Make Believe Mailer 43: Animation Domination
It's Always Anime
I had food poisoning this week (always cook yakiniku well, folks), meaning I spent the majority of the last few days lying on the floor. Unable to move or think properly, I opted to spend this down time watching anime.
I knew the very basics of what SPY X FAMILY was about (there’s a spy, and he has a family), but was quickly taken in by how charming the whole premise of it was, coupled with just enough absurdity to make everything click. I burned through four episodes in a semi-alert state, but as my health has slowly returned (at least to the point where I can sit in a chair, use a computer, and write a potentially rambling newsletter), I also jumped down greater mole holes to see how this series was being embraced online.
What stuck out almost immediately were the music covers. Creators have covered SPY X FAMILY’s two themes — opener via Official HIGE DANdism and closer by Hoshino Gen — on piano (some more…suggesstive than others), bass and much more. There’s English-language versions too.
All typical develpments from anime fandom. Yet what jumped out to me was how well both these songs — especially Hoshino’s “Comedy” — are doing on streaming charts. SPY X FAMILY’s ending theme has tip-toed into a fair amount of Viral 50 charts, including sneaking into the top 25 in the United States, far higher than any of Hoshino Gen’s actual English-language efforts. The official, puppet-featuring video (below) comes complete with an array of subtitles for users to choose from, and a comments section full of messages in different languages.
It’s just the latest entry in one of 2022’s bigger musical trends as the year nears its midpoint.
I do not send this to you today asking “anime, you hear about this?” Of course anime helps springboard music into mass popularity. In Japan, that’s always been the case, and remains so. Aimer’s contribution to the latest season of mega-popular series Demon Slayer topped Billboard Japan’s Hot 100 chart at 2022’s midpoint. That comes a year after the aforementioned Official HIGE DANdism scored a huge hit via an anime opening, while Eve one upped them thanks to their contribution to Jujutsu Kaisen. Domestically, all old hat.
What’s new is how it spreads Japanese music abroad. A decade ago, Japanese songs breaking globally — critically, in this case, including English-speaking countries, which were viewed as most elusive — had to have some sort of mainstream appeal, which as is often the case in regards to the nation, meant it had to seem weird. You needed aggregation sites to ponder what drugs they had accidentally consumed to be experiencing “PonPonPon,” or a gaggle of YouTubers to watch BabyMetal. That’s true of the last “crossover” J-pop hit globally too — Pikotaro’s “PPAP,” a song stumbling its way into the Billboard Hot 100 behind an easy to mimick dance, a Bieber shoutout and one of the last true instances of “wacky” Japan in the spotlight1.
Sorry BTS, Pikotaro paved the way for meeting U.S. Presidents (yuh oh…)
Alongside video games, anime has always been one of Japan’s strongest pop cultural exports globally, stretching back decades. For the most part, though, it has always thrived in its own niche, and even at max visibility in the 1990s, didn’t carry any J-pop into the mainstream2 or even more frigid corners of the charts (at least outside of Asia…continentally, a whole different story for another time). You could get a cult hit, like The Pillows finding an audience via FLCL, or a J-pop group transforming into a cartoon like Puffy AmiYumi, but there was always some distance. “Anime Music” could be popular with anime fans, but didn’t travel further than that very often.
That’s all changed though, and now more than ever, anime is the single best way for any Japanese artist to reach a global audience.
It’s a lot of factors, once parallel but eventually colliding, powering this. The fragmentation of all pop culture via the internet and social media — wherein something once “niche” can get enough attention to, say, land in a music chart or bumrush the Netflix rankings — is important. So too is a broader boom in anime over the last decade, wherein a once geeky pasttime now inspires Megan Thee Stallion magazine shoots. Most importantly, Japan just finally embraced the digital age. It’s way easier to access anime, music and anime music from the country than ever before. You’ll still have instances where Toei Animation strikes down YouTuber content in very much old-school Japanese entertainment behavior…but those moments are becoming the rarities rather than the norms.
Like with older Japanese music, TikTok and YouTube play a huge role in this too, though that just comes back to the power of companies letting go control and seeing where fans take the sounds and images, with no shortage of creative users covering and reimagining anime music in new ways.
It’s helping lead songs to greater placement on streaming charts, which didn’t exist a few years ago but now are another tea leaf to decipher in figuring out the mysterious concept of “popularity.” Cuts from the funk band ALI featuring rapper AKLO (Jujutsu Kaisen), duo YOASOBI (BEASTARS), electronic project millennium parade (Belle) and yaoi franchise Yarichin Bitch Club (Yarichin Bitch Club) have all placed high on subscription streaming “viral” charts…and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. This year, besides Hoshino’s “Comedy,” every song associated with Attack On Titan — “My War,” “The Rumbling” and “Akuma No Ko” — have slayed on charts all over the world, getting into top five spots in a lot of major markets.
It’s not quite mainstream — but really, what is anymore? Ten years ago, you’d be lucky to access a Shinsei Kamattechan video at all if you lived outside Japan. Now, you can grab their songs on TikTok and make your own Levi Ackerman fan edit in minutes, for thousands of others to enjoy.
What has my interest is seeing how this plays out in the rest of 2022, with a handful of huge anime titles on the horizon. Makoto Shinkai has a new movie coming out, and seeing as how he’s become interlinked with RADWIMPS since Your Name, it feels safe to speculate that rock group will once again feture prominently in a movie that will have a lot of eyes on it.
More intriguing, though, is One Piece. The long-running…truly, long-running in the sense I work with multiple people who were born after it started running as a manga…series gets a new animated feature this August, and artist Ado provides the singing voice for new character Uta.
That’s a huge break for a performer with a lot of momentum behind them already, but what makes this so fascinating given the state of how music tied to anime travels today. She will collaborate with an ecclectic mix of artists for these songs, including Vaundy, FAKE TYPE and Yuta Orisaka. One number, “Shin Jidai” (above), is already out, and finds her working with Yasutaka Nakata3. It’s already getting a bit of buzz, and offers the chance to go even further with the right nudging.
And everyone involved knows it. “Shin Jidai” comes with Englisth subtitles in the official video. The promotion for the movie itself is also taking steps to both be accessible (you can watch the trailer) and understandeable (savviest of all…the Uta character is being introduced before the movie IN THE STYLE OF A VTUBER with English on hand). Tied to this is me knowing from ~industry sources~ that Ado is definitely being eyed for a greater international push. Also…it’s One Piece! Everyone knows it, even if you’ve never read or seen it.4
Maybe it climbs up streaming charts, maybe it inspires hundreds of violinists to cover “Shin Jidai” while dressed as a fantastical pop star. Either way means more eyes and ears on it…moreson than would have been possible just a few years ago. That’s the power of an anime collab, a force that might be the way to go moving forward.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Follow the Best of 2022 Spotify Playlist Here!
A whole thesis/feature/book lurking here, but here’s just one music example — months after this, the “city pop” renassaince really starts blooming online, a very marked shift in what kind of Japanese music connects with very-online listeners.
Video games, funny enough, probably were introducing a lot of famous songs…or at least now-ubiquitous melodies…to the world stage.
Has Nakata ever worked with a voice so willing to let loose over his production before? He’s best known for making voices fit within his electro-pop cuts (Perfume) or finding a suitable backdrop for artists who are more charismatic than polished excel (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu). But Ado just goes for it here, and it ups the intensity of Nakata’s retro-drive rhythm a lot. Purely as a standalone song, a fascinating development for both creators invovled in this.
*raises hands* the one guy stretches like rubber, right?