Search: Anime soundtracks?

The talk of how crappy the music in NGE is on the dedicated thread got me wondering about anime soundtracks. Are there cool 80s/90s anime soundtracks or do they all consist of lousy syrupy orchestral stuff?

This isn't my area of expertise, but as far as I know, the soundtracks for Akira, FLCL, Cowboy Bebop, and generally most of Yoko Kanno's projects hold up fairly well.

The soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop is indeed great; I remember really liking Escaflowne's music as well.

lain?

I remember Akira having lots of cool drums and FX that really brought the drama. Great stuff.
I see cool looking used anime soundtracks on vinyl every once in awhile and just assume they're orchestral garbage. But I figure there must be some quirky stuff out there.. Or maybe some vangelis-esque dreamy dx7-heavy stuff.

Susumu Hirasawa (Paprika, Millenium Actress, Paranoia Agent, Berserk) is the obvious one. Paprika is one of the best soundtracks ever regardless of what medium. Berserk has really stunning stuff too, I've wanted a cd of that for quite a while.

Something that has always bothered me is that the English language Fist Of The Northstar series soundtrack has never been available but it was spectacular. It was credited to Reinforced Records but only the opening theme tune identified the specific artist (Mike Egan?) It was atmospheric dance stuff mostly. I have the Japanese soundtrack but it isn't that great, but it does have some funny lyrics ("such a lonely man", "you are shocked!", "this is the 90s!", funny in context).

The FotNS animated movie had a brilliant soundtrack too, but that was the original Japanese one. It has a really cheesy rock song by Komodo Band called "Heart Of Madness" which is actually quite fun.

I don't know how often an English version soundtrack was created but Street Fighter animated movie had KMFDM and In The Nursery among many rock bands(I was shocked to find that when I looked it up).
Berserk in English added some Japanese bands doing (pretty good) American style indie for the intro and outro.
I think Dragon Ball Z had a special western version intro too. Pokémon must have done this.

Akira soundtrack is great, I've always wanted to hear the prog band that guy was in. Geinoh Yamashirogumi.

I'm not a massive South Park fan but their parody of anime theme tunes with partial English language was hilarious, with that "protect my balls". I've seen quite a few things like that.

To be honest I don't like most anime and most of the tunes I have heard are terrible. I actually thought the Evangelion theme was quite fun.

Berserk "Fear" by Susumu Hirasawa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOJb_0VZXsY

oh cool! I'm vaguely aware of him via PModel but didn't know he did soundtracks. I guess hosono from ymo did a couple of soundtracks in the late 80s that are supposed to be pretty weird/cool

I always say the Ghost in the Shell soundtrack, but I seem to be the only one who does...

his soundtrack for paprika is amazing altho not within the thread's time period. def look for it

ghost in the shell soundtrack is also great

Are we planning to keep this to 80s/90s?

nah, doesn't matter. personally, i'm more into finding out about 80s artifacts but bring on any recs you have

Belladonna Of Sadness (early 70s) has a soundtrack kind of like a 60s French pop ballad, pretty nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUmAlWr-rYI

Great film too, very undervalued by the western anime audience because it's so different in style.

the music is crappy in eva?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGaDs4MzQJo

i mean the misato and ritsuko themes and whatever the banjo-y track is called are a little frivolous but no anime had better music direction imo

yeah i love the eva soundtrack tbh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbSzSz6CHvE

Fist Of The Northstar 1986 movie. Fooking awesome.

http://youtu.be/IFLvdvjqNDM?list=PL7A7zdbTXj4VCLM4OO2MwobJgK72Sikpu
http://youtu.be/fZJ024p97Pc?list=PL7A7zdbTXj4VCLM4OO2MwobJgK72Sikpu

misato's theme was the alarm clock sound on my phone for a really long time

this is my jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CptTCkAT2GM

i was actually revisiting the three gundam wing opening themes the other day, at this point in my life they sound like rave-y abba which i'm about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV5XU4vIu5E

not anime (there's animated bits) but hausu has great catchy soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcSn1iGt0U

hausu soundtrack haunts my nightmares

Western version of Fist Of The Northstar series.

The series never lived up to the unbelievable excitement of the opening, maybe nothing else in life has ever fulfilled the expectations instilled in me by this intro *sob*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTT8Ylf4ss

and the immensely evocative end music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKwp7-cu1Uo

The show did have its moments but it was plagued by all the usual things in a martial arts anime series. But I'll never forget the feelings stirred by the music. I stayed up really late and only got 4 hours sleep before school to see this show each week. It was so exciting.

was fist of the north star distributed in the us by manga entertainment? only now recalling how they'd occasionally alter soundtracks (the fist opening, putting a passengers song over the end credits of the us release of ghost in the shell). in an odd moment of nostalgia i looked up old us anime promos on youtube the other day and saw all of the awful stuff manga put out back in the day, set to kmfdm's "ultra"

also is the akira soundtrack technically gamelan? i learned about gamelan over a decade later and had an oddly reductive epiphany about it resembling the akira soundtrack

oh, i can't believe i forgot: if you're looking for synthy weird anime OSTs, joe hisaishi's score for nausicaä of the valley of the wind is awesome, although it seems like mostly orchestral versions on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82MCCTCqauo

Yeah FotNS was Manga Entertainment. The KMFDM tune was used in the Street Fighter film when Chun-Li fights Vega (or Balrog if you insist on Japanese purism).

Pen Pals from Berserk intro. You can hear the Pavement and Pixies influence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrWiRdFajTQ

Some great stuff on the Berserk soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZa0Yh6e7dw

Also Samurai Champloo and all the Fat Jon and Nujabes stuff on that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtuoEtohPv4

The Jojo's stuff is pretty patchy but a few jems throughout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1jp0Dxa9tQ

I'll even go to bat for some of the early Naruto stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKCaqDZFJ7o

Have a lot of time for the stuff Imahori did for Trigun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU-YBopiuX0

chobits op remix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyDsPAjJzvI

squid girl s1 op:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCcLrC4MuLI&feature=kp

roujin-z ed by mishio ogawa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oki0JqTEaqw

patlabor 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEK6l02Rl5U

all the ones by ymo members are good too. hosono's for tale of genji (which I've never actually seen) and night on the galactic railroad are both top-notch, as his sakamoto's for wings of honneamise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8nunklJx7o

also dig this synthed-out arrange lp of macross tracks:
http://youtu.be/hFK8pAa_r4E?list=PL5C6F7D55B988F62F

oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFK8pAa_r4E&list=PL5C6F7D55B988F62F

i was actually revisiting the three gundam wing opening themes the other day, at this point in my life they sound like rave-y abba which i'm about

this song rules

GENIUS PARTY

esp. fennesz' music for limit cycle, some of his best 00s work imo

patlabor 2 seconded, basically anything with mournful roland d50 synth pads is cool to me

if peeps are fiending for more future gamelan, the akira soundtrack is part of a trilogy of albums by geinoh yamashirogumi where they combined traditional asian folk forms with late 80s production aesthetics - dx7s, gated reverbs, chorused out gutar shreds, p essential stuff

Some of the JA Seazer stuff from Revolutionary Girl Utena is nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r6EGNIANaI

i tend to like soundtracks that are more about sound design which add to the atmosphere, but these don't tend to have a lot in the way of hummable tunes. Ryutaro Nakamura directed shows do this a lot (Lain, Kino's Journey, Ghost Hound especially which felt v Lynchian). would also add my fav anime show Mushishi to this, with its chiming bells, gongs & singing tubes ala http://youtu.be/k9XG9NGDaO4

Speaking of Susumu Hirasawa, I haven't been able to find the version of this song used in the anime anywhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEp6lUBsrE

(The OST has a version but it's not the one used in the anime)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJY1TomgkBs

Probably ya'll are gonna think it's corny but there was nothing greater than the Initial D Hi-NRG eurobeat soundtracks when you were 16 and just got your license

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gah8FnYSypk

if peeps are fiending for more future gamelan, the akira soundtrack is part of a trilogy of albums by geinoh yamashirogumi where they combined traditional asian folk forms with late 80s production aesthetics - dx7s, gated reverbs, chorused out gutar shreds, p essential stuff

oh goddamn

I liked the Redline OST but it might not make an impression if not heard within the context of the anime

I like FLCL's fading afternoon garage tunes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxVAT_pdyOA

Ghost Hound especially which felt v Lynchian

yea sound design on this show was outta this world good

ecophony gaia is th only other geinoh yamashirogumi I've spent much time with but it's excellent. gotta get on the others.

Speaking of Susumu Hirasawa, I haven't been able to find the version of this song used in the anime anywhere:

http://www.youtube.com/v/GMEp6lUBsrE&fs=1&hl=en

This is from the album Switched-On Lotus which re-does a bunch of his songs in a more grand orchestral style (very impressive as these songs were quite grand on their own), it's really excellent.

I do wanna point out that as good as his soundtracks are they often wind up being based off his current studio work. "Forces" is based off "Take the Wheel", "Run" is a remix of "Rubedo". A lot of people point out how great "The Girl in Byakkoya" and "Parade" are off the Paprika OST but both those songs also appear on White Tiger Field which also includes eight more songs in the same style. In other words if you dig the soundtracks I think you'll really dig the albums. I mean all of his solo stuff is epic and soundtracky, case in point, from the same album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ETZbw1GR8

I have Switched On Lotus, frogbs, and it's not on that

Tekkonkinkreet by Plaid

ahh yeah, I misread your post. well, let me know if you find it!!

The Initial D songs were pretty rad Eurobeat but I can't imagine anyone liking them if they weren't the right age for it. Serious answer is Kiseki no UmI, the theme to Record of Lodoss War, which I think is a Yoko Kanno tune. Beautiful song with great singing.

oh lol there's talk in the dedicated thread about how bad this song is but it's actually the best and a total jam ???? and awesomely used in EoE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLoNOYcVQU

"kom susser todd" is the best fucking song

it's deployed powerfully in the movie but if it were 100% pachelbel and 0% "hey jude" I'd like way more

like IT way more *sigh*

Ahem.

So, somehow I never got around to DLing enough MP3s to make this into a mix CD back in the late 90s when I was really into these shows, but it just this minute occurred to me that the reason that my MP3 directory is, to this day, named "Pop Music" is that there was once a separate "Anime Music" folder for these things! God knows when I deleted them all, what a stupid day that was. The hard separation of genres there was pretty silly admittedly - I swung way more towards the "fun and energizing J-pop theme tune" than the kind of stuff that would actually make soundtrack/classical/jazz geeks take notice (though I still think Akira for example sounds great). Anyway these are all dope, fuiud, SHORT TV VERSIONS ONLY THOUGH because the extended cuts, like extended TV themes everywhere, kinda tend to lose the clarity and tension-and-release stuff.

Magic Knight Rayearth - Yuzurenai Negai - The greatest shoujo theme, all the sweep of epic legend, romantic drama and action-adventure excitement. And man, that high note at the climax! There was also a fairly hapless rap song, which for some reason pops into my head from time to time, and in hindsight, with its guitar parts, sounds remarkably like an UmJammer Lammy cut.

Kimagure Orange Road - Summer Side - Sweetest little 80s teen-romance theme. Before the summer takes you - Right Now!

Tenkuu no Escaflowne - Yakusoku wa Iranai - Runner-up to Rayearth's theme, this is more rhythmically insistent and very prettily sung. Visuals match it very well - this is the side of your medieval fantasy romance show where you're gazing out at the stars imagining something magical sweeping you away.

Dirty Pair - Ru-Ru-Ru-Russian Roulette - More 80s cheese, kind of peaks with the opening few seconds (though the bridge is great and I should probably sample it for something). I only ever saw the first few episodes of this show but it clearly has classic potential and I kind of want to watch it right now based on this opening. Action, hijinks, cheesecake!

Kodomo no Omocha (Kodocha) - 19 O'Clock News (Jyukuji No News) - Demented pre-teen sugar-buzz rock. I never liked the designs for the characters' faces on this, except maybe the deadpan theme song performance of the sullen male love interest.

Sailor Moon - Moonlight Densetsu - Canonical, obviously. Kinda sounds dinkier and more Casio-based than I wanted to remember but c'mon. I actually learned to play this one for keyboard class in high school so clearly this wasn't necessarily a minus.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Cruel Angel's Thesis (Zankoku na Tenshi no These) - Badass signifiers of intrigue, prophecy, and a colorful cast! This is another one that kind of peaks with the opening IMHO; once the rest kicks in it all sounds kinda like shopping mall muzak or something. The closing version of Fly Me To The Moon probably has more to do with the general musical footprint of the show - this and the jaunty Misato theme were also on my keyboard-class list. I still warm up my hands playing "Misato" - it's fun! Komm, Susser Tod (TRIPPY AND IMPENETRABLE SPOILERS), as noted above, is a Hey Jude rip but a good one.

Bubblegum Crisis - Konya Wa Hurricane (Tonight The Hurricane) - Oh man this shit is badass. Those backing "aahhhs!" The in-narrative band performing it - PRISS AND THE REPLICANTS - and their stage wigs! I would love to be in a band that performed this, and I want all post-apocalyptic noir shows to have this kind of soundtrack. Nene's dumb song Bye Bye My Crisis is also a favorite, and gets stuck in my head every time I see Our Brand Is Crisis on the library DVD shelf.

Here Is Greenwood - No-Brand Heroes - I cannot remember anything about this song, but according to a letter I wrote one of my internet friends to accompany a Christmas mixtape in 1998, "I love this. With a passion." It's hard to find this online because (a) the direct-to-video anime was never all that popular, and (b) the manga was much more recently adapted as a live-action series which takes up all the youtube coverage. I imagine it must be pretty good though!

Shoujo Kakumei Utena - Take My Revolution - Another pounding theme for a very weird shoujo series, one I've always been tempted to revisit and actually finish; the English release got bogged down badly for reasons I forget, so it was literally years before the second half of its run came out and I'd moved on by then. But man - a bunch of boarding school kids fencing each other in some weird tournament to determine who will "gain the power to bring the world revolution"? Sign me up! The other treat here is the juicily melodramatic Apocalypse theme, played when characters ascend to the dueling arena, and with completely bonkers lyrics (translation: "The absolute destiny: apocalypse! Birth records, baptismal registry, death records!"). The duel songs themselves are even weirder: "Carboniferous, Permian, Paleozoic (...) AMMONITE!"

whoa, thanks for that!!

*^_^*

coool!!!!

oh also for more 80s good times I have to rep for

Urusei Yatsura - the first theme, Lum No Love Song and the later closers Cosmic Cycler and I, I, You & Ai are both very sweet little nuggets of period charm. I still believe one of the great projects of my retirement will be tracking down and watching the entirety of this 200-episode space-alien sitcom.

i've seen a lot of anime features but i have to admit i've only dipped my toe into the TV series because i just can't imagine where it will ever end. i used to see those shelves at the video store where there'd be like 400 volumes of neon genesis evangelion or whatever and just making a sharp turn away for fear that i would get sucked in never to reemerge.

For the "Cruel Angel's Thesis" fans:

http://aintgotnoladytronblues.tumblr.com/post/143851671217/gigasatan-gotta-love-the-70s-how

there'd be like 400 volumes of neon genesis evangelion

nge is only 26 episodes long! they staggered it out on 100000000 tapes bc there were only two episodes per tape

most tv anime is one self-contained 24 or 26 episode season (or one 12/13 episode season)

I know next to nothing about this subgenre but I know that I really really like the Boogiepop Phantom soundtrack.

also, i never realized that the koko wa greenwood ova was so obscure. i guess i don't often see people talking about it. this seems like a pretty classic list of the better stuff you would see at like a university anime club in the late 90s/early 2000s

I know next to nothing about this subgenre but I know that I really really like the Boogiepop Phantom soundtrack

yeah it's basically perfect early '00s japanese techno

haha yeah i basically never dug too much deeper than the mainstream canon of the late 90s - I dug a few things like Kodocha that were just then getting fansubbed for a niche audience, but otherwise, just a string of 'gateway' shows (and the range of "MANGA MAN SAYS..." stuff that'd been at Blockbuster throughout the decade to an extent) really.

Greenwood felt a little obscure even in high-school anime club though. Like, someone had brought it around, so it was part of the set of things we knew about, but it wasn't much-discussed on the internet. Plus, it was basically a straightforward boarding-school story, no robots or other worlds or psychic powers or anything. Probably the most 'Japanese' thing any of us watched, in a way.

(And, appropriately, the first installment of my own lengthy high school comic epic The Umgurai Saga, set in the high school technology lab, was entitled "Here Is Techwood." I had no knowledge of Atlanta's famous Techwood Homes housing project.)

A couple from the "wacky" file - we were cracked up by the Dragon Half closing theme - IIRC an extended tribute to the heroine's efforts to prepare egg dishes. Ranma No Baka is a character song for long-annoyed protagonist Akane, repeatedly insisting on the stupidity of usually-male lead Ranma. The bottled Lita Ford arrangement was implausibly described by one of our bunch as "heavy metal," heightening the comic alternation with the "sweet" interlude. Comedy gold, to a 16-year-old anime fan.

you guys had high-school anime clubs? maybe i'm a little older than you (i went to HS in the VHS era, for one thing, so "fansubs" weren't really a thing)

fansubs were distributed on vhs still when i was first getting into anime. there was an anime club at my magnet jr high but in high school we went to ut austin anime club meetings

It was absolutely the VHS era! We got into this on the Eva thread a while back but fansubs were a matter of sending somebody a check for the value of three blank tapes, and them dubbing 'em up with either 16 episodes in washed-out EP or four in lovely bright SP. We spent a fair bit of allowance, and later summer-job money, that way, and with a cluster of even a half-dozen people that meant you could see a lot of shows by loaning stuff back and forth.

As previously related we had two anime clubs but only because the first one was run by a senior-year tyrant and we felt compelled to start a breakaway faction.

http://gunshowcomic.com/ac/part0/20090122.png

oh wow, that's good

Discussion of anime clubs and tapes in the 90s starts here I think: neon genesis evangelion

i came across this today and i'm kinda blown away, by the first track especially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLg_wp0IXoI&index=1&list=PLDCCB9272B2489B01

Ooh yeah, that's up my alley. Totally different itch than the stuff I've linked above, but cool.

I've been recently working my way through old 90s Sailor Moon Episodes and found that while never really cared much for the Japanese music used, I do really enjoy the second ending theme sued for the SuperS season:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb2gdrUISzc

i wonder if my HS had such a club and i was just totally unaware. i wasn't into this stuff in HS, i probably thought it was "nerdy" (along with magic cards and suchlike). but i certainly had never heard of one.

that's interesting about that taping thing. i did that kind of thing but with music tapes... would send folks a few bucks to dub bootlegs of shows. kind of forgot about all that.

sorry for thread derail. i'll check out the NGE page.

no worries on derail! I wonder if our anime club was in any sense "visible" - there must have been flyers or something posted around, but not REALLY. I did eventually create a (pointless) website, which might have just been part of the scam of making the breakaway club look legitimate enough to get recognized by the school.

That Super S closer isn't bad! I like the animation anyway. Even as a great fan of the show i never actually made it that far (though I certainly read lots of summaries, and fanfic using those characters). It was BARELY available (quality fansubs were still working through R or maybe S, and I didn't have enough pocket money for them all), and it sounded, ummm, really goofy, like they were swinging for a younger and younger audience. Too much Chibi-Usa... and, um, Pegasus?!

website! in the mosaic era?

these days i find certain torrent sites pretty good not just for anime /films/ (including ones that have never been officially released w/ english subs) but anime soundtracks as well. my fave anime tune is a really obvious one, the nausicaa title tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EiGG--eXc

you can hear a demo (??) by the author, hosono haruomi, here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKfT4h-po6s

great vocoder vocals on the latter btw

Thank you, Internet Archive!

The profoundly embarrassing anime pages proper are here. Yikes.

And that vocoder-vocal version rules.

hmmm, "film society"? way to class it up... :)

Well, we had to more clearly mark it out from the anime club, or it would have seemed redundant when we were getting it approved. I think it was even officially the "Eastern Film Appreciation Society."

"society for the study of modern visual culture"

the berserk soundtrack is so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLiRMorUV2g&list=PL9146BDACDA5C450A&index=8

Iczer-One, Dangaioh and probably a dozen other forgotten giant robot OVAs have some sweet Godzilla-like horn sections

Amazing, someone made a playlist of the english dub version soundtrack to Fist Of The North Star, which has never had a disc release and I don't think anyone ever listed who did the tracks. The end credits always said "Reinforced Records" but only told you one or two of the artists.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGdUqxn08cb9ZTEopP8OKvkp0yh2SaGsa
Quite a few of these I don't remember