MvP: It was a while back, and I can’t remember the source, but one theory I read regarding this issue was that the increasing lack of familiarity spawned by demanding work/study hours in Japanese society causes the warmth of family members to seem more “intimate” than it should.
GBS: That both has the ring of truth about it (from other things I’ve read about changes in Japanese society during the 20th century) and…is really, really scary. I think it’s part of the effects of leaving the closer (and more closely monitored) environments of the traditional villages and migration into the cities, especially Tokyo, that marked the last century. It has the eventual result of making people more solitary, more isolated. A single atom in a giant mass.
MvP: And continuing along that line of thought, it’s plausible that the growth of what was formerly nostalgia for the simplicity and warmth of home to become a perversion of itself.
GBS: I think we’ve definitely seen that in recent shows.
Where was the Magic of Music this season?
GBS: Every season, without fail, I usually find at least one opening or ending theme that’s so catchy, I feel the need to import the soundtrack single. That hasn’t really happened this time, though there is one candidate that might go into my next import order, StylipS’ “Spica,” the ending song to Comic Artist and His Assistants. The animation of several show openings were quite impressive: Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara, Love Live S2, Coffin Princess Chaika, One Week Friends, Nanana’s Buried Treasure among others all had decently animated openings, but the songs just didn’t catch my attention.
If I had to pick the two which were visually most impressive, they would be Is the Order a Rabbit? and Kawaisou. The former used a very varied color palette including hues you usually don’t see in regular weekly shows (and won’t see in this one either). The latter displayed a great deal of imagination as we look into Ritsu’s world of books, though the most interesting part was when rain was replaced with lines of text and Usa’s umbrella had text bouncing off of it like splashes of water. It was a subtle but nice touch.
For ending animation, again, Kawaisou, joined by Comic Artist had perhaps the ones that impressed me the most.
MvP: Punk music will get me every time, especially when paired with punk animation, so my hands-down favorite OP this season was Ping Pong’s. The music’s loud, brash, fun, and paired with animation that seems to be living the music, exploding anywhere the energy takes it even (and especially) outside the lines.
GBS: Visually, that one is also stunning, following the very distinct style of animation for the show.
KS: I’m also a big fan of punk in general, and not only is that song one of the best examples of the genre I’ve heard recently (and one of the best from a Japanese band overall), but there’s no more appropriate a combination of music and animation than punk rock with Ping Pong’s visual style. Oh, except for punk rock with Ping Pong’s visual style in monochrome. Yeah, this one’s a winner.
MvP: The only other OP that grabbed me this season was from World Fool News, which nails the late 80’s/early 90’s sitcom intro and combines it with a playfully, jazzy score. It’s as lighthearted and non-serious as the show it precedes, and I occasionally find myself humming the bom. bom. bom. bommmmmmm-bom base line. Not spectacular…just foolish fun.
KS: I could go on too long about opening and ending themes I liked this season. As I implied earlier, the opening is one of the few things about The Irregular at Magic High School that I really love. I’ve been following LiSA’s releases and happily bought “Rising Hope” as soon as it was on iTunes (a shame Aniplex no longer bring the CDs over). I thought at first that the opening theme song to No Game, No Life wasn’t one of the best, but I’ve had it stuck in my head pretty much since the series ended, so I guess it turns out that there’s not much I can say No Game, No Life doesn’t win out on.
Brynhildr in the Darkness is an extremely interesting case, having spent most of its one-cour run with an opening featuring no vocals, it instead being a dubstep version of a background piece used frequently throughout the series. Anime openings with no vocals are rare, and I can’t think of many times I’ve heard dubstep in anime at all.
GBS: Purely instrumental openings are fairly rare. I can think of a handful, including Marimite (for the first season, but then they added vocals to “Pastel Pure” in the second), Victorian Romance Emma, R.O.D (both OVA and TV series) and Cowboy Bebop (which does have one line of narration at the start)…but look how far back I’m having to dig to come up with most of these examples.
KS: What’s more is that with only a few episodes left and before we had even seen all the scenes of the first opening play out, it suddenly switched to a completely new opening with all-new animation, despite no changes to the ending, this one from Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas, a band I know from Hunter × Hunter’s first ending. With all the screaming this band does, any anime theme from them is sure to put a lot of people off, but their blend of that equally unusual (for anime) element with electronic instrumentation and voice-altering is something I find very fresh and enjoyable. This song isn’t nearly as good as the Hunter × Hunter ending, but it still had me a lot more interested than a lot of things in that series.
In addition, I was impressed with Haikyu!!, bringing on SPYAIR for the opening and NICO Touches the Walls for the ending, bands I knew from several other titles, and Black Bullet, whose opening is rather interesting simply because it has a section extremely similar to both Attack on Titan openings, mostly a corresponding section of the second, that I almost feel has to be intentional. Also, Mushishi: The Next Chapter delivered with “Shiver” by Lucy Rose. It not only makes a perfect sequel to “The Sore Feet Song” in terms of style and sound, but also happens to match the series in both its tone and its lyrics.
MvP: I agree completely about “Shiver” matching the series, which is odd, because I also think it an incredibly bland singer-songwriter piece but place Mushi-shi Zoku Sho well above most other series. What I think “Shiver” is so instrumental in doing is creating a buffer between the viewer’s hectic world and the intensely contemplative stories of the show. The song stops time with a very simple, emotional edge that builds slowly then trails off. It’s the perfect transition, the perfect anti-hype, that makes minds focus on nothing else but what comes next.
