The rock duo Monoral, consisting of Anis Shimada and Ali Morizumi, have two EPs and two full-length albums under their belts but I first heard their music, as quite a few others no doubt did, through their single Kiri, the song used in the opening theme to Ergo Proxy. This is featured on the second of their LPs, 2007′s Turbulence.

It’s testament to the soaring Kiri (not to mention my impulsive music purchasing habits) that I went ahead and ordered the entire album based on my impressions of that song alone; fortunately the rest of the material on offer is of a consistently high quality. It’s worth noting that all the lyrics are performed in English – a fact explained by Anis and Ali being fluent in both this and Japanese. This means that not only are the songs somewhat more accessible to overseas fans than other similar J-rock bands but it also gives the music a distinctly American flavour. Indeed, the best way I can describe the album’s sound as a whole is ‘grungy’ – there are elements reminiscent of Stateside alt-rock and similarly influenced artists that followed in the intervening years.

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(Inspired by Lewis’s earlier article – and the fact that I just can’t get the first ending song from ‘Kyo Kara Maoh!’ out of my head right now!)

In France they call them ‘génériques’. Here we tend to call them the ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ song. Love them or hate them, they’ve been an integral part of the whole anime experience even before the ‘Cha La Head Cha La’ song introduced Son Goku in ‘Dragonball Z’ way back when. Nowadays, being chosen to sing and/or write the song that accompanies the opening sequence can be the start of a lucrative career in the world of commercial music for a young singer or band.

So, what do you do if you’re driven mad by an anime song, but you’re not quite sure how it goes after the first couple of bars? Or you’ve been watching ‘Shaman King’ or ‘One Piece’ in the bowdlerized US versions and you want to hear the original music? You go to www.coucoucircus.org!

I first happened upon the French website Coucoucircus a couple of years ago or so. Nowadays they have a really useful English translation as well. It’s a wonderful treasure-house of génériques, with the Japanese words helpfully transcribed so that you can sing along. It’s a great resource, as long as you don’t want to download the songs. As the good people who run Coucoucircus politely point out, there are other sites set up (and licensed) if that’s your aim. But for hours of happy browsing and listening (and a little karaoke), Coucoucircus is the site to visit. Of course, there is a long and honourable tradition of showing ‘proper’ anime on children’s television in France (anyone remember Club Dorothée?) so, referring back to Lewis’s article, there are plenty of nostalgic theme tunes to be found in their French translated versions on the site (‘Mysterious Cities of Gold’ and ‘Ulysses 31’ to name but two old favourites). Of course, if you’d rather have the lyrics translated into English, then www.animelyrics.com is another really useful site to visit with links to YouTube, also highly recommended.

I’ve often wondered, however, to what extent the appeal of an opening song influences the viewer’s first impressions of a series – and whether those impressions can be blighted by a naff or inappropriate choice of music. The witty mix of traditional Japanese imagery and hip-hop in ‘Samurai Champloo’ was an inspired marriage that led perfectly into the first episode. And Yoko Kanno never seems to hit a false note in setting the scene for what’s to come: from the Seatbelts jazz groove in ‘Tank’ for ‘Cowboy Bebop’ through the raw and restless ‘Stray’ for ‘Wolf’s Rain’ to the upbeat opening for retro fantasy/mecha series ‘Genesis of Aquarion’, she always seems to find the right sounds to draw the viewer in.

Then there’s the closing song. How could the mesmeric ‘Wind’ for ‘Naruto’ have been replaced for Jetix with that tedious guitar jangle (as they roll the credits at triple speed to allow more time for adverts?)

Sometimes I can’t bear to listen to the opening song so much that I’ll skip it altogether. Am I alone in this? Top hate right now is the opening to ‘Spiral’. The singer’s voice is so piercingly off-key that I have to hit fast forward. Another pet hate is the beginning of ‘Gilgamesh’ (and the closing song as well). Liked the series and the rest of the incidental music – loathed the génériques. I also used to hate ‘In the Endlessly Far Sky’, the opening to ‘Kyo Kara Maoh!’ The lead singer of The Stand Up has a voice of such penetrating stridency that it could probably set dogs howling (we have a cat). Yet the ending (same singer?) is one of my all-time favourite anime songs: cute, well-matched to the adorable visuals and so catchy that once heard, you’ll just have to hear it again and again.

And talking of ending songs, some of the best are the cute ones, such as Rie Tanaka singing ‘Raison d’Etre’ from ‘Chobits’ or the ending to ‘Pumpkin Scissors’. As for those that reinforce the poignancy of the episode you’ve just been watching, ‘Mermaid Princess’ from ‘Chobits’ (Rie Tanaka again), Yuki Kajiura’s ‘Path’ from ‘Loveless’ or most unbearably sad of all, Yoko Kanno’s ‘ gravity’ for ‘Wolf’s Rain’. Yet I also love ‘Hey, Jimmy!’ by Hav from ‘Peacemaker Kurogane’; it’s such a brilliant pairing of an aggressively swaggering metal track with charmingly inconsequential domestic vignettes of the characters: Vice-Commander Hijikata smoking his pipe; Soji with Saizo, his pet pig, Tetsu playing with the other children. And the animation has been timed to fit the beat of the music really well; it’s simple but it worked.

I’ve proposed a few of my current favourites and pet hates. Anyone else like to name some of their best – and worst – anime theme songs?

Since this is my first post on this brand spanking new blog I decided to cover an issue that I had completely forgotten about until a few days ago. As I was roaring along the road running over various species of wildlife and pensioners one of Gwen Stefani’s records came on the radio. As you may or may not know Gwen in her recent years has taken a great shine to Japanese pop culture. Funnily enough this 3 minute spat of pop music got me thinking to more pressing matters, the state of anime soundtracks and their past.

When I got home I had a gander over my soundtracks through the years and there’s one thing I noticed that has changed. Back in the early 90’s you would be hard pressed to not find a soundtrack that didn’t have some sort of English translation. Carrying onto the late 90’s there was a mix of both original Japanese music and English translations. If a show was deemed popular enough the songs would be re-dubbed along.

But now we are almost in the 2010’s and things are changing.

Now if you’re sitting there and thinking that nothing has changed then let me show you some examples. The easiest ones that come to mind (you may have your own, please let me know) are Tenchi Muyo and Dragon Ball Z. Through the early 90’s both soundtracks for these shows and movies were sung by English speaking artists for their respective dubs and were included in the shows at one point. They were released into the American market and things were all fine and dandy.

Move onto 1998 and Cowboy Bebop was released. This soundtrack is considered by some as the best in any Anime. It’s also a fine blues track in its own entity. Now the most important thing about the songs released by Cowboy Bebop was the mix of both English and Japanese lyrics.

Now taking a look at current day Anime soundtracks. One of the biggest phenomenon’s of 2006 was the release of Hare Hare Yukai from T.M.O.H.S The catchy ending song from this uber popular show engulfed Anime fandom like a wild forest fire. The soundtrack was released with the dubbed R1 box set, completely untouched from its original format.

So if we look at things in the bigger picture we can see that the soundtracks and their translations have changed over time. There are a number of theories and thoughts behind this and I share sentiment with a few of them. For one you could say that Japanese pop culture, along with Anime, has become more mainstream and accepted than it was back in the early 90’s. People are now more open to foreign music sighting less need for change.

You could also argue the fact that the overall quality of the Anime soundtrack has increased over the years. That still doesn’t mean all soundtracks are great. Every time I hear a song from Naruto I want to kick puppies. But the really good pieces of Anime music are on the level of pop songs and are taking over the charts in Japan.

But there’s also the fact that other artists from various countries are also being brought in to do their piece for shows. One example that comes to my mind is Ergo Proxy. The theme tunes from this particular show were done in English by Monoral and the infamous Radio Head. Now obviously there are plenty shows out there with various soundtracks and these are not the be all and end all. These are only examples that spring to my mind when writing this.

But the music to Anime has changed over the last decade or so. You can think of your own reasons but I would personally put it down to the quality of songs going up along with the demand for Japanese pop culture. Hence why Miss Stefani got me thinking about this article. I don’t think the music translation has died out completely; the chance for cover songs is still there. But with companies trying to save as much costs in production as they can and fans willing and able to buy the first product anyway. It begs the question to the creators, is there really a demand out there anymore?

But with fans craving more original music and the song writers themselves doing songs in English, I wouldn’t put money on translations being around much longer. Over the years to come I think the trend will continue. We will see a variety of different genres using both full English and Japanese tracks, all mixed into one big shiny album for you to buy.