What ideas can one, including otakaian otakus, induce after reading a anime song with viusal element supported? And, what useful information can be obtained after so?

Let's examine the lyrics with the musical instrument played together with the relevant Opening Theme clip shown. After one have doing so one will know how the flow of anime matches the video and audio in a appropriate way.

Take the Digimon Frontier (2002) as an example; the lyric of its opening theme song is as follows:

Before the artist starts singing, one would hear a musical instrument, electric guitars generating the circular wavefront of fire, with a sigh "akaa~~~~~~~" as a conscience of it. 



        The photo above is a static clip from the dynamic oscillation of the earth, meaning the turbulence of peace to be fixed. 



        The photo above is the routine logo which does nothing with the song.

        As the lyric starts, a series of drum sounds starts as a part of the superimposing melodies. The graphical connotation to this is the train. Similar techniques have been found in TV-Tokyo's previous Anime production, Cosmic Baton girl comet-san (2001). In its TVBGM collection CD 1, the first track "星のトレイン" responsible for such a acoustic effect can be found.

For the transition part, the graphical connotation of lava is used.

In the video, the climax part apparently denote the motion of the main Digimon characters only, and is the less relevant to the audio.

The time elapsed so far is 1 minute 30 second, which suits the general flow of a 24-minute Anime TV Programme (Advertisements usually take 6 minutes in a half hour)



The remaining part of the song does not belong to the Digimon Frontier opening theme. The melody is repeated. For the transition part the connotation of time "時(とき)は流(なが)れてくんだろう？" functions with the music of clappers and drums.

The climax will be repeat once more. Before so the additional music of drums and electric
guitar accelerates the speed of fire.

Note that the original Opening Theme (video) contains many Digimon characters (with differentiated functions) which are less relevant to the theme of the song (audio). This suggests that anime songs are separable from the general episode flow of anime. Therefore it is useful to explain why many otakaian otakus stress on the music (as a technical aspect) rather than the storyline (as a scenic aspect) in the study of anime. This further helps explain why many non-moe otakus read anime that apparently girl-targeted anime such as Ojamajo Doremi (Toei Animation Ltd.)) and Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san (TV-Tokyo Ltd.) - the melody of the song, which can be separable from the visual element, draw their attention, henceforth intriguing their interest in exploring the themes of the anime. Hence, one can derive a fact: the production cast of apparently girl-targeted anime and marketing cast put much emphasis on quality (and quantity, in case for Toei Animation Ltd.) of songs for diversification of interests. Certain freelance song composers, like Ootayoshi Tomohiko (太田美知彦), also have play a role in transferring technical support on music. The evidence is that Ootayoshi Tomohiko has also composed a song called Milky Way, for the anime Cosmic Baton girl comet-san again.

Ootayoshi Tomohiko also help TVB compose a Hong Kong version of Fire!!, but both the quality and duration of the song is not as good as the original one.=

Obviously the ideologies of the two lyrics are totally different as their theme bias. Moreover, as the former use the complete musical instruments of rock 'n roll (at least 3 electric guitars) the latter only use less (one of the must be the song artist, even without using any of the musical instrument), the acoustic effects) further reduces with lack of the "fire" atmosphere. Therefore it is one of the reasons that HK audience tends to reject secondary ideological products (i.e. local songs, especially translated songs) that originate from Japan / America: They demand purer atmosphere generated by the musical instrument rather than emotional connotations of the texts of the lyric. Besides, the latter songs reflect over reliance of repeated mediocre DSP effects in Hong Kong CD studios, and usually infiltrated with personal love as a means of promoting local showbiz market. This makes local audience sick.

Further training of acoustic analysis aids deciphering what an anime really want to say actually playing musical instrument. Otherwise, listening to such a song will be futile and one will only to continue to believe that it as a mere way to relax and entertain. Besides, current songs are scattered ideological products hard to digest (extract) and without enough alert one will be emotionally addicted to it and brainwashed by its theme easily.

        Therefore, we can conclude that Anime provides a way for us to decipher the complex songs popular in current societies by parsing the graphics (a representation). It has been a main concern in the flow analysis of Anime. Meaningless privatized comments filled with mere common senses, such as “I love it” (好聽)" OR "I hate it” (不好聽) without detailed analysis, usually fall into the categories of robbing acceptance by the ignorant doers, and the doers of such comments will surely be rejected by otakaian otakus for fear their analytical work should be wasted.

In the coming weeks I will be displaying another example of audiostatic induction: Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san, with the criticism which involves Cookies.

End note:

1.       The pictures of Digimon Frontier opening theme come from  http://www.helloluke.net/

2.       The score of ‘Fire!!” is available at here.

3.       The two song of fires are available at the following links:

a.       Fire!! (Original)

http://audio.xanga.com/doraemonserv2/ddf6d173883/audio.html

b.       Fire !! (Hong Kong, by Juno Mak)

http://audio.xanga.com/doraemonserv2/90e7c173914/audio.html

(Note one must have Macromedia Flash Player 9 installed)