The Music of Revue Starlight Roundtable Discussion - Part 1 (Patreon)

Shojo Kageki Revue Starlight: the franchise that has taken its “musical x anime mixed media” concept and turned it into a myriad of different projects. The TV anime, which has been one of the franchise’s main pillars, will soon be coming to an end. What are the secrets behind the revue songs that have appeared in nearly every episode, leaving a strong impression on the viewers in their wake? LisAni will attempt to answer this question by diving into a roundtable with the show’s staff.  In part 1 of this talk between three of the music production team -- the music producers, Teppei Nojima (Pony Canyon) and Kohei Yamada (APDREAM), and the lyricist, Kanata Nakamura -- we will be looking back on the songs that featured in the first half of the series.

-- For this roundtable discussion, I would like to ask about how each revue song was made and what we should be listening out for. Perhaps we can start with episode 1’s “Until the World is Turned to Ash”?

Teppei Nojima: Right. First, we had something of a process for creating each revue song. We’d start with director (Tomohiro) Furukawa putting his idea into words, which I would take and then ask Yamada to compose the music based on that. When Yamada came back to me with the music, I’d run it past the director, and once he decided it was good to go, Kanata would write the lyrics. However, with “Until the World Turned to Ash,” we only had the vague idea that we wanted to use the process of “film scoring” (composing music to go with a  video), so we hadn’t the faintest clue how to actually go about it. The song we used was originally a candidate to be used as a ballade for the single PRINCIPAL -Fancy You-. I had the director listen to it as well, and we decided to go with it. The composer, Kentaro Ishii, lives in Osaka, so we spoke to him  over FaceTime.

Kohei Yamada: We just set up our computer and talked right there and then, didn’t we?

Nojima: I input the storyboards into some movie-making software to create an animatic (animated storyboard) and added in notes like “Eyes open. Song starts” to signal the start of the song. That’s what we showed him during that meeting.

Yamada: The software displays the cues as text.

Nojima: So going back to the process of making a revue song, we sent these animatics to each composer--with notes such as “This piece will be arranged like this” or “Hikari Kaguya will sing here”--added as cues to the video. The composer would use the animatic as a base to compose the song. That’s the first step (in making a revue song). Once the draft composition was ready, there was a lot of work waiting for Yamada - like the orchestral recording, and so on.

Yamada: I discussed with the composer how the intensity of the instrumentation should change in accordance to the dialogue or movement on screen. I then ran this past everyone, and if they were all ok with it, we would move on to the recording. And that’s what we did for pretty much every episode.

Nojima: The director wanted the lip flaps to match with the singing as much as possible when the characters started singing and when their songs came to an end. So another thing we needed to pay attention to was making sure that the scoring matched the lip flaps relative to the storyboards. And of course, we also worked on aligning the animation with the music. As for the process of writing the lyrics, how was that for episode 1?

Kanata Nakamura: I focused on matching the lyrics with the staging and the feelings of the two characters [fighting in the revue]. There’s this line in the song, “My arrow, the embodiment of a shooting star, will pursue” -- visually, what we see is arrows shot by Junna (Hoshimi) stitching their patterns among the stars on the stage. I was aiming for something blatant like that in episode 1.

-- So after this, you had a general grasp on how to compose a revue song. Did you go into episode 2’s “The Star Knows” with that same idea?

Nojima: Episode 2 had its own set of problems. The piece was arranged from a song originally used in the (Revue Starlight) musical(s). And since we were going around with the tagline of a musical x anime mixed-media project , I thought it would be nice for those who had already watched the musical version if one of its songs was performed in the anime as well. So I proposed that we put one of them into the anime. I thought that “The Star Knows” best matched emotionally with episode 2, so that’s what we decided to go with, but it was a lot of work reworking a song that had already been completed. 

Yamada: It wasn’t just about rearranging the piece--we also had to change its length to match the animation, and change the texture of the music and so on. So we had a lot of retakes. It took a fair bit of time to free ourselves from our earlier impressions of the piece. This was more a problem with us -- the production side -- than with the composer……

Nojima: We were also questioning ourselves. Even as we asked the original composer to rearrange the piece, we’d wonder if we were on the right path. I then had a discussion with Yamada about needing another perspective, or else the arrangement wouldn’t be well balanced, and so we brought three [other] people in to quickly rearrange the piece.

Yamada: (Kotaro) Okada, (Ryota) Fuji and (Naoki) Tani.

Nojima: The idea was to get these three, who are incredibly reliable, to come in and do their best to finish the arrangement.

Nakamura: Likewise, I found it difficult not to be influenced by the original lyrics of the song and write from a neutral standpoint. So -- and this was especially the case with the exchange between Karen (Aijou) and Junna in the second half -- the lyrics draw from the dialogue in the screenplay, and convey the same message. “Is the future unattainable? Surely no one can know that” -- this was also meant to be Junna denying her own words, the lines she says after those cuts with Maya (Tendo) and Claudine (Saijo): “I could never reach them. They, who were always running ahead of me.” If anything I’d say that episode 1’s lyrics were written to match the staging, while for episode 2 they were drawn from the lines of dialogue. 

-- So you wrote the lyrics such that they would flow on well from the dialogue?

Nakamura: And adding lines of dialogue into the song itself weaves it all together even more seamlessly.

Nojima: We also want the songs to make sense even when listened to on their own…… but it’s a lot of work, isn’t it?

Nakamura: It’s very time-consuming (laughs). But as a result, the finished songs are incredibly cute. 

-- Did you experience difficulty with episode 3’s “Pride and Arrogance” as well?

Nojima: The storyboards for episode 3 were done by (assistant series director Takushi) Koide. He would say things like “Make sure this is in sync!,”  showing us an animatic set to a temp music track. What he wanted was very clear, so this episode went quite smoothly (laughs).

Yamada: In fact, we didn’t have to change anything about the demo (T/N: that they produced in response to what they were asked for).

Nojima: Koide made an animatic and (Yoshiaki) Fujisawa drafted a musical composition to go along with it. However, when they were cutting the episode together during post-production, the length of the cuts (of animation) was changed ever so slightly. Fujisawa said that he struggled quite a bit modifying the song to match those changes……

Yamada: A shame, since it got through the first time, in terms of the music. 

Nojima: We also wanted to bring the best out of (Maho) Tomita’s singing ability as Maya. In my mind, in the first three episodes, we completed a trilogy with those three early revue songs. I was glad that we were able to have Tomita sing the last of the three songs.

-- Nakamura also talked about this song in LisAni (Vol. 34).

Nakamura: But now that the three of us in this music production team are talking about this, I have remembered something even deeper. As Nojima said, the first three episodes can be bundled together, making it something like the first chapter (of the story). The lyrics of the first revue follows the staging and the lyrics of the second revue follows the dialogue. The third revue, “Pride and Arrogance,” puts these two ideas together. For example, we have a part where, in response to Maya singing “Come climb up, if you have the guts,” Karen climbs up towards Maya. There’s also a part earlier in the revue where they exchange dialogue. The one moment where I think the song and Maya’s thoughts come together is when Maya sings “Going higher and shining more.” There was some difficulty in deciding whether this phrase should be a line of dialogue or a part of the song. I think somebody told Koide about this, and he said “We might as well make it part of the song” and had Fujisawa put a melody to it. 

Nojima: That’s pretty much the only line where the lyrics were written before the music.  We also talked about how we could take some “dialogue-y” parts and mix them together with the girls’ emotions to make the song. A revue is also a performance, so for the part starting with “The call of a goddess and the celestial throne,” we asked for lyrics that would give the impression that the revue song “Revue of Pride” actually existed.

Nakamura: This was something I was quite particular about, but after the line “That gaze,” we see cuts of all the other girls. Like Claudine’s gaze, for example. I was very particular about this, so I’d be very happy if people noticed.  

-- In comparison to the first three songs, or otherwise the first chapter, “Miracle Pitch of Love” and “Song of Blossoming Flowers” from episodes 5 and 6 are a bit of a curveball, aren’t they?. 

Nojima: In a musical, you get a variety of different songs. Slightly comical ones, ones for when the two characters are alone on stage, and so on. We wanted this world to reflect that, too. The director also wanted to have a few songs that would differ from the so called “revue song.” These two songs actually came from the competition for songs to be released as singles. For Mahiru (Tsuyuzaki) in episode 5, I wanted something that was, in any case, cute, and that also expressed Mahiru’s straightforward feelings, chasing [after Karen]. For Futaba (Isurugi) and Kaoruko (Hanayagi), I wanted a song of genuine love, filled with the pure feelings they have [for each other] as childhood friends. We found songs that fit the bill perfectly for both.

Nakamura: It was fate!

Yamada: Quite early on, we felt that these songs could be used for the anime series, so we kept them aside before we really got started on creating the revue songs. 

Nojima: Then we waited for the fine cut. Once they’d tweaked the length of each and every cut of animation, we put a melody to it.

Yamada: Especially with episode 5, I think we were able to take everyone by surprise. Up til this point, the intro of each song had more of an orchestral feel to it, but then with episode 5, we suddenly switch to big band music.  

Nojima: When they’re naming themselves it’s backed by the orchestra, but around the time the tobidashi boys (T/N: Standees/Signs that are used around schools to warn drivers to be careful of children (jumping out into the road))  first appear on the screen, the music starts to change. The director also asked that we match the accompaniment with Mahiru’s feelings, so when she gets a bit sad or angry, the accompaniment follows suit. In the scratch vocals, the last bit where Karen sings “yup!” was originally much shorter. But during the actual recording, the voice actress (Momoyo Koyama) extended this note so that it synced with the timing of the home run she was watching on-screen, and we decided to go with that! 

Nakamura: It was a fun episode to record, wasn’t it? There was a nice atmosphere throughout the recording session.

Nojima: I also think Mahiru is a bit insane (laughs). The lyrics are cute, but it’s a bit like “What…?”

Nakamura: It’s been said a lot on Twitter and elsewhere, but it seems fans have been bothered by the line “See, there’s a small light (Hikari) that will disappear come midday (Mahiru)” (laughs).

Nojima: She’s putting it in a pretty way, but what she’s actually trying to say is “Hikari can just disappear. I want you to always be looking at me!” I really liked the punchline (T/N: Used in rap. A witty line used at the end of a joke/idea, usually involving wordplay (metaphors, similes, etc.)) in these lyrics. I was like, “Kanata is so good!” (laughs)

Nakamura: Thank you (laughs). I actually wrote some of the lyrics before the storyboards were finished, and at that stage they were much more neutral - or flat, would you say. It wasn’t this crazy. It was only after seeing the storyboards that I realised the content was more insane. And the sequence was also a lot longer than I had realised. Because of this, I wasn’t really sure what I should be doing with this song, especially compared to the three previous songs. 

Nojima: I’m a bit of a fan of baseball myself, so bit by bit, I would ask to have some baseball terminology added in to the lyrics. Things like “I’ll go running in, fast and straight,” “intentional walk” or “the game won’t end” and so on.

Nakamura: I don’t think there was any baseball terminology in there at first.

Nojima: Although the song isn’t completely about baseball, I remember suggesting that you throw in a few lines/phrases like that.

-- “Song of Flower Blossoming” from episode 6 was much more Japanese in style, wasn’t it?

Nojima: I was asked for the song to be made in a Japanese style. But just going for a straightforward Japanese style wouldn’t be very exciting, so the order I put in was for a song that was beautiful like a Nogizaka46 song. 

Nakamura: At first, it really was like a Nogizaka song (laughs).

Nojima: So we realised that we needed to change the arrangement of the song completely.

Yamada: The only parts that remained from the original demo were the melody, and the guitar phrase in the interlude. We made drastic changes to everything else. The impression the song gives off has changed quite a bit.

Nojima: Nogizaka songs have this alternative style that I thought would be quite fitting, so I asked for something like that. We also talked about making a new kind of Japanese-style song, and so we ended up taking an EDM-like approach to the arrangement. The part where they’re naming themselves was made as an homage to Tomio Umezawa’s Yume Shibai -- it was an order from above. It’s Yume Shibai plus Nogizaka (laughs).

Nakamura: A hybrid we never thought possible (laughs).

Nojima: You wrote the lyrics quite quickly, right?

Nakamura: Yes, it was very easy [to put to words].

Nojima: The punchline was “The swift stream of a river,” right? This song has parts expressing the character’s emotions whilst still retaining that revue song-like quality to it -- I think it’s pretty amazing. 

Nakamura: I was quite conscious of the scripted dialogue as I wrote the lyrics, and tried to make them follow-on from the various conversations the two girls had before the start of the revue. I also wanted [Futaba and Kaoruko’s] more ugly and messy feelings to be expressed -- a bit like an enka (T/N: A genre of popular music in Japan. Enka lyrics are often based around themes such as love, loss, loneliness and drinking [Enka playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp7pAH9am84PycFTTTEsOsIUL5Ny8leRq]) 

Nojima: Kaoruko playing dirty and shedding those fake tears during their showdown was quite enka-esque. I really liked it (laughs). Yamada made a reservation with Daisuke Kaminaga, who plays the shakuhachi in a traditional Japanese instrumental band, and we were able to take a recording with him performing live. 

Yamada: We’ve come really far in terms of step recording technology, but I still wanted to do a live recording. I think that the emotional build-up was just on another level, so the song was able to reach far greater heights in intensity.

Nojima: The long, lingering note of the shakuhachi at the beginning is amazing.

Yamada: It was my first time attending a shakuhachi recording. For me, the only image I had of the shakuhachi was that sound at the beginning (laughs). It was my first time realising that the shakuhachi could, like the flute, play a melody and stir your feelings. I really learned a lot. 

Nojima: The guitar was played by Yosuke Yamamoto. That was my request. Yosuke’s guitar really stands out. The guitar is what keeps the song together, so for such an intense song I wanted a guitar that would stand out. 

-- So this is a song where you put a lot of thought went into the participating artists as well.

Nojima: There were a whole lot of elements that we were able to play around with.

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This interview is part 1 of 2 covering the first insert song album. Translated by @why1758 and checked by @karice67. Commissioned by myself (@JackUTS). Co-funded by @NaChiKyoTsuki97, @SubtitledAnime, @PedanticRomantc, @blautoothdmand, and @GlassReflection.