Shiver by Lucy Rose

Shiver by Lucy Rose is the opening credit track for the popular Japanese art-house anime series called Mushishi. Very few Japanese anime will use properly sung music with dedicated musicians. They mostly get some poppy Japanese voice actress they've already hired for the cast to do it, and few of them write good songs. Their singing is competent, not emotional or evocative. There are only a few cases where proper international music is used instead, this being one. Serial Experiments Lain also had a similar vibe, about 10 years ago.

This is by BoA, and the track is Duvet. Do not confuse this band with the new electronic one of the same initials. Serial Experiments Lain is a very freaky story about a computer hacker, about rave drugs in Japan, about technology out of control, of teen suicide, and the nature of consciousness. Pretty heavy material for an Anime, but the Crash was only 10 years old at that point. They still thought it might end. Of course, it didn't, and Japan retains the highest suicide rate of the industrialized world. Japanese Grandmothers hate children. They're killing them off by stifling the economy there. And the kids know it.

The Delgados had The Light Before We Land as the opener for the exceedingly depressing child-cyborg story "Gunslinger Girl". Their album Hate is about Divorce, which I sometimes find quite appropriate. Gunslinger Girl has some amazing imagery, but its also very tragic and is about the worst of human nature.

 

That is not to say that there aren't some great Japanese musicians that find their work in Anime. Suneohair got a lot of airplay in the art school tragedy anime Honey and Clover.

When the art school hero of the series realizes he's placed second in love, and second is the first of the losers, they play this song as he pedals a bicycle away helpless and heartbroken. Its gotten used in quite a few AMVs (Anime Music Videos). The title is Sora Mo Isogashii. It means "under a weeping sky."

 

Speaking of AMVs, they can sometimes be good.

 

 

 

88 Lines About 44 Women, classic punk rock song of the 1980's.



This AMV was done by Erin Weaver, wife of anime voice actor Brett Weaver, famous for Gai Daigoji of Nadesico fame. They live in Austin, TX.

So yeah, music drifting into Anime could get better, but you get flashes of brilliance.

I mean, look at this. The anime (Gasaraki) flings itself apart like a badly unbalanced flywheel, but its a heck of a teaser. I hope the OP director got a job doing music videos. It feels more dated now, but 15 years ago? This was cutting edge.