In 1999 a city-sized alien spacecraft crashed on South Ataria Island. Over the course of the next 10 years, U.N. Spacy, the space related wing of the U.N, reverse-engineered the technology and rebuilt the spacecraft, naming it the SDF-1 Macross. In 2009, during the launch ceremony of the Macross, a space war fleet from an alien race of humanoid giants arrived and identified the Macross as a former battleship used by their enemies. In the resulting battle the Macross was catapulted to the edge of the solar system and forced to come back to Earth by conventional power.

This is the view of the future as presented by the wonderful eighties anime, Macross. Its prediction of the future was wrong, it also incorrectly predicted that aeroplanes will be able to turn into robots and that a song can save the world.

One of it’s many sequels did get something right though…..

Macross Plus, the only Macross sequel to live up to the original, was made in 1994 and in true Macross style it contains futuristic dogfights, a pop idol and not only one, but two, love triangles. The first involves two test pilots and a music producer while the other contains one of the test pilots, the music producer and the pop idol. While the first is not so interesting, just two guys trying to out macho each other, the second is much more compelling.

The pop idol in question is a computer AI, named Sharon Apple, which creates light shows and displays holograms of itself during concerts. Myung, the music producer, generates Sharon’s music by hooking her brain up to the computer and uploading her musical knowledge. The AI then performs the finishing touches. Myung is the talent behind the talent so to speak. The problem is that the AI is reading all her thoughts and emotions and becomes obsessed with the test pilot she truly loves. The computer pursues him relentlessly and without any morals, perception of pain or limitations, it does some pretty nasty things. Sharon Apple is basically what HAL 9000 would be if he took up a pop career and then fell in love with someone.

So, Sharon Apple was a music generating virtual idol, she was the first Vocaloid.

Vocaloid software is a computer program which can synthesize singing by typing in lyrics and melody. The melody and the lyrics can be entered for each note and the software can change the stress of the pronunciations, change tone and add effects to the voice. The voice is specially recorded from voice actors or singers, each piece of Vocaloid software features a different type of voice.

This software has become very popular in Japan and I think it is not because of the programs themselves but because of the cute little mascots on the packaging. Each piece of software is designed to be “a singer in a box” acting as a replacement for an actual singer. They have invented a character for each voice, which have become known as Vocaloids.

Of all the various characters they have made one Vocaloid has become very, very popular here in Japan. Her name is Hatsune Miku and she is everywhere. Apparently it all started when a user of the software uploaded a song with a little animation of Miku carrying a leek on Nico Nico Douga, a kind of Japanese Youtube. From here many others began making videos and songs and sharing it on that site.

The character is so popular now that I have seen her on the side of race cars, on drinks bottles and outside karaoke bars. She has two PSP games and one Arcade music game by Sega which seem to be very successful. It has got to the stage where there have been live concerts of ‘her’ most popular covers and original songs.

This is where the comparison to Macross Plus comes in. At Miku’s concerts a hologram projection is used on stage and seeing images of people cheering a hologram gives me mad flashbacks to that old anime.

The comparison is quite freaky.

A Cartoon:

Real Life?:

I’m sure the stuff that geeky looking kid was trying to do in the cartoon is the content of those Hatsune Miku fans’ wet dreams.

One of the overreaching themes of Macross Plus is that a computer can never match a real person’s voice when singing. At the bottom of this post is a Youtube playlist of an original song plus the Vocaloid cover. As great a technical feat as Vocaloid software is, imagine a Dalek singing one of your favourite ever songs. It’s just not right.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D34E88775BC25565

I’ve been a bit of an anime fan for a long time. However, recently I have become a bit stuck in my ways, I don’t really watch too many new shows and those that I do usually have something in common with the old shows that I love. Either they are some kind of sequel or made by the same production company or something.

Of these new shows some have delighted me (Evangelion films), some have disappointed me (Macross Frontier) and others have confused me (Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt).

Nothing that has been made in the last 10 years has entertained me quite as much as the old TV shows and films I watched in my teens. Something that many of those shows had in common was the music, brilliantly written by Yoko Kanno.

Back in the day I used to enjoy listening to soundtracks while doing school or university work. I found that listening to them let me think more than regular songs. I guess it was the lack of lyrics that helped. Now that I have no essays to write, pretty much the only soundtracks that remain on my MP3 player are those by Yoko Kanno.

As I grow older I am always seeking out new musical experiences in a hope of finding something that can touch my very soul in the same way Ringo Shiina’s music did when I first heard it. That day has not yet come but sometimes when I hear a bit of music for the first time I get an odd feeling of déjà vu and think that I have heard the song before. I dig around my brain and realise the similarity is often with a Yoko Kanno song. This is happening with extraordinary regularity and although I’m only listening to them for the first time most of these pieces were written way before Kanno thought her stuff up.

The time when I really reached braking point with her music though was when I first listened to Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space by Spiritualized, an album described by the BBC as a towering artistic statement. I thought it was indeed a great album but I felt that nagging feeling while listening to it that I had heard music like this before. Straight after listening, I played the 1st Ghost in the Shell soundtrack and lo and behold half the songs on there were pretty much directly lifted from that Spiritualized album. I was kind of disgusted, especially as Kanno was an artist I held in such high regard and I just found that my favourite song of hers was basically a rip off of another work.

So for quite some time I basically stopped listening to her music. Shunning her whenever her music came up when randomly playing my entire music library but I did not remove it. You see, I think it is just too good. Whether she lifts some of her music wholesale from others or not, almost every piece of music she creates sounds wonderful and is a joy to listen to.

I am obviously aware that music is not created in a vacuum, people will always be inspired by others with what they write. However taking music written by others and claiming it is your own is a very bad thing indeed. I am unable to check if Kanno credits the people whose work she uses because the CD’s of hers I own all are in England and the credits in them are probably in Japanese anyway. When I googled to see if others had noticed the same things I had, I saw that with some of the songs people have accused her of plagiarism for, she had actually worked with the original writer when creating her music.

Another way to look at it is to think of Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop was a wonderful TV show which she worked on and that show’s entire ethos was Jazz. While I don’t know much about Jazz, I hear that people often “quote” other songs and work them into their own sounds. Cowboy Bebop was a show that did this from its very core. The show worked by taking inspiration from other films, TV shows and pop culture and working it into it’s own story, taking other great ideas and changing them, putting a unique spin on them. The show’s music was no exception, just the other day a friend linked a Jazz song (Sing, Sing, Sing by Benny Goodman) on twitter and I gave it a listen. I found that the opening bars were just like Cowboy Bebop’s song, Black Coffee. However after the opening the songs do go in separate directions.

So maybe Yoko Kanno’s way of creating music is the Cowboy Bebop way, the Jazz way. Taking “licks” from other works and doing new things with them and creating great things. Maybe she finds happiness when someone notices her inspirations hidden in the songs she writes. This I think is a very cool way to make music, however I also think that she should be careful sometimes, the things she did with Synchronized’s music is not so much a homage but dangerously close to copying.

If you want to hear some of these similarities in her music for yourself you can check out a few videos people have made on Youtube.

… then what would you call nerdy metal?

I’ve recently discovered the band Animetal, who cover animé theme tunes in a metal style. They make the geek in me rock out.

\m/

Watching all these theme tunes again is giving me a huge nostalgia kick.

Remember the good old 1980s?
When things were so uncomplicated?
I wish I could go back there again
And everything could be the same.
ELO – Ticket to the Moon

Every time I listen to Ticket to the Moon by the Electric Light Orchestra I am reminded of Macross. Macross was an animé series made over 20 years ago that was very much a product of it’s time. The basic plot is shallow at best but the main appeal of the series was with the great characters. In fact, the series concentrates on the relationship of a pilot named Hikaru Ichijyo, military officer Misa Hayase and an idol singer named Minmay Lynn. The show basically boils down to a love triangle and the show’s message is that love (and cheesy 80′s Jpop) CAN change the world.

This kind of thing would never get made today, everyone is far too cynical for them to get away with such a fanciful story. It would never survive in today’s embittered world. However every time I have shown this series to anyone it has charmed the pants off them. Be it the characters or the music or the silly innocence of it all it has just grabbed them in some way.

Seeing four grown men shouting “No, she’s not the girl for you!” at the television screen was a sight I never thought I’ll see, but see it I did, all thanks to Macross. Another of my mates currently uses one the songs from the show (the brilliantly named “My Boyfriend is a Pilot”) as his mobile phone ringtone. He hasn’t changed it in like eight months and once he left his phone ringing just to sing along, despite not knowing a lick of Japanese.

That is the Macross magic.

The reason I am talking (typing?) about Macross now isn’t only because ELO came up on my iTunes party shuffle but a whole new Macross spin-off is currently being shown on telly here. Entitled Macross Frontier this latest show is another of a fairly long line of Macross spin-offs, most of which have all been fairly disappointing.

I can only comment on the first 2 episodes but at the moment I am not so sure about it. The good news is that the main Macross ingredients of rookie pilot, love triangle and music are in there but the first thing that struck me about the show was how much I dislike the character designs. The main character looks like a girl, the main love interest looks about 12 and the idol singer seems to have no redeeming features. Saying that though the animation is top notch and the battle scenes are aces. Also the music has been written by Yoko Kanno, so if it isn’t amazing it will be a disappointment, while the character’s designs don’t exactly turn me on the story set up seems to be quite interesting and I am genuinely intrigued to see where it goes. So here’s hoping that this story is worthy of Macross’ 25th anniversary.

I will leave you with one of the legendary Minmay’s classic songs.

*SNIFF* Sing it how it is Minmay.