Feel the Burning #3: Music to Burn
One of the most glorious traditions of Burning robot anime is the opening song. The main goal of a robot show’s theme song is to fill your veins with adrenaline and testosterone (the robot anime opening is one of the few genres where it is acceptable to shout nonsense in between verses just for the sake of shouting). It’s perhaps my favorite kind of music to sing, and should the tastefully-named Richard Kim and I ever find ourselves locked in a private karaoke room, I’m sure that our first order of business will be belting out the old hits, like Tekkaman and Kidou Senshi Gundam.
In the ’70s, the voices of the robot genre were unquestionably Sasaki Isao and Mizuki Ichiro. Those two singers set the standard for blood-pumping awesomeness with Getter Robo and Mazinger Z (if you haven’t heard the songs before, click now; I can wait). Songwriters back then operated under different rules; nothing was considered too silly to get the kids excited, and so those old songs were made of horns, drums, explosions, impassioned shouts, and on more than one occasion, children’s choirs.
As the audiences for these robot shows grew up, so did the music, and the old style of anime opening died out for a while. Macross made it okay to mix old-school Mizuki Ichiro machismo with girl pop. Gundam became so popular that major labels attached their acts to it for sales boosts - in some cases, with disastrous results.
It was a dire time indeed for fans of the old style. Then, in 2000, Mizuki Ichiro started a project to revive the old style of anime song. He gathered up some of the more famous anime crooners in what he dubbed the JAM (Japanese Anisong Makers) Project, and with that, the Burning style of song was reborn. Thanks to JAM Project, it’s cool to shout in anime songs again - but JAM project is a subject for another time.
I’m just curious here - are there any old-school Burning themes that you hold dear that I haven’t listed as a favorite? Or do you find songs from mecha anime to be dull, overdone, or passe?
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November 1st, 2007 at 11:13 am
Ever since Pocky introduced me to the works of Isao & Ichiro, I can’t help but belt out a Combattler V, or Mazinger Z lyric. But Choujou Smash Gingaizer, for sheer campy, crappily-built, children singing cheese, gets my vote.
-CB
November 4th, 2007 at 1:38 am
I have too many favorites to count.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I prefer the macross style girl pop, but maybe that’s just me…
November 8th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I have been in a Karaoke room with Pocky before. It was a site to behold. I still have visions of him singing Mazinger in my head. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Space Runaway Ideon’s first few seconds with the acoustic guitar are brilliant and hasn’t been done anywhere else. The rest is fairly generic, but it gets your attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5i3H-mgoTE
January 10th, 2008 at 5:30 am
[…] I mentioned back in Feel the Burning #3: Music to Burn, the formation of JAM (Japanese Animation song Makers) Project in 2000 was an earthshaking moment […]