“Hi! My name is Jessica, but I’m just passing by じぇす
Here, that means Jesse! This is my first time posting on Shooting Star Dreamer, so I thought I’d give a little introduction. I’ve loved anime since I was a kid, and my first anime when I was two years old was Samurai Pizza Cat. I currently enjoy a wide variety of Japanese media including anime, manga, video games, light novels, and more! I hope you enjoyed my first post! “
Music has been an existing theme in anime for decades, from shows like
Macross (1982), Sagast Full Moon (2002), and Baker (2004). Back in the early 2000s, there were only a handful of music-based animations, so fans of the genre didn’t have much room to be picky. By the 1980s and 1990s, this was even less the case. As time went on, the late 2000s brought us things like dating dream, Qingan!,
detroit metal cityin early 2010, we launched more music-related animations.
Now, 8 musical anime TV series have begun airing in 2017, 5 of which have been announced to be aired at some point in 2017, and 13 have been announced but have no release dates yet. There are a total of 26 music-based animations that are likely to be aired in 2017 alone. So what led to the huge leap forward in musical anime?
First, we must realize that the number of anime and Japanese animation studios is increasing every year. The first reason why there are so many musical anime is that there are a lot of anime themselves. according to
Anime-Planet’s databaseOnly 17 different series aired during the 2004 summer animation season. this 2016 Autumn Animation Season A total of 84 animation TV series were broadcast. Since the amount of TV anime in general has increased significantly, it makes sense that there should be more musical anime, right?
This is true to some extent. However, there still seems to be a trend for music-based anime at this time compared to other “niche” genres. By “niche,” I mean more specific anime categories like “Lost in a Strange World” or “Vampire” rather than more common genres like “Action” or “Horror.”
In Japan, pop idols are very successful right now. Especially AKB48 located in Akihabara. Simply called Akiha, it is somewhat of a center for otaku of all kinds, so an entire culture has formed around the so-called “idol otakus.” In addition to AKB48’s success in Akihabara, many Love Live videos were played on screens in the area and other anime-heavy areas of Japan. Love Live is currently very popular among Japanese otakus.
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| The music-based anime “Classicaloid” does not focus on pop music. |
While I do think that Japanese idol groups like AKB48 and popular anime about idols like Love Live have contributed to the increase in the number of music anime, I know many of you are shaking your heads right now and thinking, “Not all music anime are about pop!” It’s true that recent anime such as
sound! euphonium and Classical It has nothing to do with popularity. However, if you look at the different titles of recent music-based animations, you’ll see that almost all of them are indeed about pop music.
This makes sense; after all, learning music has to start somewhere, and pianists often start by studying classical music. If you look at the variety of anime we put out each season, you’ll see that creators are looking at more and more niche themes. For example, the upcoming Welcome to the Ballroom animation is about ballroom dancing. It makes sense that music genres would also want to expand into different types of music.
Overall, I feel that the growing popularity of Japanese pop idols is the reason why our musical anime collections continue to grow, but the anime industry itself should also be thanked for it, which has made such great progress, growing every season and adding diversity of its own.