

And then there is the OP "Hikaru toki" (When it glows).

The song itself is "The Tale of the Heike" itself. A modern translation of "The Tale of the Heike".

It is also a replacement of a passage from "The Color of the Flowers of Sara Souju," but because it compares the cause and effect of history to flowers and seeds, and converts the Tale of the Heike into something to live by instead of something to perish, the passage "The story of the last episode is-" makes me so sad that my heart clenches.

Every time I listen to it, every time I watch it, I cry.

It is not the best song of the season or anything like that, but one of the best songs of my lifetime.

In the "Tale of the Heike," which I learned in school, I could not feel the "ordinary people living for their families. If I had realized that when I was a student, I would have liked history more.

These are the 10 anime songs selected for this season!

Thank you very much for your attention!

I have written a long list, but everyone has their own way of feeling music, so I think you are right in your opinion that "this song is not included" or "I don't think so", etc. This is just an example of how to listen to music, and we hope that this column will help you choose your own 10 songs.

Akiba Research Institute will be holding an ani-song popularity poll for the winter 2022 anime season, so please vote in that poll as well!

See you in the next issue of "Spring Anime Songs! See you in the next issue!

(Text by Hiroyuki Deguchi)