One of the aspects of anime that I always found interesting is the music and the use of songs (but not just in opening and closing credits). It is something that we would not find in western animation of my childhood. The western animations were usually cheaply done and the scripts were quite simple. I am not sure when it started in Japan, but I have noticed it mostly in shows from the eighties, like Macross (1982), Mospeada (1983), Megazone 23 (particularly part II, 1986) or Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991). The presence of music and lyrics in the shows was very sophisticated and was used to enhanced the emotion of the characters or emphasized the drama of a situation, like a battle scene. When it was well done it was really awe inspiring.
The concept was perpetuated through all the Macross sequels, but particularly with Macross Plus (1994-1995) and Macross 7 (manga: 1994-2001, anime: 1995, 1997-1998), and it was push even further with the creation of anime about music like Beck (manga: 1999-2008, anime: 2004-2005), Black Heaven (anime: 1999), Nana (manga: 2000-2009, anime: 2006-2007), Nodame Cantabile (manga: 2001-2010, anime: 2007-2010), La Corda d’Oro (manga: 2003-2011, anime: 2006-2007), or Carol & Tuesday (2019) — just to name a few.
Now it is an integral aspect of mostly all anime and much has been written about it (Crunchyroll, Google, My Anime List). We certainly talked a lot about Japanese music in Protoculture Addicts (particularly with the series of articles by James S Taylor titled “The Modern Japanese Music Database” which started in issue #57 — we used to have an index of old articles on the defunct magazine website and I intend to eventually make it available on a new website in a near future).
Today, while watching a documentary on NHK World (see my article “Anime and manga on NHK World”) part of the Anime Manga Explosion series, I learned about another increasingly popular genre of music anime: the Girl Band Anime that focuses on the life and tribulation of… girl bands. They talk about anime series like BanG Dream! (2017-2020) or Bocchi The Rock! (2022) which features authentic guitar rock scenes and where voice actors form real live bands.
In the last decades I’ve been mostly reading manga, but documentary like this makes me want to watch more anime…
On this subject, you can read also my article “Memorable Music.”
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