I liked kure-nai. Liked, not loved. There were many flaws with the show - I regret that it was only 12 episodes long which meant lack of development for side characters like Ginko and Yuno, there were more plot holes than a piece of Swiss cheese and it had a final episode that bordered on the ridiculous.

Thankfully I never read the novels and I really don’t care if they screwed up the adaptation since I was only in it (watching the anime) to be entertained, and entertained I certainly was. kure-nai provided me with 23 of the most enjoyable minutes of my life (episode 6), Murasaki remains one of the few anime characters under the age of 10 that I find tolerable (and loveable), and the music was fantastic too. Indeed, the soundtrack was something I was much looking forward to, even more so than I was for the Macross F OST.

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I’ve listened to a lot of cover and tribute albums in the last 10 years or so and it is inevitable that the new versions are compared to the originals. The question I ask myself most when listening to yet another covers album:

-Does a cover version really need to be that much different from the original? There’s obviously a fine line to walk when trying to record a distinctive version of songs some considers to be masterpieces. You could keep it simple and as close to the original as possible - but you might as well be doing karaoke. Or you could take risks, try to change things around and if it pays off, get lauded for being innovative and if it doesn’t work, you get darts thrown at you. But there’s always going to be a section of fans who’ll never be happy no matter what people do, so why bother? Just do your own thing and worry later when you get rotten eggs thrown at you…

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Finally, it’s out. I’ve been waiting rather impatiently for this week to come so I could finally feast my ears on a version of Donten that doesn’t give me ear cancer. It’s like, only the best anime theme song so far this year, and the best of the many good Gintama themes so far. Screw VELTPUNCH, listen to DOES. PV, is predictably boring. Sounds OK live, too.

On the other end of the spectrum is Hikita Kaori’s Amatsuki ED theme Namae no nai Michi. The first time I heard this I had to give my ears a decent dig with the pick to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. Apart from the fact that it sounds like a rehash of 99% of Kajiura’s other compositions, the first line of the song’s chorus is amusingly, almost identical to that of Duca’s Ai no Niwa. Which happens to be my favourite video game-related song of 2008 so far, and is a kazillion times better than Namae no nai Michi. Yeah well, coincidence I suppose. The song’s verses also sound oddly familiar but I can’t quite place it at the moment. Whatever, back to Donten then.

Woah, woah, woah. I can’t remember the last time an anime soundtrack ever sold that well on its first day - the power of Macross is truly mind-boggling. Passing the 10000 index number on its first day, that’s almost unheard of nowadays. With a 1.7 multiplier, that’s roughly 17,500 copies sold in the first 24 hours although for anime the multiplier should be larger, so I predict total weekly sales of around 35-40k… oh hang on. Let me explain what index numbers (circled red above) and multipliers are again. There must be some stats geeks like me around somewhere…

Copied and pasted from one of my Nana posts last year:

The index numbers only represent a percentage of the stores around the country - around 2,200 stores report daily sales figures IIRC. There’s two other groups of stores that factor to total weekly sales - one is a smaller group of 800+ stores who fax in their weekly sales totals, and the other group is the online stores. The index numbers are added up over the week (from Tuesday to Monday) and multiplied with a number (let’s call it the multiplier) - around 1.7 or 1.75, to attain a figure which is quite close to real sales totals.

International and anime-related CDs tend to have completely different (usually higher) multipliers, as cheap imports (for the former) and strong online sales (latter) really make a difference. Which is why Mizuki Nana’s SECRET AMBITION ended up at No.2 eventhough it didn’t rank higher than No.4 on the daily charts throughout the whole week. So remember, if you wanna do your bit for your favourite artist, don’t buy from YesAsia but get stuff from HMV, Amazon, JBook or CDJapan instead - sales from YA don’t contribute to the Oricon chart.

Nyan Furo’s probably gonna drop like a stone over the next few days anyway and surely MINMI’s best collection will outsell it (or I’ll beat myself over the head with a stick), but still… crazy stuff. Anyway, putting it into perspective - last year’s best-selling anime-related original album of any kind was Mizuki Nana’s GREAT ACTIVITY and it only managed an index of 8,692 on its first day.

I don’t know what else to compare Macross to since the anime is in essence, all about the music and less the mechs (unlike something such as Gundam). Erm let’s see…the first Geass OST sold 5,000 copies in its first week…uh, the first Gundam SEED OST managed 14k. It’s probably not fair to compare it to the Evangelion and Macross 7 soundtracks from the mid-90s as CD sales have plummeted since then, but for the record:

Release date*Debut chart position**Total weeks on chart**First week sales**Total Sales**Album name
1995/01/21 **6位 *19週 *21,520 228,840　Macross 7 MUSIC SELECTION FROM GALAXY NETWORK CHART
1995/06/07 **4位 *11週 *84,800 229,430　Macross 7 Let’s Fire!!
1995/12/06 *12位 *22週 *49,650 204,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
1996/02/16 **4位 *15週 *81,620 212,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION II
1996/05/22 **1位 *11週 117,190 219,070　NEON GENESIS EVANGELION III

There’s a long way to go before Macross F can match any of that… And oh yes, I forgot to mention that I love Nyan Furo. OST of the year (so far)!

If you ever wanted to hear a duet between Chihara Minori and Mizuki Nana…

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Lots of new music out this week again, lovely. Notice how the reviews towards the end get shorter and less comprehendable as my brain runs out of steam. Er yes, I wrote all of this at the same time I was listening to the songs, all in one go - it’s not very fun, I can tell you.

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I think that Special A has one of the worst pairs of opening and ending themes in anime history, they both make my skin crawl.

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It’s the albums’ turn to get some harsh treatment.

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