The excursions of trying to blog in time to the tourney is starting to tire me out, but I plan to complete my coverage of the first round at least. After that ... well, I'll see how I feel then.
http://animusictourney.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/bracket-hanyuu-round-1-polls-1-4/http://animusictourney.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/bracket-hanyuu-round-1-polls-5-8/Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 1"A Cruel Angel's Thesis" [OP of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (1995 - 1996)] vs "Afro Gunsou"* [ED 3 of "Sgt Frog" (2004)]
"Tank" may not be one of my personal favourite anime themes, but I can kind of see why it's so iconic. Not so for "A Cruel Angel's Thesis", which is in my opinion one of the most overrated anime themes of all time. It's starts well enough, with the slow, rising vocals sliding across the chanting to provide the song with an enigmatic air, but that only lasts for one single sung line - the closure melody to the prologue provided by the second line already starts showing signs of being conventional. And after the prologue, the song loses all its mystery and promptly changes into an upbeat pop song. It's good but hardly top tier material. Still, since the song it's facing against is a novelty song from a novelty anime, the choice of which song to pick is pretty easy.
Rating for "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" :)
Rating for "Afro Gunsou" :|
My pick"A Cruel Angel's Thesis". "Afro Gunsou" is amusing and I might have been tempted to vote for it, but not over what I consider to be genuinely good songs.
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 2"Sister's Noise"* [OP 1 of "A Certain Scientific Railgun S" (2013)] vs "Allegro Cantabile" [OP of "Nodame Cantabile" (2007)]
Is it just me or does all the Railgun/Index songs in this tourney sounds the same? I have a feeling that everything I want to say about this song, like its consistent catchiness but easily forgettable qualities, I've already said before for the other songs. The one notable thing about this one is that it has this big dance anthem style backing track, which I don't remember being in the other Railgun/Index songs. My love for "Nodame Cantabile" is well known among my circle of anime friends, and "Allegro Cantabile" is probably its best theme across its three-season run. It's a pop/rock song with a nod towards the classical music (particularly for the piano) theme of the anime: the piano features prominently in the instrumentation, the lyrics is written around the theme of the 88 notes on the piano, and even its title is made up of tempo markings passed down from classical music tradition. Maybe my fondness for the anime is biasing my opinion here, but I really love the song, and it was on my initial shortlist of possible nominations for the tourney. I took it out because I figured the anime is reasonably popular and not that old, so a strong track like this should make the nominations stage in all likelihood, and I'm happy I was right!
Rating for "Sister's Noise" :)
Rating for "Allegro Cantabile" :D
My pick"Allegro Cantabile".
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 3"Connect" [OP 1 of "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (2011)] vs "Grey Wednesday"* [ED of "Penguindrum" episode 13, 15 and 18 (2011)]
"Connect" another meh ClariS song, this one parasitically riding high on the popularity of Madoka. The song is incredibly generic, and that's a sentiment echoed by most of the commentators on the poll (where the SERIOUS anison listeners hang out - I would be there myself if I wasn't kept so busy by this bloody blog). The commentators voting for it seems to be ones who think "Grey Wednesday" is even worse. I'm not one of them though. "Grey Wednesday" sounds like a serious songs until the female vocals come in - they were suitable for the almost childish enthusiastic air of "Rock Over Japan", but here it just sounds like they've stumbled into the wrong song. If done well, "Grey Wednesday" would have been a nice, stripped-back ballad with a simplistic piano accompaniment; when not done well, it's still significantly better than any ClariS song I can think of.
Rating for "Connect" :|
Rating for "Grey Wednesday" :)
My pick"Grey Wednesday".
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 4"Do You Remember Love" [insert song of "Macross: Do You Remember Love" (1984)] vs "Space Lion" [ED of "Cowboy Bebop" episode 13 (1998)]
This is a battle between a song I'm well familiar with and a song I'm quite familiar with even though I've only encountered it a couple of times before. "Macross: The Complete" soundtrack, comprising the music for both the original series and the "Macross: Do You Remember Love" movie, is one I've listened to a lot over the years, so I knew "Do You Remember Love" well before I watched the movie last year. Written as the flagship song for the movie, it's probably the most polished and well produced out of all Minmei's pop offerings, and while I think it is a nice song, I'm also of the opinion that there are better Minmei songs on the soundtrack. When I'd first heard it, I liked it a lot more, but the song lacks an enduring quality and quickly became unnoticeable the more I listened. "Space Lion" is a track that I quickly recognised as the ending to the "Jupiter Jazz" mini arc of "Cowboy Bebop". It's a very long track that gets played as the story drew to a typically melancholy close. The scene did a long pan up through the darkness of space as the credits started to roll; it was an incredibly stylish finish to an incredibly awesome mini-arc, and "Space Lion" helped gel everything together. The start of the piece is very minimalistic, with just the leisurely played sax sounding out wistful, laid-back melodies, penetrating the ambient sounds that captured that vast, empty feel of space. Slowly the song builds up, using primitive percussion and chanting to lend the music a tribal sound. The saxophone never goes away, but does fade into the background a lot more. It really is a magnificently atmospheric piece.
Rating for "Do You Remember Love" :)
Rating for "Space Lion" :)
My pick"Space Lion". If I only just heard both songs, I may have voted for "Do You Remember Love", but "Space Lion" has that timeless, enduring quality that "Do You Remember Love" lacks, so at this point in time, I'm happy to vote for the Bebop entry, especially since all its tracks other than "Tank!" have fallen in the first round of the tourney so far, and they definitely deserve more.
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 5"God Knows..." [insert song of "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (2006)] vs "Haruka Kanata"* [OP 2 of "Naruto" (2002 - 2007)]
"God Knows..." is one of the two songs Haruhi played at the school concert in the anime. I prefer the other song, but this one isn't half bad either. Normally I would label this kind of song "polished but forgettable", but for some reason I can't fathom, I haven't forgotten it. Maybe it's because the concert scene it comes from is pretty memorable. Of course, it helps that the prominent guitar parts are pretty ear-catching and they're probably the most stand-out parts of the song ... and it's up against the strongest bass in the competition so far - believe it! Now that I've driven off everyone with that atrocious joke, let me say that the "Naruto" OP proved to be a very pleasant surprise indeed. The bass in the beginning immediately caught my attention, as it's something different to everything that we've had so far in the tourney ... and then the song just bursts into life. The energetic, rugged rock vocals fits the hot blooded genre of "Naruto" very well. But what impressed me the most is how it kept changing while keeping a consistent feel throughout. The beginning of the verse isn't that unusual, but then it goes into a strong rhythmic section where the electric guitar is used almost like a percussion instrument to reinforce the beats; the build up of anticipation pre-chorus is effective, and the chorus is simple but forcefully releases all that pent up energy; the song slows down in the last section to mix things up even more, but nor in a way that's jarring. The only thing that I didn't like is how it ended so abruptly.
Rating for "God Knows..." :|
Rating for "Haruka Kanata" :)
My pick"Haruka Kanata". It's losing pretty badly at the moment though. I may be missing the reason why the Haruhi song is so popular, but surely the "Naruto" song deserves something more than a mere quarter of the votes here?
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 6"READY!!"* [OP 1 of "The IDOLM@STER" (2011)] vs "Pre-parade"* [OP 1 of "Toradora" (2008 - 2009)]
Even without the IDOLM@STER connection, "READY!!" sounds like an idol song through and through: you have the chorus of enthusiastic, energetic girls singing in harmonies so simplistic it sounds like they're all singing one tune (maybe they are; it's hard to tell); the melodies are catchy in a bland, familiar kind of way, and I'm guessing the lyrics are about them ready to get to #1 or something along those lines. "Pre-parade" is a bit more odd-ball. Electronics plays a bit part in the song, and not just in the instrumentation - it's also applied to the vocals to give them a robotic feel. The sung melodies are definitely a bit more interesting than "READY!!", though what caught my ear is up and down electronic notes in the backgrounds which gave a cartoony impression of a tilting ship deck in rough seas. But damn, those "pure pure" noises and other moe decorations sure are annoying.
Rating for "Ready..." :|
Rating for "Pre-parade" :|
My pick"READY!!". Listening to the songs again, I'm not sure why I picked "READY!!" over "Pre-parade". It might be cos I felt they were messing around a bit too much in "Pre-parade". Well I really don't care all that much who wins this one.
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 7"My Dreams Inside of My Dreams" [ED of "Humanity has Declined" (2012)] vs "Canta Per Me" [insert song from "Noir" ()]
"Canta Per Me" is the third of my nominations to appear, but as soon as I heard the song it's going up against, I knew it's drawn a short straw: it's up against a feel good song from a recent anime that also happens to be one of the most unusual in the competition. I'd heard "My Dreams Inside of My Dreams" before. I believe it won the ED of the Year award for 2012 on the Anime Instrumentality blog, and it's such a memorable song that I recognised it immediately. There was an Aria song in the competition earlier named "Euforia", but that title would have been far more appropriate for this song, as "My Dreams Inside of My Dreams" simply exudes a feeling of elation and happiness. With its whimsical and fluttery melody, the feeling it generates is quite surreal, as though it comes from inside a dream. Or even from a dream inside of a dream.
Rating for "My Dreams Inside of My Dreams" :)
Rating for "Canta Per Me" :D
My pick"Canta Per Me". I gotta stick by my nomination, but while I don't think "Lonely In Gorgeous" and "For Fruits Basket" deserved to lose against their opponents, "My Dreams Inside of My Dreams" is a worthy opponent for "Canta Per Me" and I wouldn't be too upset if my nomination lost, especially since Yuki Kajiura songs are so over represented in the tourney. Reading the comments on the polls, it looks like quite a few others are finding this match difficult to decide, but most have leaned towards "Canta Per Me". It gained an early lead but has now fallen behind. Seems to me that the early results often reflect the more hardcore listener's choice (if you buy into my theory that the commentators on the blog represents the more hardcore listeners), while the later votes that come flooding in represents what's generally more popular with the masses, so it's no surprise to me that "My Dreams Inside of My Dreams", being a more feel good song from a more recent anime, would benefit from the later surge.
Bracket Guts Round 1 Poll 8"TRY UNITE!"* [OP of "Lagrange - The Flower of Rin-ne" (2012)] vs "Brave Song"* [main ED of "Angel Beats" (2010)]
I can't quite decide whether "TRY UNITE!" sounds generic or not. Apparently I'm not the only one, as one of the commentators described the song as managing to "sound the same yet very different" to other anime themes, which I think hit the nail on the head. There seems to be a lot going on in the song, but I still find it a bit bland, though I think the singer did a good job - she sung all the "Macross Frontier" songs that have appeared in the competition so far. "Brave Song" is a bit sleep-inducing in the beginning, almost like a lullaby, but it manages to build up the mood while operating within calm waters, with the chorus having quite an especially uplifting effect with the help of the surging instrumentation. While not ostentatious, it manages to grow into a song that befits the title of "Brave Song" because there's a certain determination, a quiet courage within the emotions expressed by the it.
Rating for "TRY UNITE!" :|
Rating for "Brave Song" :)
My pick"Brave Song".
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