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Crunchyroll Expo 2022 - Burnout Syndromes Interview

by Kalai Chik,

Formed in 2005, Burnout Syndromes have a long and successful discography under their belt. Composing songs for popular series such as Haikyuu!!, Dr. Stone, and Gintama, the trio infuse musical genres together with emotional lyrics. Kazuumi Kumagai (vocal and guitar), Taiyu Ishikawa (bass), and Takuya Hirose (drums) were excited to be headlining at Crunchyroll Expo as their first performance in the United States. They arrived late Friday/early Saturday, but were invigorated by the idea of performing in front of their fans. Before their highly anticipated live performance, they spoke with ANN on the process behind their music's composition.

Thank you for speaking with us. Would you be able to introduce yourselves?

Kazuumi Kumagai: Hello, I'm the guitarist and vocalist. I really like manga, anime, and such. I'm very excited to be here at Crunchyroll Expo and be part of this event.

Taiyu Ishikawa: Hi, I'm the bassist and I'm very excited for the live performance. We'd love to receive energy from the audience and look forward to performing.

Takuya Hirose: Hey, I'm the drummer and I also like anime. I'm very excited to be here and I can't wait to perform.

Burnout Syndrome has been a band since 2005. When you look back in your 17 years together, what were some of your favorite moments or live performances?

Burnout Syndromes: We had the chance to perform for a Haikyuu!! event in the Saitama Super Arena, which was the largest venue we'd ever played at in both size and total number of attendees. At that time, we had performed three songs from the series, and they were songs we put our heart and souls to. To play there felt as if we had worked hard to climb up to that stage, and our efforts were acknowledged by the fans there. We would say that moment had an incredibly big impact on us, and gave us the most confidence in our work. We were able to connect with the fans in a way that we had never had before. We're hoping to perform at Crunchyroll Expo this would be a new experience for us as well.

The past two years have been very difficult for live performances due to COVID-19. Even now, there is a surge in Japan. How have you been using this time to develop more music?

Burnout Syndromes: It's true that COVID-19 had quite an impact in Japan. For example, many events were canceled. However, on the creative side, we realize that not too much has changed. We're not bound to create in front of other people unlike in the past. If we were restricted like that, there wouldn't be much we could do. But in modern terms we're able to use computers to send data back and forth between the different members. It's unfortunate that we couldn't perform live but we developed a new process. We discovered a new technique, a new sound, and a new way to create music. We're actually treating this as an opportunity for us to improve our creative process and for us to come up with new music for the group.

Burnout Syndrome has made music for Haikyuu!!, Gintama, and Dr. Stone incorporates rock and different genres. Can you talk about how you compose lyrics for an anime series? For example, Hana Ichi Monme for Gintama and Phoenix for Haikyuu!! are both poetic songs.

Kazuumi Kumagai: In regards to "Hana Ichi Monme", I had read Gintama since I was a child and it had quite an influence on me. Writing wasn't difficult, especially when you're writing about something you have a lot of memories of. So I incorporated those memories into my creation process. Moreover, to create something that is Gintama-like, I thought we had to express the lyrics with words that only exist in Japanese, as it's a very Japanese show. Gintama's setting is Shinjuku and Kabukicho-esque, so we went to those places to experience what it would be like. Then, I incorporated that into the lyrics.

For "Phoenix" (from Haikyu!!), which was the opening for the fourth season, and came after "Hikari Are": This was quite a different season itself and most of the seasons up until then were about matches. However this specific one was almost entirely focused on their training camp and they were spending the entire time practicing aiming for their next goal. I thought, “How do I match this feeling?” I wanted to make sure that the lyrics had that sense of character development in it as they come together and aim for the top.

This will be your first U.S. performance, but you've played to many different venues and audiences around the world. In Japan, fans would have penlights and wave the band's towels. What kind of mood did you want to bring to overseas fans at Crunchyroll Expo?

Burnout Syndromes: That's right, it will be our first U.S. performance, but we've played in Germany and France in the past. We're full of excitement to be a part of Crunchyroll Expo and are overflowing with energy to perform. There's a lot of different anime that are a part of Crunchyroll that we recorded the songs for. We want to perform those songs, but make sure that the American audience can enjoy our show. We made sure to address any gaps, whether it be something ambiguous between the songs and the audience, in order to connect the listener to our music. Maybe we'll show you some things that we don't normally do in Japan. Definitely look forward to our performance.


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