Tag: Welcome to the NHK

1947: Some Great Anime Soundtracks

Writing in the comments of yesterday’s post, Mr Heaslip reminded me that I’ve been continually impressed with the quality of soundtracks in modern anime.

I tend to listen to a lot of soundtracks when I’m doing other things — particularly when I’m doing work of some description. I prefer soundtracks in this context because lyrics can be distracting — particularly if you’re trying to write something — plus, given the right one, they can lend a certain air of drama to proceedings. And it doesn’t have to be work, either; there’s nothing that livens up a tedious motorway drive like a storming, over-the-top soundtrack.

The majority of my soundtracks come from games, unsurprisingly, but since I started really getting into anime a year or two ago, I’ve begun tracking down soundtracks for various anime series, too. So I thought I’d share a few favourites today.

This is Swordland from Sword Art Online, the “trapped in an MMO” show that was popular but somewhat divisive. I enjoyed it a great deal — at least partly because it reminded me of .hack, a series of games and anime that I love the idea of but am yet to actually work my way through — but I will acknowledge the arguments that it was cheesy as hell and moved way too fast for its own good. Those things didn’t put me off as much as some other people, but as I think we’ve established over the course of the last 1947 days, I have a much higher tolerance for bullshit than many other people.

Anyway, I’m a fan of this piece because it sounds authentically “gamey” — plus, for all the series’ faults, it knew exactly how to give a sense of drama to a big fight scene, and that included having a suitably epic soundtrack.

Contrasting completely with the above, this music is… well, I don’t know what it’s called as my Japanese reading comprehension isn’t quite up to the task, but it’s the music that plays during the “Previously on Love Live!” bit at the beginning of each Love Live! episode.

Not a lot to say about it really, other than the fact that it nicely captures the feeling of sheer joy that Love Live! encapsulates; it’s happy, cheerful, summery, uplifting and heartwarming, just like the show as a whole.

KissXSis was pretty dumb all round — it was thinly-veiled… no, completely unveiled fanservice for the most part, but it had some entertaining moments and some fun characters. The two titular sisters were an enjoyable study in contrasts, and the supporting cast made for an enjoyable ensemble to spend some time with.

The thing that stuck with me long after finishing watching the show, though, was the ending theme — and this adorable dance animation that was shown in partial form during the closing credits, and which was rendered in its full glory for, I believe, the Blu-Ray release.

Yuru Yuri was an odd show in which pretty much nothing happened for its entire run, but it was immensely endearing purely for its characters. It was one of those shows where you feel like you’re “friends” with the cast by the end of it, and for that I’ll always think of it rather fondly.

I can’t actually remember the context of this song in the series — or indeed if it actually appeared in the series at all, or if it’s just a character song from a soundtrack album — but either way, it’s a nice little song that I like a lot.

DanMachi, also known as Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? thanks to questionable transliteration, is the current hotness in anime, with many calling it this year’s Sword Art Online. It seems to be overall a bit more consistently well-received than Sword Art Online, however, thanks in part to its main heroine Hestia being a much more interesting and fun character than SAO’s Asuna.

Like Sword Art Online, DanMachi has a gorgeous incidental soundtrack accompanying the action. There are some awesome battle themes, but in the interest of a bit of variety, here’s a lovely, more pensive piece reflecting the affection between Hestia and protagonist Bell.

To Love-Ru is another show that was pretty dumb and mostly fanservice, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. I found it particularly interesting in that it changed format significantly over the course of its three distinct seasons, with the main heroine from the first season being largely relegated to occasional background roles by the third. (I wasn’t super-happy about this, as I adored Lala, but the new “main” characters made up for her relative absence somewhat.)

To Love-Ru was another of those shows that was unrelentingly cheerful throughout. It knew exactly what it was — silly, lightweight, occasionally (all right, frequently) pervy fun that had no intention of making you think too hard. This particular track, known just as “Good Morning!” reflects the show’s character pretty nicely.

Welcome to the NHK was an awesome show with a wonderful streak of honesty and bitterness at its core. Contrasting starkly with the relative darkness of the protagonist’s hikikomori lifestyle was the fictional anime show many of the characters were obsessed with, whose theme tune ran something like this.

Purupurupururin…

Oh, Lord, Clannad. So many feels. Anyone who’s seen the show probably doesn’t need any further words when they hear this piece of music. And if you haven’t seen the show, rectify that right now. Bring tissues. Not for that. For all the crying. Because there will be lots of crying.

#oneaday Day 987: Welcome to the NHK

Continuing my jaunt into the world of anime, I started watching Welcome to the NHK on the recommendation of my good friend Mark, who knows about these things. And if ever there were a show to ably demonstrate the massive possibilities of anime as a medium it’s this one. Watch it and then tell me that animation is in any way childish or silly.

I’ve only watched about half of the complete run so far, but I am very much appreciating what it does so far. It’s wonderfully put together, blending just the right amount of comedy, surrealism and pathos together to produce something extremely memorable and affecting.

For the uninitiated or curious, Welcome to the NHK revolves around the protagonist Tatsuhiro Sato, who is a hikikomori. (A hikikomori is a “shut-in” — someone who is not in employment, education or training (NEET) and who rarely leaves their home or interacts with other people except when absolutely necessary.) The story unfolds as Sato explores his condition and learns a great deal about himself through his developing relationships with several other characters — his neighbour and former schoolmate Yamazaki, his old school senpai (and crush) Hitomi and the mysterious young girl Misaki, who shows up offering to counsel him out of his hikikomori status for reasons that have not become completely clear at the point in the series I have reached thus far.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Welcome to the NHK is that it doesn’t pull any punches about how these characters are represented. Sato is wracked with all manner of neuroses and social phobias; Yamazaki is a hardcore otaku; even Misaki, who initially appears to be sweet and innocent, clearly has some fairly serious issues of her own that she’s dealing with. Every one of the characters is dealing with some sort of “damage” and it makes every one of them interesting and unique by themselves. When they get together, as you might expect, the sparks frequently fly. But at no point are their conditions and issues really played for laughs — they are what they are, and if you find their circumstances amusing, that’s your decision, but they’re not specifically portrayed as being worthy of ridicule (or not, as the case may be).

In particular, I’ve found a lot of the show very relatable for a number of reasons. I recognise many of the things Sato in particular goes through — specifically with regard to his social phobias and discomfort at the prospect of dealing with other people. There’s also the fact that I was practically a hikikomori myself in the weeks/months following my split from my wife — I was a NEET, I was emotionally unstable, I had no idea what to do with myself and the prospect of going back home to live with my parents filled me with unspeakable dread, like an admission that I was a complete and total failure as a human being. Having survived all that intact — well, mostly — I know in retrospect that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but when you’re there actually in that situation, it’s all too easy to let the negative thoughts, fear and anger run away with themselves. And with no-one around to keep you in check, it can be very difficult to deal with.

Aside from the personal perspective on the show, the other thing that I’ve been very impressed with is the soundtrack. It features some excellent tunes in a variety of different styles, ranging from some mournful Silent Hill-style jangly guitar melodies to more upbeat and “dramatic” numbers. They fit the on-screen action well and are reused enough to be recognisable but not so much to be tiresome or predictable. They’re also tweaked, changed and remixed every so often to either have different lyrics, or additional layers of lyrics, or different instrumentation. It gives the show a great feeling of consistency.

And speaking of consistency, there’s Pururin.

Pururin is a fictional anime show that Sato’s neighbour Yamazaki is obsessed with. It has such importance to the “world” in which Welcome to the NHK takes place that creators GONZO went to the effort to create a completely fake opening credits sequence for the show, seen above. The Purupurupururin theme that you probably already have stuck in your head if you were foolish enough to click “Play” on that video is a regular fixture in the background sound of the show — Sato meets Yamazaki as a result of hearing the song through his wall 24 hours a day (if you want 10 hours of it non-stop for a similar experience, go here), it’s several characters’ ringtones, it plays in the background of several shops and the Pururin character frequently appears on billboards and posters around the place. We never really find out a lot about who or what Pururin actually is, but from the opening sequence we can deduce that she’s some sort of magical girl with cat ears who appears to ride around on a vacuum cleaner.

All this isn’t even getting into the other awesome aspects of the show — the tenuous friendship between Sato and Yamazaki as they attempt to make an eroge together; the way in which Sato has a stronger impact on the people around him than he thinks; the unassuming, understated but utterly enrapturing cuteness of Misaki (plus the things she’s clearly hiding) — but suffice to say that the DVD blurb’s assertion that Welcome to the NHK is a “modern-day classic” is not without a certain degree of plausibility, and it’s well worth your time if you’re interested in character-driven, relationship-based stories featuring realistically-flawed characters with relatable issues.