Buma Music In Motion was part of Amsterdam Dance Event 2023 with a fully stacked conference day at the Main Business Hub Felix Meritis. Hundreds of music professionals joined our talks and panels, where we dove into the latest developments in our field. Besides discussing future challenges and opportunities with experts, we invited many well-known composers, producers, and other music professionals to share their insights.
Text by Meike Jentjens
Photo’s by Birgit Bijl
Booming anime
Anime has been booming ever since its origin. With the rise of Crunchyroll and other streaming services, even more fans now have access to the vast amount of anime available. In addition, we see lots of brands jumping to collaborate.
About the experts in *Cue Epic Anime Music
In this panel, attendees had the chance to meet acclaimed composer and electronic artist kensuke ushio – known for his superb work on A Silent Voice, Ping Pong, Devilman Crybaby, and Chainsaw Man. He will speak about the unique process of scoring music for anime series and how he incorporates his background as an electronic music artist to create some of the most exciting scores of the moment.
Ellie Harrison from Crunchyroll can tell us how important music is in this genre and what the role of Crunchyroll is in anime becoming more mainstream.
Naho Saito brings the unique perspective of Aniplex, a Japanese animation studio and music production company.
We zoom in on the question: What makes anime so special?
Firstly, how do you get into working in music for anime?
kensuke ushio explains how he rolled into his profession of composing music for anime. ‘I started my career as an artist in electronic music and made tons of instrumental music. A producer from Aniplex was a big fan of mine, so he asked me to create a soundtrack for one of their animations.’ Aniplex is a subsidiary of Sony Music Japan, where Naho Saito worked and was later transferred to Aniplex.
Ellie Harrison’s position is still very new. ‘Basically, we’re bringing music content to our subscription platform for users. The market is rapidly growing. In this past year alone, we’ve added over 225 hours of music content to our platform, all artists from Sony Music Japan. Part of that content is 100 full-length concert videos, as well as over 3,000 thousand music videos. That opens up a lot of new jobs, too. The global reach of anime in the past few years is increasing still.’
Naho Saito explains that anime music specifically shows growth on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. ‘I noticed that several tracks kensuke has produced were snowballing in our revenue reports, especially on platforms like Douyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok. Users created twenty million videos with his track ‘Night Cruising from Pingpong’, all with organic growth. After that, his track got so many more streams on platforms as Spotify. I don’t think these people knew about his music being used in anime, his music came first for them. That shows how anime is everywhere without people even noticing it.’
How has the medium of anime music changed over time?
kensuke ushio: ‘I grew up in the 90s. When the animation industry was getting bigger and bigger, general music companies found out that it was growing. The respect for anime music also grew with that, while in the 70s and 80s, that wasn’t exactly the case. The diversity of animation music itself is widespread. It’s comparable to Hollywood, where musicians like techno producer Junky XL or Johan Johansson from the rock band Nine Inch Nails started doing soundtracks for animated pictures. That’s similar to Japanese animated videos, where we also see a lot of diversity. Since anime is growing, the diversity in the music is also growing.’
Since anime is growing, the diversity in the music is also growing.
kensuke ushio
Naho Saito explains how she gets data from Crunchyroll about screen numbers, and she can see that anime keeps growing in numbers every year from a business perspective. The same goes for anime conventions, where the number of events and fans increases extensively. ‘Japanese anime has always been a big domestic product but was closed off as an industry. Recently, foreign companies have been tapping into the industry. For example, Crunchyroll and Aniplex have co-produced animes.’
Ellie Harrison adds that years ago, showing people you watched anime wasn’t cool. These days, that’s completely different. ‘You see kids in schools wearing Demon Slayer backpacks or Naruto shirts. That’s really cool nowadays. Celebrities have started cosplaying, and even athletes talk about how anime inspires them. We can definitely speak of a whole pop culture moment for anime right now. Artists are starting to become more familiar with international audiences, which adds to the genre’s growth.’
How does kensuke ushio compose his anime music?
One of his tracks that got a lot of traction is his intro for ‘Chainsaw Man.’ Ellie Harrison thinks that score, plus his work for Devilman Crybaby, shifted a lot of minds in how people view music in anime. But how does he do it? ‘Honestly, I always compose the music from the bottom of my heart. I feel a lot of passion for every title. I get a lot of love for my work but also a lot of hate. I don’t even read my Twitter account anymore because of that. But that doesn’t stop me because some people will hate on it anyway.’
Ellie Harrison adds that the music in anime is such a massive component of the show that it will always be special and reaction-provoking. ‘Music in anime takes up almost a third of the whole episode. What makes anime special is that the language barrier is almost non-existent. I mean, if you’re a fan of Latin music or K-pop or anything, we don’t need subtitles or translations or anything. If you like a song, you like a song. That’s why the music in anime can grow even more than anime itself because you don’t need to dub it or explain it to people. It’s easier to digest for fans.’
Naho Saito: ‘Everybody around the world can feel what anime music is about; it’s very universal. I would love to push the soundtrack as a genre more; that is my goal.’
