JJapanese

I’ve been curious to know this when it comes to newer Japanese music.

For new music that is featured in new anime openings and endings, are these artists perceived differently than artist whose music aren’t involved in anime? And for people who mostly get exposed to new Japanese musicians/bands(Asian Kung-Fu Generation, Toru Kitajima, Kana-Boon) through anime, would you say that they might be missing out on a lot musicians(if not most) simply because most Japanese musicians don’t have music featured in anime. I’ve always felt like people might be missing out on most musicians due to anime being their main exposure, but would you say this is true?

3 comments

  1. In my experience, I would say there’s not much of an issue of artists being perceived “differently” for being used in an anime, other than it’s usually an indicator that they’ve “made it” / had a “big break” once your song gets used as a theme — that stands true for j-drama and films as well as anime though. “Ani-songs” are definitely a genre of music, but I think it’s also possible to have a band that is featured in an anime OP/ED but the average person would not be like “oh they’re an anime band” or whatever.

    Side note, traditionally anime in Japan are funded by a “production committee” (製作委員会) that’s often composed of a publisher (whose manga the show is based on); a TV company (which will air the show); and a record company (and it’ll be one of their artists doing the OP/ED).

    And while there is a pretty wide range of musical genres that get picked for anime, I do think people can be missing out by only listening to those artists. Sometimes it’s artists that are more “indie”/underground or less well-known (not signed to a major record label) and sometimes it is because the music is too “out there” or avant-garde lol.

  2. I’m never experienced anything like artists being seen differently for having an anime OP/ED other than it may give people a point of reference. As someone else said, this also would be the same for if their song I’d chosen for a JDorama, or other types of TV. Sometimes it can have a large effect of their career.

    If someone is getting most/all their Japanese music exposure through anime I wouldn’t say they they are missing out on a lot of artists. I’d say they are missing out on virtually all of them.

    Can you imagine if you only listened to songs that were featured in CSI or other cop shows? Your exposure to artists would be abysmally small. And such is the case for these poor souls you are describing.

    Japanese music is so incredibly diverse, covering every imaginable genre. In fact it’s quite common for even individual artists to perform a wide range of genres. Only being exposed to Japanese music in this way is horrendous, even many popular artists end up in an anime. The tens of thousands of incredible artists of every stripe that will never be top 5 on the Oricon charts might as well not exist to the people and it’s really a shame.

  3. So I used to feel weird that my Japanese playlist had a lot of anime openings on it. Then I started listening to Japans top 50 on Spotify and discovered it had plenty of anime openings. Recently all of Ado’s one piece album skyrocketed to the top. There are other non anime popular songs but a banger anime opening will still make the top 50 easy

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