TV Asahi recently surveyed 1,740 overseas anime fans to determine their favorite anime theme songs and Oricon News shared the top 20 here. The results are interesting… I think there’s a lot of recency bias going on. Idol and SPECIALZ over Tank! is crazy. A Cruel Angel’s Thesis is well placed. I have never watched Evangelion (and won’t) but it’s a classic that I listen to regularly.
(more…)Category: music
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Music Rotation #1
When I was a young(er) person on the internet learning more about j-pop, my lifelines were the various mp3 rotations scattered around self-hosted domains on the web. Eventually those died out (who even has a personal website anymore? haha… 😬) and transitioned to places like LJ. Of course, they were legally dubious, but fans had to do what they had to do back then.
These days you can stream just about anything, which is great, but playlists don’t really hit like the old mp3 rotations do. So I thought it would be pretty cool to share on a regular basis all the current stuff I’m listening to.
No playlist, just YouTube links. But you can find these songs on your favorite streaming services.
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Chungha, “벌써 12시”
Because I don’t follow idol music anymore (or is she technically one? let’s just say idol groups), I wasn’t aware of I.O.I. or Chungha until I heard Wow Thing, featuring Seulgi, SinB, and Soyeon — A COLLABORATION FROM HEAVEN, BTW. I was like, “who is this beautiful talented girl?!” And I was shocked to find out she was a soloist because no one is ever strictly a soloist anymore. Sure, artists have broken away from their groups and found solo success (Lee Hyori being the biggest example I can think of) and Chungha initially made her debut in a project group. But so many of her peers in that group went on to join groups with their original labels to varying amounts of success. Putting her back in a group would have been a waste of her talent, so her agency was wise to let her shine on her own.
Anyway — stumbled upon her new single by chance last night and I love it! The choreography and the song feel so classic and she looks STUNNING in pants. The scenes in black & white at the staircase… wowowow.
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12/9/1998
I’m sure it’s been written to death at this point, but twenty years ago today Utada Hikaru made her debut with Automatic / Time Will Tell! I was already listening to j-pop around that time, but like a lot of people I found out about her through Kingdom Hearts. Up to that point I thought the concept of KH was the wackest thing ever (my, how times have changed 🙄), until I heard the song on a commercial. It was actually pretty good, and that would not be the first time I would be suckered into buying a game because of the theme song (see: Final Fantasy X-2), haha
I wrote some words about my 20 favorite songs! This is NOT a complete list, simply because I could honestly list the entire Deep River album, plus or minus a few songs and call it a night 🙃 anywayyyy
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DA PUMP, “U.S.A.”
“COME ON BABY, AMERICA!”
If DA PUMP isn’t invited to Kohaku this year then I’m protesting. I’ll start a change.org petition. (Also, you can’t really experience the true majesty of this song until you watch their live performances — they do a lot of live events at shopping malls WHICH I LOVE. Here is one of my faves. Peep the ending. So perfect.)
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CHAI, “N.E.O.”
I’ve been on a Japanese (indie) rock kick lately and I found out about these girls after seeing them featured on Spotify. This song gets me pumped. YOU! ARE! SO! CUTE! NICE! FACE! カモーン! YEAH!!
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Best of 2017: Japan 🎶
This isn’t a sponsored post y’all, I’m just a Spotify stan. I listen to it at work, in my car, at home… (kind of, my iTunes library is deeper lol).
Last year I set out to listen to more Japanese music outside of my favorites, and I’m pretty happy about that choice! With some effort, I was able to discover a lot of new and great artists. Japanese music is notoriously difficult to find (even with an Amazon JP account there’s a region block, so buying digital music is impossible), but Spotify Japan’s presence has made it just a bit easier. Some playlists I like to follow:
– Tokyo Super Hits!
– Tokyo Rising
– Road Trip To Tokyo
– Early NoiseYou can find more on their page. It really is just a treasure trove of stuff — just now I found Asano Tadanobu’s band (SODA!)…
Unfortunately there’s still a lot that’s widely unavailable, but I think it’s getting better. I’m hoping there will be a big shift come Tokyo 2020, but ANYWAY. Here are my favorites for last year: (more…)
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FINAL FANTASY 30th Anniversary: 自立
First: Merry Christmas! 🎄🎅❄️
The Final Fantasy series turned 30 last week, and earlier this month I flew to Toronto to attend the Distant Worlds concert! I was originally supposed to go to the Chicago show in the fall, but I spent too much money in New York this summer and had to cancel. Fortunately my friend and I were still able to find tickets to this show.
There are a lot of games in this series that I haven’t played (basically anything that isn’t IV, X, XII, or XV lol…), and since I’m sipping the Final Fantasy Kool-Aid again, I really want to play those classics. Luckily for me, Steam has all of them on sale for 50% off! I’ll keep y’all posted on how that goes, lmao. (more…)
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You did well.
A fun bit with all the members. There’s not much I can say that I’ve not already said or thought or cried over but… thanks for the memories, Jonghyun. You will be missed.
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midsummer shower
It’s late at night and I’m in my feelings again, what’s new? But oh man. I did not know that my favorite song from Fantôme, and quite possibly my favorite Utada Hikaru song of all time, had a music video. Watch it, feel it, and be healed.