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Sound Decision - The Big Two-Five




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lianncoop
ANN Columnist


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1705
Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 2:18 am Reply with quote
Personally, I enjoy reading about anime soundtracks more than Jpop or music industry stuff. If I watch a series, I'd like to know if the soundtrack is worth my money to get. While the occasional music tangent is interesting, I really look to SD for anime OST reviews.

Though, if a particular Jpop artist/group somehow relates to an anime series (say the Pillows or Maya Sakamoto), a featurette on them would be well worth it.
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Godaistudios



Joined: 12 Jun 2003
Posts: 2067
Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment)
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 3:07 am Reply with quote
It's funny that you say that. I had talked to Miagi privately earlier and made some similar comments that because this is an anime site, anime OST's were more expected. While I do like the occasional J-pop review, I recommended keeping the majority of J-pop reviews regulated to "tie-ins" like L'Arc and TMR. Don't get me wrong, I like J-pop and would love more reviews for them, but it's not particularily beneficial to the site itself.
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lianncoop
ANN Columnist


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1705
Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 4:34 am Reply with quote
Great minds think alike...
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vherub



Joined: 12 Nov 2003
Posts: 49
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 2:01 pm Reply with quote
I agree with the anime-centric attitude, j-pop has as much to do as say as reviewing Kill Bill's ost for Luis Bacalov's The Grand Duel. There might be an overlap between target audience's, but as anime music continues to expand, I feel there is enough content for it to stand on its own feet.
As for the review process, I would like to see a bit more time given to individual tracks or (and this may be too demanding) where the song might have fallen during the show. Green Bird for example is not known by every bebop fan, but if referenced with the scene in which it plays it is instantly recognizable.
Other than that I find the column an enjoyable read and one of the more solid efforts out in the lawless web.
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jmays
ANN Associate Editor


Joined: 29 Jul 2002
Posts: 1390
Location: St. Louis, MO
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 4:35 pm Reply with quote
If you want more track detail (à la Haibane), I'd be able to do at most one CD review a week. It's very time-consuming to give more than a few words about each piece on a soundtrack, but if enough people prefer that to a short overview, I might try doing that more regularly.

Specific scenes--sorry, I can't do much of that. More often than not I'm reviewing soundtracks of anime series I haven't seen. Whether that's a positive or negative impact on the reviews is up to you, but it's not realistic for me to see every show and then listen to and review the soundtrack.

I must say I'm surprised by the hesitation towards J-Pop reviews. I know this is Anime News Network, but really, we cover anything of interest to anime fans that you can't find (or at least, not of comparable quality) other places. You won't see videogame reviews here because sites like GameSpot cover it better than ANN ever could. But I think most everything else is fair game.

One of the reasons I started introducing J-Pop into the column is that I couldn't find another regular source for domestic J-Pop reviews. Import reviews, if any, will always be a very small part of the column because J-Poop and others have that covered quite well. Short of ANN splitting off a separate J-Pop site, I don't think there's much we could contribute to that area.

I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I expect ANN's animie music and J-Pop reviews (as a whole) to be the best you can find anywhere. Certainly they're better than AoD's offerings. Strawberry Sherbert might rise to the challenge, and Anime Jump's are good but rare. I don't know of any other real competition.

I'd expected a formidable domestic J-Pop news site to pop up by now, but it hasn't. If that happens, we'll either have to commit to being better than that site, or we'll pull out of J-Pop. The future of J-Pop in the US is uncertain, I think, but in the meantime, I think it's a nice perk for ANN to have the best domestic Japanese music news and reviews on the Internet.

Manga seeped into ANN's coverage a while back, but I know that link is more natural. Whether we can keep up with the J-Pop is another matter, and for that, only time will tell.

Now, what I really want to know is what you prefer to read. Assuming ANN is a legitimate source for J-Pop news and reviews, and that I have enough time to do about three reviews a week, what would you like to see? Are J-Pop reviews useful to you, or would you like me to stick to anime music CDs? What do you think about the occasional "in-depth" feature? And if you don't like my reviews, how can I improve?
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Vigilante024



Joined: 11 Jul 2003
Posts: 578
Location: back. but not really.
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 4:55 pm Reply with quote
for the most part, anime music reviews are most relevent to m, however an occasional j-pop review or an in depth review would be nice. it would be nice to know if a particular artist isn't a one hit wonder and maybe hear about some other good mucis that might not entirely be anime realted, but is still good and worth looking for.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4106
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 6:24 pm Reply with quote
You know, I'm happy that Geneon's doing straight domestic versions of Japanese soundtracks now, but I actually kinda miss the old school domestic Pioneer soundtracks, at least with Tenchi Muyo, because they re-compiled both vocals and BGM onto one CD, what, in Japan, would usually be spread out over several CDs since the Japanese CDs had drama tracks. Also, you got the dub songs, but Geneon isn't in the business of dubbing songs anymore (okay, they're not in the business of releasing Tenchi Muyo anymore either except for their back catalogue stuff).
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jmays
ANN Associate Editor


Joined: 29 Jul 2002
Posts: 1390
Location: St. Louis, MO
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 6:43 pm Reply with quote
Would you believe we're actually going to get FLCL #2 with drama tracks included? Crazy stuff. They better put some translations in there.
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littlegreenwolf



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 4736
Location: Seattle, WA
PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2004 8:36 pm Reply with quote
Miagi wrote:
Would you believe we're actually going to get FLCL #2 with drama tracks included? Crazy stuff. They better put some translations in there.


Oi, for a second there you almost had me thinking the English cast would do the drama. >.< That would be so great if they could, but if not, yeah, they better add translations.

I don't mind the J-pop reviews at all. I especially liked the little Tidbit on X-Japan. I think as long as you don't make them so in depth, and mix them with a couple anime cd reviews when released, it would be more well recieved.
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