10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 7 (Patreon)

We’ve been pretty light on the Metal for the majority of this series. Sure, we had Seikima-II in the blog before last, but even the great Demon Kogure can only last me so long, and I wanted to slip in at least one more RAWK song. Or, be more specific: more 80s Metal. Or to be even more maddeningly specific: 80s Female-Fronted Metal. Look, half the rock vocalists in 80s Hair Metal bands tried to hit notes that nature only intended for females anyway, so it’s just the fair thing to let the girls have more time in the spotlight. Japan’s especially good for this sort of thing, since the mysterious workings of pop cultural expectations has resulted in a much larger overlap between Pop Idols and Metal over there (hello BabyMetal). When I originally threw together my first draft of this list, I’d scratched this particular musical itch with “Watashi Wa Arashi” by the acknowledged queens of Japanese Rock: Show-Ya. But the thing is… Look, I know the odds are good that a significant portion of people who’ll ever read this blog never even heard of Show-Ya before right now, but I still feel like they’re a bit too well known for this list. Like, I already felt a tad squeamish when I used that Seikima-II song, since the odds of any show even been ABLE to use one of their hits were slim at best. And “Moon At Mid-Day” wasn’t even one of their best-known songs. “Watashi Wa Arashi,” on the other hand, was Show-Ya’s biggest chart hit back in ’89, a point in their career where they were “using their songs in commercials” levels of successful. They wouldn’t have NEEDED a spot in some anime in order to gain exposure, and it’s doubtful most show’s would have been able to afford them. Instead, I’ve decided to give a shout-out to somebody with waaaaay less name recognition: Misako Honjoh.

I’d like to give a quick rundown of her career and legacy here, but unfortunately the very obscurity that motivates me to plug her in this blog prevents me from having much to say. She cranked out a series of albums across the 80s, her sound getting ever more generically Jpop the later they came out. She seems to have been a decently big deal for at least the early half of the decade, and even did an actual song for an anime at one point. It was the OVA of Starship Troopers, and the fact that you almost certainly didn’t realize there even WAS an 80s anime of Starship Troopers tells you how great that was for her career. In any case, her last album came out in 1990, and with the exception of a few one-off singles over a decade later, she seems to have called it a career at that point. Still, she had a great voice, and her early releases are some prime slices of 80s JRock with some truly impeccable crews supporting her.

I feel a bit bad singling out the backing band over the singer, at least when it carries an uncomfortable air of “Never mind the chick, let’s talk about the dudes doing the ACTUAL work,” but it’s hard not to get distracted by the star power on display on 1982’s Messiah’s Blessing and 1983’s 13th. Both albums were produced and largely written by Akira Takasaki of Loudness fame, and the whole band (plus keyboardist Toshio Egawa) backed Honjoh throughout the proceedings. Considering that Loudness would go on to become just about the only Japanese band the English speaking world had ever heard up in the 80s, that’s a pretty big deal. (Though let’s be honest, there’s a good chance you only know them as that band who did the awesomely bad theme to Odin: Starlight Mutiny). Loudness’ own star had risen enough by 1984 for Takasaki & co. to be too busy to participate in Honjoh’s third album The Cruiser, but the band assembled as a replacement was no slouch either: boasting members of X-Ray, Earthshaker, and 5X (who has plenty of backing band experience given their work with Carmen Maki). And it’s this album from which I’ve picked my next shoulda-been theme: “Natsu Wa Daremo Aisanai.”

This song just has “80s Anime Theme” written all over it, and yes, we’re back to OPs again for this entry. It’s fast, propulsive, and catchy, with the chorus in particular a serious ear worm. This is exactly the sort of song that would work to both rev-up the audience before an episode and ALSO ensure that commercials for the show would be remembered via sheer catchiness. Granted, I might be a bit biased in the catchiness claims since it turns out that “Natsu Wa Daremo Aisanai” is actually a cover of a song I already like. A very, very, VERY loose cover with new lyrics and a different title that’s virtually unrecognizable if you haven’t been given a heads up, but a cover nonetheless. I kind of hate to even give identity of the original away, since the moment of realization is kind of amazing… but I know there’s no way anybody reading this would even bother trying to guess, let alone actually get it right. It’s “Bus Stop” by The Hollies. That 60s British Invasion song with the acoustic 12-String guitars. How anyone could even get the idea to TRY that melody in an 80s Metal context is beyond me, but I guess that’s why I’m not a musical genius. The tune really does work in this new form, even if it is rendered virtually unrecognizable in the process. But look, if you’ve seen ANY of my other music blogs, you already know I’m going to be subconsciously inclined to favor a song with some level of 60s origins. The real clincher for this blog, however, is the keyboards. The song kicks off with a simple but distinctive synth riff before the band fully kicks is, and it feels EXACTLY like the sort of thing an opening credits sequence would make good use off. I can just see a shot of the sky with the show’s logo forming while the keyboard plinks away, smash-cutting to the rest of the intro/credits once the band kicks in. But what KIND of show? Well, let’s rummage around in The Big Hat Of 80s Clichés that I totally have sitting by my desk at all times and see what I pull out…

“A Post-Apocalyptic… Action Series… where a Mysterious Wanderer… is forced to fight for an Evil Warlord… because of a Bomb Strapped To His Neck… and everybody wears Spikes And Shoulder Pans.” Okay, I’d say that covers all the bases. A nice mix of Fist of the North Star, Escape from New York, Max Max, and Violence Jack. I could totally see “Natsu Wa Daremo Aisanai” kicking off this show, accompanying a montage of our Wandering Anti-Hero punching biker thugs amid ruined cityscapes while the Big Bad Guy smugly looms overhead. All the better if there’s an anachronistic mix of cannibalized modern-day technology (cars with spikes all over them, please) and random bits of more advanced technology that survived the end of the world (hello power armor with laser guns!). Yeah, I’d totally watch that show. Heck, even once we move past the cool Legion of Doom aesthetics, the basic concept seems like it’d be an easily self-perpetuating formula: Big Bad sends Anti-Hero out to fight some Rival, Rival nearly beats Anti-Hero to prove how bad he is, Anti-Hero goes off to recover/train, Anti-Hero meets New Friend who might be able to defuse the bomb on his neck, New Friend is killed by Rival, Anti-Hero gets revenge on Rival, Big Bad is smug while Anti-Hero vows to find some way out of this situation. Repeat cycle every few episodes as needed, with lots of violence and explosions and crazy 80s Punk aesthetics sprinkled throughout. I’ve seen franchises make more out of less.

…though as I sit here thinking about it, I can also see how a show like that could end up really annoying everybody. And I don’t just mean the ever-present threat of being the same thing over and over. Maybe I’ve just grown pessimistic about the industry over the years, but I can totally envision a show built around teasing a final showdown between the protagonist and a main villain not actually having that showdown. Like, maybe the show would get canceled earlier than planned, or the manga would run longer than expected, or maybe the director would just have some obnoxious urge to get all artsy and decide that an unsatisfying ending is somehow more meaningful. Better yet, there’d probably be a movie or OVA a year or two later that WOULD have the final, climactic showdown, but then some kind of legal squabbling would keep it from being released outside of Japan or getting included in the box set of the series. SOMETHING would happen to make sure that most fans wouldn’t get to see the payoff that should be the whole point of the anime… yeah, I’m DEFINITELY pessimistic about the industry.