Nuance for the Ear, Beyond Maaya’s Voice
I’ve been listening a lot to Praline, which is the c/w track on the Ame ga Furu single. It’s penned by Taiyo Yamazawa.
It’s a good snapshot to how Maaya Sakamoto has changed throughout her music career.
I still remember listening to her earlier works like Dive and Grapefruit…and I still occasionally do. Despite that raw talent in her voice it all feels a bit cuddly. Almost juvenile. And honestly back then Yoko Kanno was (and probably still isn’t) your average pop composer. Kanno and Maaya do work with good people and sometimes the arrangements are spot on, so Maaya’s earlier CDs have strong entries to carry them despite the lackluster accompanying tracks. In the grand scheme of things, that’s really nothing unusual. In fact it was quite good given the genre of music.
The fruit of having all that good people work on your stuff is two very good selling compilation albums, but that’s all anyone needs to know about Hotchpotch and Nikopachi. Besides maybe one had came with guitar tabs if you ordered the special edition. If there was any other questions, I figure you can find the answer by listening to them.
I always thought Shounen Alice is her most mature album. If we just take a very cold, hard look from statistics, the chart you can find over at en.wikipedia would seem to agree, as it had done the best out of all her original albums. It shed the most amount of that cuddly feel out of all the works that came before it, which I then thought was the biggest barrier in her creative endeavors reaching greater popularity by its own merits.
It is probably safe to say that Maaya has moved beyond that. I say this not because 30 Minutes Flight and Yunagi Loop were particularly remarkable, but because I believe she has started to find a voice that’s closer to the her true voice. Maybe it’s a change in her person or in her vision of what kind of an artist she wants to be, and it is a small change. But I think I see a subtle evolution and I like it.
And I’m not even giving praise to Taiyo Yamazawa. Indeed Praline felt a little repetitive and in the original arrangement, it sounded much like Maaya’s other light pop songs. But in the 1+1 version, we have a slightly different beast.
Maybe she’s just flexing her musical chops. I don’t know, but she did a good job making the most out of repetition. This is something successful pop vocalists do well… and honestly, I was a little impressed. It’s different than the kind of songs she did in Shounen Alice.
It does make me kind of hopeful for her upcoming CD (aff. link) coming out early next year.
Xam’d Episode 15 - Claustrophobic Country
I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles for a while now; it seems natural given its anime-like presentation, the Sakura Taisen production team, a very nice collection of seiyuu performances, and that it is a PS3 exclusive. Having an anime to go with next year is just a bonus. I mention this because the way some scenes in this episode of Xam’d looked reminds me of all those bullet-dodging and cover-to-cover dashing I have to do in that game.
Oh and it made me less annoyed about the episode not coming out until Wednesday. Boo @ PSN Video Store.
Kannagi: Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About?
Kannagi peaked @ episode 7.
And that is fine. I think if I dropped the show right here and now, I would have already gotten my money’s worth, so to speak. Kannagi had made a fan, and it will get my money. I’d save the rest of my time left, lest my passion and curiosity for the things I like get the better of me. It would be a fearsome anti-dilemma, if such a thing exists.
But when you have Yukata Yamamoto and Hideyuki Kurata at the helm, this is really just a glimpse of what they are capable of doing.
And yeah, Kannagi is a Sony! As I hope you already know, A1 Pictures is 100% owned by Aniplex, which is a company under the Sony conglomerate umbrella. The lovely jab at Blu-Ray Disc and Beta is not only the highlight, but also how to stick it in the show while sticking it to the man. A best of both worlds.
Does it surprise anyone when Akiba-kun went on and talked about the equally godly episode with the guest animation director and the connections? Animating a cockroach’s POV is something you only do for your friends? We can only suppose.
To end with drawing comparisons to a totally random and different show–in the pilot episode of Karekano, we’ve also seen peddling of bamboo poles. Coincidence? No way. Nobody frets about sex in that series, right…?
C-Comboroll Breaker
Did they just team up with TV Tokyo?
TV TOKYO???
Somebody hold me.
…What’s next?
Xam’d Episode 14 - Meanderingly Shocking
This is suppose to be an OSHI episode, but I have a hard time bringing my emotions into the game.
