During a livestream on his personal YouTube channel earlier this year, Ichiro Yamaguchi, lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the band Sakanaction, talked about the band’s work on “Kaiju” – the opening theme for the Madhouse-produced anime Orb: On the Movements of the Earth. As this was the band’s first anime opening in a long time, he loved the challenge and expressed his desire to produce music for more anime titles. However, according to him, Sony Music’s involvement with popular anime productions like Aniplex is making it difficult for those outside of the company to score openings.
Aniplex is a Japanese entertainment company and a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan dedicated to producing and distributing anime. Given that its parent company is one of the biggest music producers in Japan, it makes sense for Aniplex to hand theme and score composition duties over to Sony Music Japan’s in-house producers and associated bands.
Unfortunately, Sony Music Japan’s exclusivity of Aniplex-produced anime means that bands like Sakanaction have a harder time scoring them. That said, Sakanaction’s record label, Victor Entertainment, has an animation-related video and music software subsidiary called FlyingDog. Should FlyingDog ever produce an anime, Yamagushi says there is a good chance that Sakanaction will be able to produce music for it.
Yamaguchi reveals that a way for bands not associated with anime productions to get into the anime music business is to look for titles that don’t have a record label on the production committee. Madhouse, the studio behind Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, is not associated with any music label, allowing Sakanaction to easily work on Orb: On the Movements of the Earth.
In the livestream, Yamaguchi said he is open to hearing business proposals from manga artists and anime companies who are interested in working with Sakanaction on a future theme song, so it might not be long before we get to hear Sakanaction on another anime opening again.
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