This season we have chosen completely out of taste! 10 Anime Songs for Winter 2020! Hiroyuki Deguchi's "Just Shut Up and Listen to Anime Songs! in Winter 2020".

Hello to all the 10 million anime song fans in Japan, I am Hiroyuki Deguchi, a wandering bassist and DJ specializing in anisong and special effects music. Once a quarter, I come to "Just Shut Up and Listen to Anime Songs! This time, I would like to introduce you to the Winter 2020 anime season.

This season, the overall trend of "those who get it will get it" has become stronger than last year, and I have the impression that the works have become more diversified and segmented. While the popularity of otherworldly works remains high, all works are unique and there is almost no overlap within the same genre. I don't want to look at this and that randomly, but rather to find the one that fits my tuning perfectly. and watch them in depth. Of course, it is fun to catch up with as many works as possible, but nowadays, anime has become an information war. It can be said that the current way to enjoy anime is not to watch "only" anime, but to follow deeply what happens outside of the works.

This can be said for all genres of entertainment, not just anime, but in recent years, the emphasis has shifted from the explosive power of dots to the expansion and extension of lines and surfaces. In the case of anime, the original work is basically based on a manga or a novel, and the director and voice actors, who are influential and outspoken, are involved, and a musician, who may seem an unexpected combination, sings the theme song. In such a show-business strategy, the original film is the first of its kind in the world.

In such a show business strategy, it is quite interesting that animation works that do not have an original story attached to them are equipped with the weapon of "complete originality" (this is a long story that will have to be told another time).

In any case, the diversity of this season's top 10 shows, with 10 different choices for this season's No. 1, is a characteristic of this season's music as well.

So, without further ado, here are the 10 songs I selected from this season's anime works!

ID:INVADED ID:INVADED

OP "Mr. Fixer/Sou

Don't mess with the Video Lab!

OP "Easy Breezy/chelmico

OP " Oubaroo

OP "Oubarabu/Uzuho

Somari to Mori no Kamisama

OP "Arigatou wa Kochi no Kotoba/Moriyama Naotaro

22/7 (Nanabunno Nijuni)

OP "Muzui/22/7

BanG Dream! 3rd Season

OP "Initial/Poppin'Party

Boku no Tonari Neighbor to Ankoku Kaijigami ga Itteiru [There's a Dark Destroying God Next to Me].

OP "Take mo' Chance/all at once

Smile on the runway

OP "LION/Kakashi Sakaguchi

OP " Rikenkei ga Koihito ni shite arukimashita" (A science student fell in love and I tried to prove it.)

OP "PARADOX/Amen Amamiya

Levius

OP "wit and love/Mystery Woman

This time I was able to select the songs without any trouble, but I think my bias or my taste is showing more than usual.

As I mentioned earlier, there are 10 different choices for this season's No. 1 song, and even if you choose 10 songs this season, they will differ considerably from person to person.

It is so obvious that it is embarrassing to say with a smug look on my face that I am good at it. However, even in my conversation with Mr. BAN BAN BAN Samejima at the end of last year, looking back at the anisongs of 2019, he said, "This is the song for this cool season! There were always songs that were chosen by everyone that transcended individual preferences. I felt that there were not so many songs this season that could involve a large number of people.

That being the case, the songs that appeal to the people who like them are unusually high. Therefore, I usually set some kind of theme or standard for the song selection, but this time, I chose songs that, upon first listen, I thought, "I love this! I chose songs that I liked. Rather than discussing the music selection under a broad theme, I would prefer to select songs that I thought were "good! I decided that it would be more appropriate to select songs that I thought were "good" for this year, 2020, rather than to select songs with a major theme and discuss them!

The first one is the OP song "Easy Breezy " from "Don't Mess with the Video Lab! The first one is "Easy Breezy," the OP song of

From the slide guitar sampling in the intro, you can already sense a strong response to the song, which overlaps sharp beats with old-school rock sampling in the vein of Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys. The casual, neutral rapping of chelmico is reminiscent of the popularity of Schadaraparr, who once took hip-hop to the mainstream and brought it to the level of a household name. What he does is stoic and maniacal, but it is interesting that his output is transformed into a snarky pop style. I think the essence of this song is a new age pop sensibility, or rather, a sense of funniness and kitsch that fits the generation accustomed to Instagram and TikTok.

Mr. Fixer, the opening track of ID:INVADED, is another song that seems to be about a new pop sensibility.

The 16-minute honeyed beat and classical piano is an unusual combination that makes it stand out from the many songs between similar genres. The lyrics and melody are so dense with information that it is difficult to grasp the full scope of the song on a single listen. However, the feeling of the words jumping into your ears in synchronization with the ups and downs of the melody between the waves of this enormous amount of information is very modern. There is an attitude of assuming that the music and the listener are facing each other on a one-to-one basis, rather than a structure of many listeners to the music, as in the case of music that everyone likes and that everyone listens to. Let's all sing together! but rather that it is music that I, myself, listen to. In other words, this is an affirmation of diversity, and it is music that was born because of the current era.

22/7" and " Muzui.

I never thought I would choose a song from this work, but the song is a good one, and the trick of the work itself was interesting. As you know, 22/7 (Nanabunno Nijuni) is a digital voice-acting idol project by Yasushi Akimoto, who created the template for the idol business in Japan. From the song titles and the matching outfits they wear, which are based on school uniforms, it is clear that the project is modeled on the hill series such as "Nogizaka46" and "Keyakizaka46. The deliberate use of a methodology that should normally be avoided as a cover-up, such as familiarity or having seen something before, to give the impression of a "presence as if they had been there for a long time" in all the two-dimensional world that develops, including anime, is an amazing trick. I feel as if I have known it for a long time, even though I am seeing it for the first time. And I feel as if I have always loved it. There is a strong magnetic field that makes you think so.

Another song I didn't think I would choose here is the OP song "Oubarabu" from "Oubarufuro.

It's a bit of a mufufu (old-fashioned, as expected) anime, so it wasn't my favorite (I'm a big fan of hot-blooded battle stories with no feminine charms. It's not my favorite anime (I'm a big fan of hot-blooded battle stories with no feminine charm, like "Otoko Juku"), but the song is outstanding. Since ancient times, there has been a promise in the anime song world that "an anime song with a Motown beat is a great song," and this song also has the style of a great song. The guitar work that adds color to the song is especially wonderful. The guitar work is basically jazzy, but every section is worth listening to, from the obbligations to the moving chord backing and the rock-oriented approach in the solo, and its dynamism gives the song a good tension and a pleasant groove. The drive of the bass, while not so subtle, is also a good thing for the experts. On the surface, the song is pretty, but deep down, the craftsmanship of the players shines through, making it an excellent song to listen to. It is also wonderfully good in that it somehow has the air of the 90s about it.

Take mo mo" is the OP song of "Boku no to ni Neighbor to Kuroku Kaiyakushin ga shite iru." Take mo' Chance", the OP song of "Boku no Tonari Neighbor to the Dark God of Destruction.

This song also has the sound of the 90s. The Western-like arrangement, which brings back the youth of us (the generation of "ARAFOR"), has a retro-futuristic feeling in a good way, and it is interesting that it sounds fresh. Many of the songs have funk undertones these days, but it is worth noting that the songs are an umami assortment of 70s soul funk, including riffs with talking wahs and old-school style cutting that could be found on the first page of a funk textbook. It's been a while since I've heard a talking filter, but it's still musically weird. Because it is weird, it can have a tremendous effect when matched well with the phrasing and arrangement. A good example of this can be seen in the intro riff: the trend of reworking dance music based on 60s and 70s soul funk has been done once before in the 90s, as mentioned above. The fact that this technique is often seen in anime songs may suggest that after the 80s revival boom, the 90s revival will finally arrive in earnest in the current music scene.

The OP song from "Somali to Mori no Kamisama," "Arigato wa Kochi no Kotoba."

Good. Wonderfully good. It has a storyline equivalent to a whole movie in a short time span of about 90 seconds. It is perfectly synchronized with the images, and in extreme cases, the opening is completed as "another story" that fully conveys the goodness of the work more than the main story, which is a strong draw to the main story. Naotaro Moriyama's emotional expressiveness combined with his writing ability to make the most of that expressiveness makes this song an anime song that cannot be compared to other anime songs. This is not to say that other anime songs are of a lower level, but rather that it is an "anime song for the work" that is unparalleled and perfectly in tune with the anime work. It is an "anime song for the work" that is unparalleled and perfectly in step with the work. It can be described as "Ghibli-like" or "Disney-like," but it has an intensity that rivals the worldview and scale of such theater movies, and has a sense of scale that is out of the norm for late night terrestrial broadcast anime.