j1m0ne's blog

Continuing on with the series of posts looking back at 2008, here’s a brief look at some of the music I enjoyed listening to throughout the year. A few samples are included.

Anime & Game Music
I tend to favour soaring orchestral stuff but there wasn’t really anything that stood out like Moribito did a year ago. My favourite composers (Mitsumune Shinkichi, Kawai Kenji, Nanase Hikaru) were largely dormant in the anime scene this year so I increasingly found myself turning to video game soundtracks for relief from the dull emo-piano rubbish that kept getting churned out.

Favourite Soundtracks
Senjo no Valkyria OSTs. Sakimoto Hitoshi

I don’t have a PS3. If I did, Valkyria would without a doubt be the first game I’d snap up – too bad it’s not selling too well in the US (PS pls port game to PC kthx). Anyway, Valkyria is amongst Sakimoto’s best works of late even if it does stick to his tried-and-true formula of sweeping orchestras with heavy usage of brass and strings. I do wish he’d break out his piano a bit more, Uruwashi no Gallia is a wonderful example of different things he can do if he tries to.

kure-nai OSTs – emotional side & swingin’ side. Muramatsu Ken

Probably the most ‘different’ soundtrack released this year. Still loving it!

Nabari no O OSTs. Oshima Michiru

The trailer’s music is what drew me towards watching Nabari in the first place, and I believe it was partly why I managed to keep going til the end. The soundtrack is actually pretty typical of Oshima’s fondness for epic orchestral tunes full of pretty strings and melodies, which she’s used in everything from Godzilla to Fullmetal Alchemist. I sure hope people didn’t just dismiss the Nabari music because it’s from a ‘yaoi ninja’ show…

Notable:
Birdy the Mighty DECODE OSTs. Kanno Yugo
-I’m a Kanno follower due to his work on Da Capo & dorama Hotaru no Hikari, and his music for Birdy is both vibrant and dramatic. Maybe a bit too long (and too many battle themes), but a pleasure to listen to overall.
Sound of Sky Crawler. Kawai Kenji
-Admittedly I am a sucker for anything Kawai Kenji, and the Sky Crawlers score was fairly pleasant, albeit largely rehashing parts of his back catalogue.
ARIA The ORIGINATION Original Soundtrack. Choro Club & Senoo Takeshi
-Suffers from sounding a little too similar to the previous soundtracks. Makes for great, relaxing background music when working though.
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Original Soundtrack (2 CDs). Meguro Shoji
Perhaps not on par with Meguro’s music for Digital Devil Saga, but a step up from the rather bland Persona 3 OST – the two discs cover a good range of styles including rap, opera and even enka.

Favourite Image/Character CDs
Seikan Hiko. Nakajima Megumi as Ranka Lee

Of the upbeat Macross songs, Seikan Hiko was always my favourite but generally I preferred the slower stuff like Neko Nikki, which is the reason I picked this CD ahead of Lion/Northern Cross and the bloated Nyan Tama.

KimiKiss Character Song Album. Various

This CD provided one of the year’s most *ahem* memorable songs (listen below), but everything else was actually pretty decent. I stand by everything I said when I reviewed it back in April – and I’m still regularly listening to most of the songs now.

Seiyuu CDs
The standard was pretty dire this year, reflected by the poor sales figures – and this comes in a year when album sales actually went up (although that is largely thanks to EXILE). Maaya & Nana, I sure hope your next albums save the seiyuu idol world from mediocrity!

Favourite single
Trickster. Mizuki Nana

There simply wasn’t anything else that came close to matching Trickster this year – the diversity across its three tracks shows off Nana’s vocal abilities well. I think I said all I wanted to say about it here already. Trickster’s remarkable performance (certified platinum for 250k shipments) is testament to her status as seiyuu idol No.1 – could Shinai possibly match it?

Favourite album
Stories. Iizuka Mayumi

Stories was the one and only original seiyuu album in 2008 that I could say I truly enjoyed. Iizuka’s not exactly a great singer – I like to joke that Mayumi’s like Horie Yui but with good songs :3 With 12 albums under her belt already, she’s had plenty of time to hone her now very polished pop sound, working with a myriad of talented Jpop writers including Dojima Kohei and the late Okazaki Ritsuko. This time, Iizuka co-wrote all the lyrics for the album’s 10 catchy songs with Izumikawa Sora (who also composed most of them) – each one supposedly tells a ’story’, with themes of one-sided love, loss and so on. This is Iizuka’s strongest and most focused collection of songs yet, and it’s hard to see how she’ll ever be able to top Stories.

Anison
I didn’t think it was that bad a year, but now that I’m sitting down here cycling through my playlists, I can’t even come up with a top 5 shortlist for either anison singles or albums – almost everything I listened to was just ‘OK’ or ‘not bad’. Maybe I shouldn’t separate anison and seiyuu…

Favourite single
Kamigami no Uta. Ceui

This was the Ragnarok Online image song, and the single made a brief appearance in the upper reaches of the mainstream charts much to my shock – I had to pinch myself to make sure it was really Ceui’s name I was seeing in amongst the boybands. Ceui (pronounced ’sei’) is definitely at her best when, like on this single, she writes her own material – her influences include a bizarre mix of Jrock band Spitz, Brazilian composer Jaques Morelenbaum and songstress Bjork, though Kamigami no Uta has a more ethereal feel to it, tying into the world of Ragnarok.

Favourite album
Tribute to Masami Okui -Buddy-. Various

Suara’s cover of Iiwake is amongst the best songs I’ve heard this year, and is by itself, reason enough to buy this CD. There are a few missteps (Chihara Minori’s Rondo-revolution- for example), but is overall an excellent tribute to the queen of anison Okui Masami. I reviewed this in full previously.

Other highlights include Shimotsuki Haruka’s Oto no Compass (a compilation album), eufonius‘ Metrochrome and fripSide’s Split Tears.

Doujin music
I’ve not been following the scene much this year since it requires a bit of time to hunt down the good stuff, and time was a resource I was short on this year. Mostly, I stuck to the usual collecting of Chata, Shimotsuki, Katakiri Rekka, YuNa & Rita releases. The best thing about doujin singers is how sweet the vocals are. I’m not really into the Nico Nico singers, preferring those who made their careers out of participating in doujin circles & selling CDs at Comiket.

Yuzuki (癒月), who made her major debut this year, is the one who really caught my attention. Originally a net seiyuu, she finally got a breakthrough when she was featured on Higurashi CDs (singing you & common wish) last year, and has put out three very good releases in 2008. First her major debut album Start!, then two dojin mini-albums – Chiriyuku toki no naka de for Chambers Records (who handle Katakiri Rekka & Sato Rina) and the just-released concept album Yume Shinden, a collaboration with composer Ito Kenji & lyricist Mori Yuriko. Yuzuki’s strong, melodic voice hits all the right spots for me and she sounds particularly majestic on Yume Shinden. Looking forward to greater things from her next year.

Duca was the other one I’ve been watching out for for a while, and she finally released her first compilation album 12 Stories a few months ago. Unlike Shimotsuki’s Compass, I felt rather empty listening to the songs the second time round (most of them are game themes), realising how similarly bland they all sounded. Plus, Nanairo no Sora was left off the disc, and it’s only like… her best song ever -_- Still love her voice though.

Other best of 2008 posts:
Top 12 anime theme songs