Welcome to Wota Wonderings! We are a group of English-speaking Japanese music bloggers brought together once a month to answer questions posed by johpan. We strive to be creative and entertaining, and we may even shed a bit of new light on interesting musical and cultural topics. Any questions about how we work should be directed to johpan. Don’t forget to check out the other posts from this month at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

This month’s topic is the following:

The music industry has had many tie-ins with animes and doramas. Of those tie-ins, did one manage to capture your interest and get you hooked on their music? Or, did one manage to change your perspective of a musical act?

As a 2nd part, did you end up watching the anime or dorama in its entirety or give up once the musical act’s tie-in ceased?

And for you non-anime/dorama watchers, have there been any CM tie-ins that had a similar effect on you?

Ah, the many fond memories watching anime such as the various parts of the Macross & Dragonball series, Sailor Moon,  Ghost In The Shell, Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis (etc, etc…) & more recently Beck.  For most of the anime I’ve watched I never really cared too much for the opening or closing theme songs.  The only exception to that was Inu Yasha, paticularly the ending themes.

There were many great tracks that have played over the ending credits of that show such as BoA’s Every Heart, Ayumi Hamsaki’s Dearest & Namie Amuro’s Come.  For me the best ending themes were the ones that introduced me to the music of Do As Infinity.  I especially like Fukai Mori.

It may sound strange, but when I was watching Inu Yasha on TV I couldn’t wait for the episodes to end so I could hear Fukai Mori for the short 30 seconds that it lasted.   Not that I hated the show, in fact I like it a lot (I’m collecting the DVD box sets) but that that song was (& still is) so damn good.  It was sung with such raw emotion that it was hard to not get caught up in the track.

Before Inu Yasha I had no idea about DAI & would have been blind to their awesomeness had I not stuck around for the entire show.  That exposed me to a band I would have otherwise ignored or forgot about, but thankfully I did neither & now I’m a very loyal fan of theirs.

Did I stop watching Inu Yasha once DAI’s affiliation with them stopped? No.  As I stated before there were other great songs associated with  the show.  My 2nd favorite ending theme is Ayu’s Dearest.  That was my gateway into her massive catalog of music.  Her works have probably taken me the longest (after H!P) to acquire but it was worth every bit of effort.

Her early material reminded me a lot of the same pop fluff that I could hear anytime on MuchMusic or MTV & I was about to write her off.  But as I went through each of her singles & albums I realized she was much more versatile than I had initially thought.

Anyway, I would have kept watching Inu Yasha  had it not moved time slots & days so many times.  Eventually I ended up losing track of when it was on, so my lack of viewing was not by choice.  I’m grateful for the DVD box sets, even if they are a little on the expensive side.

I haven’t had a tie-in experience like those since.  Maybe because I don’t watch too many anime or drama’s these days.  I guess if I find another show that fancies me I’ll discover a new band or solo artist that way again one day.

Other Wota Wonderings Posts

• Wota Wonderings 3 – Tie-Ins (Solo Space)
• Wota Wonderings: Mendol – where the guys are girls and the girls are hot. (boylikesmusic)
• Wota Wonderings 003: It’s All Yui Horie’s Fault (Somewhat) (The Groove Music Life)
• Wota Wonderings 03 – Anime, Dorama, Video Game Tie-Ins (fields of maize and berryz)
• Wota Wonderings 003: Kirarin Revolution and Hot Guys (Merry Go Round)