Author: Slacker/Anitama Cover Source: Noir
Animation and music are inseparable, and animation works can gain the support of the whole world, but also inseparable from the power of music. Today, Japanese anime songs are as widely praised as J-POP, and the quality of the soundtrack is no less than that of live-action works. How did the current animation music come about?
The 2019 autumn issue of Keyboard Magazine produced a special topic on "The Relationship between Animation and Music", inviting many people related to animation music and animation songs to listen to the testimony of the parties, trace the footprints of the masters, analyze the musical scores of famous songs, and answer the process and method of forming the current relationship between animation and music.
Composer Yuki Kajiura's unique worldview was enthusiastically supported. Her vocal songs, as well as her vocals using strings, ethnic music, and electronic music, have fascinated many animators and enthusiasts.
However, Kajiura's musical career began with no regard for the soundtrack, but as a member of the band See-Saw. She had basically listened to vocal songs since she was a child, and to be honest, she had little interest in pure instrumental music. However, while part of See-Saw, she was commissioned to make pure instrumental music. She wrote 3 pieces of music, one of which was favored by film director Ichikawa Jun, so she suddenly wrote music for the movie Tokyo Brothers and Sisters (1995). The producer watched the movie and asked her to write music for the animation. So she first came into contact with animated music as the soundtrack for New Orange Road, The Beginning of That Summer (1996).
Until these commissions were received, Kajiura didn't even realize that the film was accompanied by music. She thought, "I used to have a job writing this kind of music," and began to make it, her mind full of confusion. During the production of "Tokyo Brothers and Sisters", director Ichikawa personally came to the studio and asked her to "try playing the piano with this scene". She played with the feeling for a while, and director Ichikawa praised her for "right, right, that's the feeling." In this way, under the guidance of director Ichikawa, she finally completed the work.
The next "New Orange Road", although it is an animation, but because it is also a theatrical version, it is not composed according to the "Sadness 1, 2, 3" demand table, but combined with specific scenes, so it is still easy to do. However, although Kajiura had been making music before, he only wrote 20 songs a year. Now suddenly it's time to write 20 to 30 soundtracks in a month, and she's writing 5 to 6 songs and she feels her body hollowed out. Therefore, in the first two works, she really fought hard and turned out all the things at the bottom of her pressure box.
Kajiura and TV animation are related to EAT-MAN in 1997. Because it was estimated that she could not cope with it alone, she and EBBY, Kazumin Yoneda, a total of 3 composers, completed the work. In this way, she has less music to be responsible for, and she is very happy to do it. However, the supervision of this work is Koichi Mashita. Mashita was very fond of Kajiura and came to her later to cooperate. Therefore, without this work, Kajiura might not have received the later work. She said that she was able to achieve today's results thanks to her fate with Mashita Supervision.
After EAT-MAN, kajiura also took over several soundtracks, but she still didn't know much about how to do pure instrumental music. In this case, The Supervisor Came to Her and Commissioned: "The next anime please complete all the compositions by yourself." Mashita's attitude toward music is "in short, how do you like to do it", he said to Kajiura, "Please don't do 'background music' that sinks behind the picture, but do 'foreground music' that constantly comes forward." ”
What is it about yourself that is so favored by the real supervision? Kajiura recalls that during EAT-MAN, she was responsible for producing the theme music for the entire work. Because she was working with Mashita for the first time, she really didn't have a score in her heart, so she wrote three pieces of music and brought them over.
The first is a niche piece that I like, the second one is a song that is "slightly better to write because it is a TV anime", and the third one is written even better. She asked Makoto, "Which one do you think is good?" As a result, Mashita Supervisor did not hesitate to choose the first song that she fully opened her personal interests. So, she thought, Mashita's supervision must be similar to her own music preferences. In this sense, the object of his first continuous cooperation was Zhenxia supervision, which is also an important reason for the formation of today's self. She works with Mashita as she learns the techniques of the soundtrack.
The second collaboration with Mashita was NOIR (2001). She thought to herself, "It's a shame that I can do one job after another." But she was not as dexterous as a composer from a class, and she was always said to have written too much music. So she remembered very clearly, at that time, she thought that she would not receive so many jobs after that.
Kajiura felt that in the world of J-POP, there was no need for songs she wrote using the elements of New Age music and world music that she liked very much at the time. However, when you look at the music of the soundtrack, even if you use up the things you like, the things you are listening to, and write the songs you want to write, it is still completely insufficient.
So Kajiura came to a conclusion: "That is to say, you can do what you want!" "It exhilarated her. She thought to herself that even if she could still receive the soundtrack in the future, there would only be two or three of them, so she would have to finish what she had always wanted to do but did not do in "NOIR".
She also didn't care if it was suitable for animation or not, and wrote out all the music she wanted to write. Therefore, the music of this work is sometimes national, and because the stage is in Paris, it is sometimes Parisian, and sometimes there is music similar to hymns, and the worldview is chaotic. She didn't think anything of it, just stuffed her favorite piece of music.
However, this kind of "messy" music, with animation, is very suitable. Kajiura believes that this is because The way Mashita supervises music is also somewhat unique. "NOIR" is a work, 5 minutes without lines only play music is a matter of course. Because Mashita Supervisor likes canta Per Me, one of the theme music she wrote for the anime, it is not enough to play it 3 times in one episode, and it is necessary to release it when the opportunity is right. And the volume of the music is also very large. He uses Kajiura's music like a musical, and from this point of view, animation is also a groundbreaking work.
Next, the producers of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED seemed to have heard the See-Saw song used in "NOIR" and came to the door and asked them to be the ED theme song for the work. The song "あんなに一緒だったのに" received critical acclaim, and Yuki Kajiura received commissions for interludes one after another. It made her feel very lucky. Before that, she had made several soundtracks, but because of the See-Saw ED, she once again made people realize that "this person can also write songs". If not, she might have been working with the soundtrack all the time.
The mobile suit gundam SEED episode "暁の車" was published under the name of the group FictionJunction YUUKA. After that, she also provided songs to animation works as a group. This is not out of strategic thinking, but a matter of course. After receiving a job writing an interlude for Gundam, she first wrote "暁の車", then thought about who to find to sing, and felt that the voice of Yuka Minami, who had collaborated in the musical, was suitable for this song, so she asked her to sing it.
Kajiura had been indifferently thinking that he would invite many singers and musicians to perform musical activities in his own name in the future, so he came up with the name of the project "FictionJunction". When the anime was about to air, the end credits had to have the singer's name on it, so she offered to publish it under the name FictionJunction YUUKA.
FictionJunction YUUKA was not originally intended to be a monolithic event, but only a one-off name for 暁の車. But the song became popular, released a single, and was widely known for its role in general music programs, which became a fixed group.
Kajiura thinks he's really lucky. Not only is there such a popular work as Gundam, but also the previous "NOIR", whose success has increased the popularity of late-night animation in one fell swoop, and he has also benefited from it.
After FictionJunction, Kajiura also formed the kalafina group. This was during the production of "The Empty Realm", and she was commissioned to make music entirely based on her worldview, not just the background music, but also the theme song. Because the animation consists of 7 chapters, there are 7 proposals for each new singer to sing. Kajiura proposed that since this was the case, it was necessary to find someone who sang well, so he held an audition to select singers.
However, after auditioning, I couldn't find 7 singers who sang well. So Kajiura thought to himself, so he made the theme songs of the 7 parts with these people and selected the members. When it came time to name the group, she began to think, is this group going to end with The Void Realm?
After all, the singing community was not easy to form and cultivate, and she didn't want Kalafina to end up in the empty realm. But if the group doesn't achieve some results, she can't irresponsibly say that "it can continue." Although "The Empty Realm" later became the fuse of the theatrical animation boom, in the beginning, there was no TV animation and direct access to the theatrical version, which seemed to be considered a very reckless approach.
The music and plot of "The Void Realm" are very harmonious. This is because the production company ufotable pays attention to music, and Kajiura gets a video material composed of complete dynamic storyboards and accurate lines at the time point, and produces tightly sewn music with the data. This brings a very valuable experience to making the soundtrack. Especially when making TV animations, the composer just finishes the music and can't combine the music and the picture by hand.
And "The Realm of Emptiness" is the first to have a moving picture, to make music on the screen, you can personally feel that "the amount of sound relative to the story progression is too large." Kajiura understands the parts of similar musical performances, such as the need to restrain the music as much as possible in order to maximize the climax. The experience of making music for nearly ten films, one by one, changed her life as a composer.
And, because "The Realm of Emptiness" is a theatrical version, the audience will not run away and will sit in the cinema for a long time. So, in this work, she can achieve the challenge that TV animation is difficult to carry out. For example, in a two-hour work, the first 20 minutes are not music at all, only noise. The TV animation is only 30 minutes away, so the music must also be rotated during this time. Extending this time to two hours and writing music made Kajiura feel very rewarded.
Before she started Kalafina, she thought she was going to do it as much as she liked. Instead of widening the river, dig deep into the bottom. When See-Saw and FictionJunction, she still receives requests from clients. But she wants Kalafina not to be shackled, but to play only in the small confines of what she wants to do.
I can do this because the work is compatible with myself. Before starting to make music, Kajiura read the original novel of "The Realm of Emptiness", and felt that the rhythm of the article was very appetizing to himself, and his imagination would continue to emerge when he read it. She had a hunch that the concert of this work was very well done. So, until now, she feels that this work allows her to compose music freely.
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