Music Time!

I feel like writing about music now. Well, anime music for now anyway.

Firstly, you should know about a composer named Yuki Kajiura. I mentioned her in my previous post about Canaan, and she is by far my favorite composer. Her music is incredible, it's like an orgasm for your ears. I have been known to watch a series for which she has composed the soundtrack for no other reason. And most of the time, the series wasn't too bad!

You might know her style of music from various shows. The first time I heard her was when I started watching .hack//sign. The opening song for that show, Obsession, is by a group she started called See-Saw. This is one of her many projects, but it's definitely an example of what she's capable of. My favorite See-Saw song, 'Kimi wa boku ni niteiru' (which means 'You are similar to me"), is the final ED song of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny.

Yuki's latest project is a group known as 'Kalafina', which she organized with the help of Sony Music to compose the soundtrack and Ending themese of the Kara no Kyoukai movies. The final KnK movie is due out in theatres in Japan in August, and the 6th movie to be released on DVD at the end of the month (yes!). My favorite Kalafina song is currently Aria, with Serenato a close second. Both songs can be found on Kalafina's album, Seventh Heaven.

Besides See-Saw and Kalafina, Yuki's other major project is with Yuuka Nanri, who has sung on various projects, including Madlax, Gundam Seed/Destiny, and more. The duo's group is called FictionJunction YUUKA, and their best song I think is Akatsuki no Kuruma (Dawn's Charriot) from Gundam SEED.

It seems to me that Yuki's music has a lot of Celtic influance, and she likes to use the violin in her songs quite often. She does an excellent job of including it into her pieces.

So, enough about my favorite composer for now. Onto my favorite anime singer and voice actress: Maaya Sakamoto.

If you've seen Vision of Escaflowne (in Japanese) you've heard her both as a voice actress and her singing (she sung for both the opening and ending songs). Vision of Escaflowne was her debute performance as well.

Maaya plays quite a few major characters. Her most recent lead role is Shiki Ryouji from Kara no Kyoukai. I think I like her voice work so much because the characters she portrays tend to not be the cliche cute anime characters that speak in high pitch tones and go out of their way to sound cute. She also plays a major character in Canaan, but so far I don't think her character has gotten much screen time.

I had the opportunity to see Maaya perform live at AnimeExpo in 2005, which was really something. To my disappointment, she didn't sing Hemisphere (from the RahXephon soundtrack), but I did take the opportunity to pick on the domestic release of her single collection, 'Hotchpotch'.

Maaya has also played the role of Eponine in a Japanse production of Les Miserables, one of my favorite musicals. As far as I can tell, however, no recordings of her performance of Eponine exist. I hope that this isn't true, or that she'll release another album some day which includes some of Eponine's songs.

Maaya is also the voice of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII and its spin-off games and movies.

Oddly enough, one of the whole reasons I started watching Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny is because Maaya was the voice of Lunamaria Hawke, one of the pilots from Destiny. Her role is fairly minor, and I was hoping that Maaya might be singing a song for the soundtrack. In that respect, I was out of luck, however, I did get Kimi wa Boku ni Niteiru instead, so it was still good.

A lot of Maaya's singles were composed by Yoko Kanno, whom you know if you've seen Cowboy Bebop or Wolf's Rain. She, like Yuki Kajiura, is also incredibly talented. I prefer Yuki's music, however.