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!

The question this month:

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?

This is going to be somewhat brief compared to my usual ramblings. Years ago, I was regularly scouring the DVD bins for interesting anime titles, usually centering around ones that weren’t mecha-laden sci-fi. One of the titles that I got into heavily was Love Hina, based on Ken Akamatsu’s manga. Such was my interest that I started scouring the web for anything Love Hina that I could get my hands on, especially if it featured my favorite character from the series, Motoko Aoyama. Yeah, that’s where the title of my original music blog, Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama, came from.

The search inevitably led to me finding soundtrack CDs from the series (two albums of character songs sung by all the seiyuu on the series and two different soundtracks). I’d found one on eBay, and on a search for a more regular source, discovered CDJapan, ordered up the rest, and started searching out other recordings by the voice actresses on the show, particularly those by Yui Horie (whose singing career I’ve become a devoted fan of) and Yuu Asakawa (who, while putting out three fine mini-albums of music, hasn’t done any solo material since about 2003).

I lost track of what was going on in anime and manga after awhile (its only in the past couple of weeks that I’ve started to look through the latter’s racks again), but discovering CDJapan in my search for these CDs, and knowing in the process that I could find other Japanese CDs easier, led me to start using the site to fill gaps in my Whiteberry collection (specifically at the time, their first EP After School and their trilogy of cover-version singles). This in itself led to me doing a little networking through LiveJournal and elsewhere for more J-music to find, which of course led to my discovering Morning Musume and Hello! Project, and to my blogging adventures.

Funnily enough, I haven’t paid much attention to any acting or anime project involving MoMusu very much. I’ve downloaded the first couple of episodes of the current My Melody series because of Reina Tanaka’s involvement in the voice cast and my general interest in Sanrio characters (Hell, I visit the Sanrio store in Times Square and buy something every time I visit New York City – last time it was a little Kuromi beanbag stuffie and pen). On the opposite hand, even though I have all of Koharu Kusumi’s Kirarin Revolution-related solo albums and think they’re fucking brilliant, I’ve never seen a single episode of the series, although I’ve heard that it may be coming out on DVD in the States at some point. My fingers are crossed…

Wota Wonderings 003 – The Ties That Bind (Selective Hearing)
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)

Welcome to TGML’s contribution to Wota Wonderings, 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!

Johan dropped quite a challenge on everyone this time around with his question of the month, which relates to what he referred to as “idol love”.

To be honest, about a year ago, inspired by similar pieces that Vee and Ray had done, I tried to write something about why Reina Tanaka happened to be “the idol that drives my wotahood”, to paraphrase Ray. I couldn’t come up with anything.

Which is OK. Being a fan of something doesn’t really need an explanation. Several years ago, I was discussing all things musical with my good friend, punk legend Mike Watt, on the phone, and amongst the constantly-changing topics, as they usually do in the course of a conversation with Watt, turned to punk rock itself.  He related how, early into his immersion into punk rock, someone asked him what he liked about it. He replied, “I don’t know. I just do. And maybe I’ll figure out why later.”

That having been said, a love related to the topic at hand, is the love of music itself. If I didn’t love music, I wouldn’t be writing about it.  Especially if I didn’t like punk rock and Japanese pop, the two things that drive this blog and its predecessor, Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama. 

The other day, I stopped at the post office to pick up my advance-ordered CD of the new Buono! album Buono! 2. The clerk who waited on me, as he brought the package out, asked me flat out, “Why don’t you just download this stuff?” Mind you, he had no clue and probably didn’t care what was in the package, but he’s seen so many packages from CDJapan, Amazon, and various record labels over the years that he knows I’m buying music. He’d asked me this at least once before and it pissed me off. This time, around I said what I was merely thinking the first time around: “Why? Because you can’t be bothered to walk the single yard between your counter and the incoming air mail table?” 

He started to mention something about a site he downloaded all of his music from. It wasn’t iTunes, eMusic, or any other legitimate service that I’d heard of, so I didn’t pay much attention to the name. I simply told him, “I’d rather pay for my music.”

“Nobody’s going to catch you,” he claimed. “I’ve got nothing but downloaded music on my computer and I haven’t gotten in trouble.”

“That doesn’t mean you won’t,” I replied, taking my package and leaving.

As far as I’m concerned, that clerk who downloads his music doesn’t love music. He probably doesn’t even like it. To him, it’s just an accessory. He has no respect for the process, the time the artists take to write and record it, or the monetary investment the record companies have to make behind it. And he’s probably amongst the first to complain that “music today sucks”. 

I, on the other hand, love music. I grew up around it and can’t imagine my life without it. I pay my hard-earned money for it, whether its on CD, LP, or a legal download, because that sends a clear message to the record companies: “I want more of this.” (For a more detailed argument against illegal downloading, read the article “You Are NOT Entitled to Free Music!” elsewhere on this blog.) 

Hm, does that make music itself my idol? Looks like it does – looks like I have my own definition of idol love after all!

Wota Wonderings 2… I luff youuuu~ (H!P Fangirling like Nobody’s Business)
Wota Wonderings 2 – All you need is love! (Solo Space)
Wota Wonderings 002 (Selective Hearing)
Wota Wonderings 002: All you need is love! (Merry Go Round)
Wota Wonderings 02 – The Idol Love Challenge (fields of maize and berryz)
Wota Wonderings: Idol Love. (boylikesmusic)

Welcome to TGML’s contribution to Wota Wonderings, 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 question: If you were someone in the Japanese music industry who could influence a change, what would your New Year’s resolution be?

If I were in such a position, I would  start reaching out towards the growing Western audience. The Japanese music industry obviously know we’re out here – and not just for the nifty Japanese editions of American albums with the otherwise rare bonus tracks. I could easily go on and on about what certain artists/agencies/labels should and shouldn’t do but I won’t go into specifics here. What the J-music industry can do for a very good start is simple, given that the audience outside of their native country exists and is strong and devoted: Make their product more easily obtainable to the Western audience.

We know that Puffy AmiYumi and Dir en grey have done Western releases of their albums and done tours, and that BoA has already started to make inroads here with a digital single. Then there’s the Japan Live package tour, now about to enter what I think is its third season (last year’s lineup introduced the great all-girl punk/powerpop quartet SCANDAL, carrying on the Whiteberry/Zone tradition to the point where they signed with Whiteberry and Zone’s former label Sony Japan), the recent advent of JapanFiles.com and HearJapan.com, the mysterious appearance of some Hello! Project/Up-Front Works and Avex releases on US iTunes, and I’m not even counting all those appearances at anime conventions.

But that’s only a small tip off of this particular iceberg, and legal digital downloads only go so far. The best next/first step the J-Music industry can do for its growing Western audience is start making physical copies of its most wanted artists/releases available here in the States on both vinyl and CD.

Without going into too much major detail, the smartest thing for the J-music industry to do is deal with independent labels that have more than adequate nationwide/worldwide distribution. (I’ve detailed how bad Tofu Records’ distribution and promotion was in past blog entries.) Unlike the major labels, a good independent label like Matador, Saddle Creek, or Merge would work their releases long term, rather than the typical major label short-term push more interested in high first-week sales than having a steady selling title. It would be equally as smart to have the releases come out in all three major formats here – CD, LP, and online.

What happens? Simple. Western fans can then get their J-pop at a more domestic price be it in a physical format or through a legal download. No asinine amounts of hype needed (as has been suggested elsewhere). If the sales of these domestic editions do enough to justify bringing more J-music acts over these shores to perform, and those concert appearances in turn serve to sell more records… well, you can guess the rest.

But domestic releases of more J-music? I’d be snapping them up in a heartbeat even if I already had the Japanese editions.

(SIDE NOTE: I don’t know how good JapanFiles.com’s distribution is regarding the American release of the Hangry&Angry EP Kill Me Kiss Me, or even if they are doing any physical distribution of the domestic CD edition beyond online sales, but since their focus seems wholly niche at the start it’s a bit of a moot point.)

Wota Wonderings 1: New Year’s Reolutions (Solo Space)
Wota Wonderings 001: New Year’s Resolutions (Merry Go Round)
…on The Japanese Music Industry (Stardust)
[Wota Wonderings] New Years Resolution… (Renai Revolution 21)
Wota Wonderings: Resolutions, anyone? (boylikesmusic)