ANIME MUSIC 1st Reaction: Kessoku Band
Added 2025-04-27 12:08:09 +0000 UTCThanks Ellie for this one. Ellie is at the SUPER AMBASSADOR LEVEL of support where you get to pick one song a month for me to react to for the PATREON community. Kessoku Band is her favorite band from the Anime show 'Docchi the Rock.'
This was so much fun, I love the complexity of this! I am enjoying getting to know more artists from the Japanese music scene. I feel this anime world could be a rabbit hole that I'd need a lifetime to fully go down.
Are you a fan of music used in anime? If so, what are your favorite songs and artists?
Comments
I just realized that for some reason my email spam filter has decided that some of your posts, and ONLY your posts, were spam and removed them from my inbox, so I'm getting to this a lot later than I would have liked. Most made it through, but a couple including this one got auto removed. Kessoku Band was formed for the anime, however now ever since they got together they have been going around and doing actual live concerts in Japan. The singer here is actually the voice actress of the band's singer in the anime, and while her singing voice sounds quite a bit different than her acting voice, you can still tell they're the same person. Since the anime's release in 2022, Kessoku Band has released quite a few different albums, totaling to 61 songs when including different versions of the same song, and 26 unique songs. Most of them were sung by the same singer here, however there's a couple character songs made for a specific character, and that character's VA sings those songs instead. I'm not sure if anime songs are regularly played around Japan, I've seen some videos of a couple businesses playing Kessoku Band songs as background music in their stores, however I'm not sure if they're supposed to be playing that or if it's just the manager's personal playlist or something.
Ellie
2025-05-22 12:51:48 +0000 UTCBocchi the Rock is one of my favorite animes of all time! It's a lovely, wholesome, funny show about these high school girls coming together to create a band, and it has some of the most insane and clever animation that blends all kinds of mediums. The songs that are performed by the characters in the show are truly amazing. Most of their songs can be found on YouTube or Spotify, so if you enjoy this kind of music you'll definitely appreciate their other work. My personal favorite is called "Ano Bando" or "That Band", it opens with a killer guitar solo (which is not included in the studio version) and transitions into one of my favorite basslines to date. The instrumentation is truly phenomenal! It's explosive and super fun. If you do ever decide to do anime reactions though, Bocchi the Rock would be a super fun one, there's 12 episodes, each about 20 minutes long. Super cool reaction, much love <3
realshadowfan01
2025-04-30 04:51:33 +0000 UTCOh, and the bass plays a much more prominent role. You could go so far as to call it the lead instrument. It's a lot more fun to be a bass player in Japan.
H. E.
2025-04-27 23:59:33 +0000 UTCCowboy Bebop's soundtrack by Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts is an obvious recommendation. The OST is an absolutely top tier jazz and blues album. Also, notice how it yet again follows the J-Rock song form where the intensity drops off just before an explosive key change towards the end? The reason Japanese music is so different actually goes back to the 60's - The Beatles lost out to The Beach Boys. The lack of a "British Invasion" meant that surf rock stayed predominant well into the 70's. That's why J-Rock sounds like a convergent evolution of garage or punk rock. Another factor is the large influence from the Japanese jazz scene, tho that's more relevant to J-pop. This became even stronger when Vocaloid "broke containment" in the late 2010's. Lots of chromaticism, jazzy chord progressions and occasionally swing beats.
H. E.
2025-04-27 23:13:40 +0000 UTCBocchi the Rock! Wonderful slice of life anime, this is actually the VA of the character (Kita Ikuyo) who's the singer in the band in the anime, VA's name is Ikumi Hasegawa. Season 2 was just announced a while ago. So it would be great to check the show and the album out. I also feel anime music is kind of at the core of JP music at the moment, although of course there are many big JP artists who rely on anime for their big break. Artists especially for their anime tracks include YOASOBI, Lisa etc etc. Artists who don't but sometimes are involved are MRS Green Apple and Ado (who has done the soundtracks of a One Piece movie which you should check out)
Kieran Loh
2025-04-27 13:11:03 +0000 UTC
