WOOO! Only Polls 1 - 4 in Bracket Dio has closed so far, so it looks like I'm gonna make it in time for this one!
http://animusictourney.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/bracket-dio-round-1-polls-1-4/http://animusictourney.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/bracket-dio-round-1-polls-5-8/Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 1"Hacking the Gate" [OP of "Steins;Gate" (2011 )] vs "19sai" [ED from "xxxHOLiC" (2006)]
"Hacking the Gate" represents the main thing that's wrong about this tourney: it's an okay song, maybe even good if you want to exaggerate a bit, but no more. And it's even weaker when you listen to it without the benefit of the opening credits animation. Yet it's one of the top seeds in the tournament, all because the anime is so popular and recent. Looking through the comments on the poll, I see that I'm not the only one unhappy about this. Granted, the song is quite energetic (though in a way that 90% of anime songs are), and the melody isn't bad, but those traits are not nearly enough to enable it to stand out in a crowd of anime songs. "19sai" does stand out with its style, but like I said before, it's more about attitude than melody, so isn't really to my liking.
Rating for "Hacking the Gate" :|
Rating for "19sai" :|
My pick"Hacking the Gate". As much as I want to topple "Hacking the Gate", "19sai" isn't the one to do it because I like it less.
Winner"Hacking the Gate" with 55%. I was pleasantly surprised to see this match closer than expected. Seems the backlash to the song's absurdly high seeding is strong. If "Hacking the Gate" is struggling this much against a lowly seeded "19sai", it's probably going to be one of the first top seeds to fall.
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 2"Call Me Call Me" [insert song from "Cowboy Bebop" (1998)] vs "Sea of Miracles"* [OP from "Record of Lodoss War: Chronicle of the Heroic Knight" (1998)]
It's unfortunate when two good songs gets matched up against one another in the first round. I haven't heard "Call Me Call Me" that many times, but I believe it's from one of the last episodes of Bebop when the team started going their own separate ways. It's from after Ed left, if I recall correctly. The song is old school and nostalgic, and helped make the melancholy scene it was played in impactful. It says a lot that I'd consider myself familiar with the song without having heard it too many times before. It also says a lot about the reputation of the Bebop soundtrack that even its insert songs can make it into the top half of the seedings. "Sea of Miracles" is yet another entry for Maaya Sakamoto, for whose music the anime tourney has really opened my ears to. You can tell from the exotic feel of the song that it's taken from a fantasy anime. It has a Enya kind of sound to it, particularly when it comes to the backing vocals, and I love the minute twirls on the melody delivered perfectly by Sakamoto.
Rating for "Call Me Call Me" :)
Rating for "Sea of Miracles" :)
My pick"Sea of Miracles". It was close, but Bebop songs are well exposed so I'm going with the lower seeded song from the less popular show.
Winner"Sea of Miracles". Despite Scamp from The Cart Driver blog campaigning for Bebop, The "Record of Lodoss Wars" OP held on and edged it with 51% of the votes.
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 3"Free Bird" [OP from "Haibane Renmei" (2002)] vs "Gotta Knock a Little Harder"* [ED from "Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door" (1998)]
It's doubly unfortunate when two consecutive first round matches have two good songs going up against each other. The presence of yet another Bebop song goes to show how well exposed and how well loved its soundtrack is. With its blues/rock sound, "Gotta Knock a Little Harder" is so Americanised that I'm sure it could have done well in the charts over here in the west if it was released with some promotion. It's a rather an epic song, starting quite low key and building up through out until the chorus is released in a torrent of emotion."Free Bird", on the other hand, remains quite gentle throughout. But it's a lovely piece, one of the few instrumentals in the competition. But even without the benefit of vocals, the main melody still sings out effectively, with strings, woodwind and piano alternatingly taking up the task. I especially like the aftermaths of the early high point, featuring the descending piano notes; the music briefly dipped into an unexpectedly darker tone as the third note of the piano hits, which is a nice subtle twist. It probably suits the anime as that's said to have a dark streak in it, though I've not seen the whole thing yet.
Rating for "Free Bird :)
Rating for "Gotta Knock a Little Harder" :)
My pick"Free Bird". I think the Bebop songs are overpowered by exposure and needs nerfing. Good job the tracks up against them are good too so I do it with a clear conscience. I would also love to preserve this rare instrumental piece in the tourney.
Winner"Gotta Knock a Little Harder" with 52%. I am a bit surprised that "Free Bird" won - its quiet, unassuming nature and lack of vocals meant it was unlikely to appeal to the more casual listeners. That said, it does seem to have a strong following amongst not-so-casual listeners. I'm sad to see both Bebop songs go, but at least they went out to good opposition.
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 4"Don't Say Lazy" [ED from "K-On!" (2009)] vs "Zero!!" [OP from "The Devil is a Part-Timer!" (2013)]
The first half of Bracket Dio has certain represented both the best and the worst aspects of this type of tourney. On one hand we have some nice face-offs from good songs with varied styles. On the other hand, we've had songs like "Hacking the Gate" which is where it is for all the wrong reasons. Poll 4 is definitely another representative for the worst aspect of the tourney: it's the battle of two incredibly generic songs. "Zero!!" had zero rights to be in this competition; this is a case of recency bias if I ever saw one. Two years from now, no one will remember the song, and it pisses me off that it's taking up the places of potentially good songs that could have made it into this competition. "Don't Say Lazy" says the "K-On" ED. "Practice What You Preach," says I, as it's a rather lazily written anime theme. To be fair though, I guess this kind of song is what you would expect from a light music club. I mean, it wouldn't have fit the context if the band come up with something a song like "Gotta Knock a Little Harder", right? But by the same token, average songs produced by light music clubs have no place in a tournament to find the most awesome anime music.
Rating for "Don't Say Lazy" :|
Rating for "Zero!!" :|
My pick"Don't Say Lazy". It's a sign of how bad the situation is that I'm actually voting for a K-On song.
Winner"Don't Say Lazy". It's a sign of how uninspiring "Zero!!" is that the K-On song managed to score a convincing victory over it with 71% of the votes, since the other similarly generic sounding K-On songs have all fallen to their opponents so far.
AAAAAND now I've caught up with the tourney! Sort of. Polls 5 - 8 haven't actually closed yet, so if anyone is reading this, get voting, preferably for the songs I picked!
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 5"Rinbu Revolution" [OP from "Revolutionary Girl Utena" (1997)] vs "Northern Cross"* [One of the countles EDs and insert songs from "Macross Frontier" (2008)]
"Rinbu Revolution" was one of the few songs which I thought was alright while watching the "Revolutionary Girl Utena". The full version is actually a bit more interesting, with some nice instrumental sections thrown in. I don't find the main melody particularly catchy, and was more interested in some of the electronic sounds/notes lurking in the background - they sound like they could have come from game music. I haven't seen the latest Macross series, but the music certainly has been modernised. There are certainly interesting points in the song, like how it fuses a rap-like section into the melody, and how intensely passionate the vocals are. But I don't really like rap, and I think the singer may have injected a bit TOO much passion in the vocals.
Rating for "Rinbu Revolution" :|
Rating for "Northern Cross" :|
My pick"Northern Cross". Could have voted for either, really.
You'll note the lack of a winners section. Did I mention I've caught up to the tourney and the polls are still running? :P
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 6"Curry Song"* [insert song from "Minami-ke" (2007)] vs "JOINT"* [OP 1 of "Shakugan no Shana Second" (2007 - 2008)]
"Curry Song" is another one of those novelty entries, though this one is rather more musical than some of the other novelty offerings. It's like a waltz, but delivered with an over-the-top style and lyrics that, from what I can tell with my limited Japanese, seems to be mostly enumerating the ingredients to making a curry ("papurika" means paprika and "chocolato" means chocolate right? Wait, what's chocolate doing in a curry?!) Baka-Raptor helpfully provided a link to the video for the song, but like everything else that I've seen of the "Minami-ke" so far, it tries hard but just isn't that funny. At least it tried harder to be different than "JOINT" though, which is about as generic as they come.
Rating for "Curry Song" :|
Rating for "JOINT" :|
My pick"JOINT". Actually, now I'm not sure why I voted for this song. I didn't care for either songs, so I didn't put much thought into the vote, but I may have voted for it because it was a more serious song, or I may have feared a novelty song like "Curry Song" will go too far in the competition, so voted against it.
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 7"Tsuki no Mayu"* [ED 2 of "Turn A Gundam" (1999 - 2000)] vs "See VisionS"* [OP 2 of "A Certain Magical Index II" (2010 - 2011)]
In an earlier bracket, I was saying how it's great that others can discover awesome songs like "Fantastic Children" ED through the tourney ... and now it's happened to me as well. "Tsuki no Mayu" is the kind of song that makes me want to watch the anime it's from. It's a slow burning epic, starting in almost acapella style, with only a constant ambient tone in support of the backing harmonies and main vocals. And then the instruments surges in richness and power, and painted in my mind the scene of a red sun rising up from the horizon over a barren, parched landscape (ironically, the title of the song translates to "The Moon's Cocoon"). While the vocals don't change that much throughout, the wax and wane of the instrumentation gives this atmospheric song a great sense of dynamics. I think the only thing that's holding it back is that the main melody is a little too simple. But it would take a very good song for me to vote against it, and "See VisionS" certainly isn't up to the task. While "See VisionS" isn't bad, its energy and dancey beats sounds all too familiar; while its melody was quite nice in places, it's a little repetitive and sometimes lost my attention. Ultimately, it's a listen-and-forget kind of song.
Rating for "Tsuki no Mayu" :D
Rating for "See VisionS" :|
My pick"Tsuki no Mayu".
Bracket Dio Round 1 Poll 8"Groovin' Magic"* [OP of "Gunbuster 2: Diebuster" (2004 - 2005)] vs "Beauty of Destiny"* [ED 2 of "Persona 4: The Animation" (2011 - 2012)]
"Groovin' Magic" reminds me of the Chobits OP, except more enduring. When I looked up the artist behind that, I found it was the same artist - ROUND TABLE feat Nino. What a surprise. "Groovin' Magic" is quite a cute, charming little number, with sweet vocals that's doesn't trigger off a diabetic reactions from me because it flies just below my sugar tolerance levels. There's a certain attraction about one particular note in the melody, but my limited musical knowledge and vocabulary doesn't allow me to properly identify and express what it is. For what it's worth though, I think it's probably something to do with an accidental that's a semitone lower than what you would expect for that note, and it basically changes the feel of the whole phrase. "Beauty of Destiny" is very much in line with the kind of music that the "Persona 4" game had. I wonder if it was based on, or even a reproduction of, one of the songs in the game. I was never a fan of the style of the music in the game, though. I did like some parts of this song (most of the sung parts), but disliked others (the rapped parts). And while I do think recency bias played a bit part in getting this song into the competition, as least it feels a bit different from most other anime songs.
Rating for "Groovin' Magic" :)
Rating for "Beauty of Desinty" :|
My pick"Groovin' Magic".
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