Welcome to Wota Wonderings! We are a group of english-speaking Japanese music bloggers brought together once a month to answer questions posed by johpan. We strive to be creative and entertaining, and we may even shed a bit of new light on interesting musical and cultural topics. Any questions about how we work should be directed to johpan. Don’t forget to check out the other posts from this month at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

This month’s topic:

The music industry has had many tie-ins with animes and doramas. Of those tie-ins, did one manage to capture your interest and get you hooked on their music? Or, did one manage to change your perspective of a musical act?

As a 2nd part, did you end up watching the anime or dorama in its entirety or give up once the musical act’s tie-in ceased?

And for you non-anime/dorama watchers, have there been any CM tie-ins that had a similar effect on you?

My first real brush with J-music came from watching the anime Sailor Moon. Back in 1995, I stumbled upon this annoying wide-mouthed crybaby on TV with tearing pouring from her eyes and I was intrigued. I quickly became engrossed in this cartoon with a different drawing style from what I was used to and immediately started looking up anything I could related to it. I became interested in the Japanese version of the show when I realized that the North American version had cut some episodes due to irrelevance and/or “inappropriateness” for American television.

As I looked up information on the Japanese version, I found some image songs and was quite interested to see that the seiyuu were the ones who actually sang for their characters, unlike in the NA version where a singer would be brought in to sing for the characters (ex. Sailor Mars singing “Oh Starry Night”).

I fell in love with the main song of the Sailor Moon R Movie “Moon Revenge”, and I was able to find some of the individual Senshi’s image songs, like Sailor Venus’ (my favourite Senshi) “Route Venus” and Sailor Neptune’s “Unmei wa Utsukushiku” which is a beautiful song which I still randomly feel like listening to today.

Moon Revenge – The Peach Hips (LOL Sailor Moon R movie. So dramatic. XD)

Unmei wa Utsukushiku – Katsuki Masako

Though I never really followed up with these seiyuu after watching the series, they hold a special place in my personal musical history, for this was the beginning of my musical journey into the J-music sphere.

Moving away from anime, a Jpop artist that I discovered through a video game and followed up with for at least a little while afterward was Hamasaki Ayumi.

I am a huge video game fan, particularly of the RPG genre. So, back in 1999, bought the game Thousand Arms for the PlayStation. The game interested because me because in addition to it being an RPG, it also had a dating simulation aspect to the game – the main character would take girls out on dates through the game, and as your intimacy increased with each girl, you could forge more powerful weapons. I have to admit that this is one RPG that I never got very far into (unlike the Final Fantasy series where every installment that I’ve played, I’ve at least gotten to the last disc, if I haven’t beaten the game).

However, the opening theme for this song was “Depend on You” by Hamasaki Ayumi. It was quite surprising to have the original Japanese theme song for the US release, but I wasn’t about to complain because I fell in love with that song.

Hamasaki Ayumi – Depend on You (Thousand Arms Opening)

After that, the next Ayumi song I got into was “Boys & Girls” which was again featured in a video game – this one being Unison for the PlayStation 2. I had gotten the North American version of the game, and for whatever reason, my brother decided to look up the Japanese tracklist. There, he found out that Ayumi’s “Boys & Girls” was the song for KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It)”, and Morning Musume’s “Love Machine” was the Japanese song for Apollo 440’s “Stop the Rock”. Oh man, that Japanese track list was so much better than the North American version (and looking at this track list right now, LOL!! Dschinghis Khan was on the Japanese version too XD). At that point in time, my brother got me to listen to Boys & Girls because he really enjoyed that song, and he knew I liked Ayu from Thousand Arms. He didn’t introduce me to Morning Musume at that time, for he hadn’t been particularly impressed by “Love Machine”. We didn’t appreciate their being on the original Japanese track list until a few years later.

Hamasaki Ayumi – Boys & Girls (Sorry, I couldn’t find the PV for the song, or a clip from Unsion.. -_-; But awesome song)

I followed Ayu on and off for the new few years, loving quite a few of her album songs and singles. I stopped paying attention to Ayu in around 2003, with the last singles of hers with songs that I know being “&” and “Forgiveness”. Looking through her discography is getting me into an Ayu listening mood. I think I need to put on some “Real Me”, “Ourselves” and “Greatful days” now. XD

More recently, I have become a huge fan of Angela Aki. A few months ago, MorningBerryz wrote a post on her favourite final fantasy themes. In the midst of her favourites, which contained some of mine as well, she mentioned Angela Aki singing the theme for FFXII. Somehow, when I played through that game (and I beat FFXII), I never paid attention to the theme song. I think it may have been because I was a little upset with game for it’s lack of romance. XD But after reading that post of MB’s, I listened to the song and fell in love with Angela Aki’s voice.

Angela Aki’s “Kiss Me Good-Bye”

After that, I looked Angela up on youtube, and saw that she did her own version of my absolute favourite Final Fantasy theme song, “Eyes on Me” from FFVIII. I love Angela’s piano version of the song. I love the simplicity of just piano as the instrumental, and again her vocals are absolutely superb.

Angela Aki’s cover of “Eyes on Me” to FFVIII video (Squall & Rinoa <3)

So with respect to Angela Aki, I am a brand new fan, but I have quickly become enamoured with Angela. I got her latest album “ANSWER” and I’m sure I’ll be looking forward to any future releases by her.

Now, I didn’t cover much on anime like the original question asked. However, I find that with the songs I like from anime’s I don’t tend to follow the group afterwards. I only listen to the songs from the anime soundtrack. The one exception would be Buono!, but I was listening to them because they’re a part of Hello! Project (and Miyabi’s in that group) rather than because of Shugo Chara! I tend to watch anime for the anime rather than for a musical group who does the opening or ending theme.

There are obviously some musical acts I enjoy who do enjoy who have done anime themes, but I didn’t watch the anime to listen to their music and I didn’t get pulled into an anime (again, excluding Shugo Chara) because of a certain music group. I watched through most of Inu Yasha, but I wasn’t watching because artists/groups like Hamasaki Ayumi, BoA, Do As Infinity, Every Little Thing or Day After Tomorrow were singing the themes. I listened to those people outside of the anime and watched the anime for the story. And in most cases, I think it was my brother who got me listening to the musical acts (minus Ayumi in this particular bunch).

*EDIT: This is my bad, but I realized there is one anime that got me into a musical artist, and that would be RahXephon.

Oh Ayato, you hot anime man. <3

For all intents and purposes, RahXephon introduced me to Sakamoto Maaya, and while I didn’t follow her after watching RahXephon, I did love the music she did for the anime. “Hemisphere” is a wonderful song, one of my favourites of hers. Another of the RahXephon songs that I absolutely adore is “The Garden of Everything” which features Steve Conte

Sakamoto Maaya “Hemisphere” – RahXephon opening

Sakamoto Maaya feat. Steve Conte “Garden of Everything”

Like I said, I didn’t follow Maaya after watching RahXephon, but a few years later, while watching the anime Tsubasa Chronicle, I realized that Maaya sang the ending theme “Loop”, which made me feel reminiscent towards her RahXephon works and look up what other music she had done. And it when at this point that I realized that Maaya had also sung a song for Card Captor Sakura, which blew my mind because I loved a lot of Card Captor Sakura music. Anyway, Maaya is one of the few artists that I picked up through an anime intrigued me enough to find out what else she had done outside of the anime(s) that I discovered her in. So in her case, it was the anime that brought me to her, so of course I finished watching the series’ (though I actually dropped off of Tsubasa Chronicle at some point – I should finish off that series because I do love Syaoran and Sakura).

Sakamoto Maaya “Loop” – Tsubasa Chronicle 1st season ending

And now that I’ve pushed far too many youtube videos at all off you, I’m done! XD /EDIT*

Check out other responses to this month’s wota wonderings!
Wota Wonderings 003 – The Ties That Bind (Selective Hearing)
Wota Wonderings 3 – Tie-Ins (Solo Space)
Wota Wonderings: Mendol – where the guys are girls and the girls are hot. (boylikesmusic)
Wota Wonderings 003: It’s All Yui Horie’s Fault (Somewhat) (The Groove Music Life)
Wota Wonderings 003: Kirarin Revolution and Hot Guys (Merry Go Round)