I'm still playing catch up to the tourney - I always seems to struggle to stay relevant, but hopefully the all the time consuming posts are done now.
The knock out stages contains 256 songs, and the cut off point was 38 nomination points ... but there were several songs on 38 points, which pushed the number over the limit. So qualification round 2 was basically eliminating two songs from all the ones that received 38 points to leave 256 remaining in the competition. And in this particular round, rather than voting for which one you want to keep, you voted for which one you want to get rid of. The post is found here (yes, I know it finished ages ago):
http://animusictourney.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/preliminary-round-the-animusic-elimination-game/
So let's take a belated look at the songs involved (the blog provides the songs so I don't have to). Throughout these blogs entries, I'll be rating them on the with the use of smileys. They're pretty self explanatory, but here's a brief explanation anyway.
>:( [hate]
:( [dislike]
:| [meh]
:) [like] (you'll probably see this one a lot)
:D [love]
I'll also use a * to indicate songs that I'm unfamiliar with before the tourney started.
Track 1: "Bartender" [OP of "Bartender"]
I love mixed duets; there should be more of them around. Having seen the "Bartender" anime before, I'm familiar with the OP. It's a pretty good duet that makes full use of the format, passing the song seamlessly back and forth between the two singers and often launching into combined harmonies amidst the jazzy instrumentations. The singers' parts are mostly different, with the melodies supplementing rather than echoing each other for the most part, which I appreciate. Some parts of the melody is better than others, but certainly the good bits outweigh the bad.
Rating: :)
Track 2: "You Won't See Me Coming" [ED of "Gankutsuou"]
I loved this song as the ending of "Gankutsuou" - the way it exploded into life right after the anime dropped a cliffhanger (which it did in nearly every episodes), and the way it's so relevant to the anime's themes. Listening to the song by itself though, I realised that it isn't that great when divorced from its context. Though the beginning of the song still gets me excited, it soon starts to feel a bit repetitive. Without the post-episode adrenalin coursing through my veins, the song sounds a bit over the top, with the "E-D-M-O-N-D, that's my name!" bit sounding especially silly. That's not to say I don't like the song: I still do, but I think it worked better as a shorter song, and with the excitement of the anime backing it up.
Rating: :)
Track 3: "Shinjitsu no Uta" [ED 5 of "Inuyasha"]*
The oriental instrumentation in this song is almost too in-your-face, and I don't think it fits well with the very modern style vocals. The song eventually won me over in the dramatic chorus, but the melody there does get repeated a bit too often.
Rating: :)
Track 4: "HANAJI" [OP of "Maria Holic]*
I saw one episode of the show and dropped it for being irritating. The opening theme also seems to set off with the intent to irritate, but actually, the rest of the song grew on me pretty fast. The energy in the song is infectious and so is the melody in both the vocals and in the instrumentation. The only major complaint I have is all that explicit moaning and stuff in the vocals. It probably fits the content of the show, but as a standalone song, those bits are pretty embarrassing, and you wouldn't want to be caught listening to it.
Rating: :)
Track 5: "Rock Over Japan" [insert song from "Penguindrum"]*
Probably my favourite of the bunch. The song energetically works its way around several different during the song, but they mesh together quite well, and I like them all. Its constantly changing form keeps the song interesting for me. I like its melodies, I like its energy, but probably most of all, I like the way they echo the "Rock!" part during the chorus. They should have done more of that!
Rating: :)
Track 6: "Hito toshite Jiku ga Bureteiru" [OP1 of "Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei"]
When we showed this at my local anime society, everyone went on about good the first OP is. I really disliked it. I tend to prefer more melodic songs, and melodically this song felt quite flat to me. The song is also pretty weird, and not in a way that appeals to me. Nor did I like the aggressive, rasping main vocals, nor the random backing vocals that chimed in. Basically I liked very little of what was in this song. I supposed the piano parts that backed up the vocals were alright, though.
Rating: >:(
Track 7: "Yowake Umare Kuru Shoujo" [ED1 of "Shakugan no Shana"]*
This song caught my attention straight away with its atmospheric opening, with the deep, sonorous chanting and the startlingly strong vocals that followed up. Alas, when the instruments kicks in, it kind of descends into a more generic sounding anime song, albeit quite a nice sounding one. I do like the song, but the opening promised something a lot more interesting. The version streamed on the page also cut off quite suddenly. Strangely enough most of the versions of the song I found on the web suffered the same problem.
Rating: :)
Track 8: "19Sai" [OP of "xxxHolic"]
Not a style you'd generally associate with anime songs, I'll give it that. It can't seem to hold my attention though, perhaps partly due to my familiarity with the song.
Rating: :|
Results: The "Sayonara, Zetsubo Sensei" OP is my least favourite by far, so it was an easy choice for me to vote off that. But that ended up with the least votes. The Bartender and Shana songs got eliminated, with the Shana song leading almost the entire way until the end when it was passed by the Bartender song. In the comment section though, there do seem to be a lot of people expressing surprise about how many votes the Shana song got. I was also surprised by its unpopularity, as I thought it was one of the better songs in there, particularly with its strong opening section. I wonder how many people accidentally voted for their favourite, and how many voted for it because of how its ending got cut off. Overall, if this elimination game is an indication of things to come, then I'm very much looking forward to the other songs the tourney will springing up.
↧