Summary
Music plays a crucial role in anime. Whether it’s inopening themesor as catchy tunes during action sequences, an anime series' soundtrack forms its beating heart. Many animes would have been worse off - both in quality and in commercial appeal - had they not featured high-production musical scores.
Yet music doesn’t always have to be in the background. Sometimes, an anime features a band prominently: sometimes it even forms the basis for the story. Fictional bands have been around since the first mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, and many anime bands have gone on to succeed on the real-life Japanese charts. Here are some of the most notable ones.
Gravitation
Gravitation hides painful yearning with lighthearted comedy: though the anime is forgotten, it deserves re-evaluation as an early 2000sLGBTQ+ period piece. Its leads, an aspiring pop star and a famous writer, clash when the latter, Eiri Yuki, dubs protagonist Shuichi Shindou a talentless songwriter.
Eiri Yuki doesn’t know how to have a good time. Bad Luck’s music might be dated - even more so because the anime came out in 2001 - but it’s charming and full of freshness. If Yuki doesn’t want to dance to this band’s jangly pop tunes, he’s missing out.
7Detroit Metal City
Detroit Metal City
The best parodies come from a place of love, not ridicule. Detroit Metal City is a love letter to metalhead culture, serving up an anime take on Metalopocalypse. It stars a budding musician who turns to metal music once his dreams of being a pop star fizzle out.
Detroit Metal City shows how freeing metal culture is at its best. By day, Soichi Negishi is shy and unassuming, but when he dons the corpse paint and takes the stage name of Johannes Krauser II, he becomes a larger-than-life demon. Whether you’re a Kiss fan or just enjoy J-metal, you owe it to yourself to rock out to this band’s tunes.
6Hokago Tea Time
K-On
It’s a classic anime story: a group of young up-and-comers band together to keep their school club from closing down. K-On is one of the best retellings of this tale, featuring a band that blends rock and pop to keep their school’s light music club going.
K-On was one of the most famous fictional bandsin the 2010s. Even if you haven’t watched this anime, you can identify the characters. The series also garnered acclaim for its attention to detail: the instruments are very faithful to their real-life counterparts.
5Bakumatsu Rock
Samurai Jam: Bakumatsu Rock
Rock’n’roll is the music of rebellion and counterculture and Bakumatsu Rock transplants that concept to a 19th-centuryshogunate setting. The world of Bakumatsu Rock is awash with government-controlled idol music meant to keep the populace under control.
In these circumstances, Sakamoto Ryoma and his band of misfits seek to free the public from their brainwashing. Using their anachronistic electric guitars, the band defies the government’s mandates against songwriting and sticks it to the Man.
4Fire Bomber
Macross 7
Macross might not have broken through in the West like Dragon Ball did, but it was still essential to anime’s evolution as a medium. By the time Macross 7 aired, the series was a respected mecha institution.
Prominently featured in Macross 7 was a rock band called Fire Bomber, whose members were as capable on stage as they were in combat. As a fictional band, Fire Bomber transcended the anime it came from, released albums in Japan long after the final episode, and still remains active to this day.
3Beck
Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad
In contrast to the dazzling and unrealistic portrayal of rock bands in most anime, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad takes a more subdued approach. It accurately portrays the frustrations of forming a band, the drive to be the best and the struggle to achieve international appeal.
Just like the anime’s presentation, the band itself is more grounded, opting for music that’s closer to the Beatles or Oasis than to image-dependent metal or idol pop. Beck’s songwriting comes from a deep love of the guitar itself, and not from the promises of fame it holds. The band even covered the Beatles at one point; unfortunately, the North American release changed the lyrics.
2ENOZ
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi is no longer as popular a seriesas it used to be, but ask any Haruhi fan about what part of the anime stayed with them the most, and chances are they’ll say it was ENOZ’s performance. Though they only appear in one episode, and perform two songs, ENOZ are one of the best bands in anime.
This band’s performance showed Haruhi’s ability to come through and take things seriously when it mattered: along with Nagato, she saves the day with her fill-in performance when two of the members fall ill. The moment Nagato starts shredding on the guitar is goosebumps-inducing for any anime fan.
Angel Beats
As any musician can attest, few portrayals of rock music in media are truly fulfilling. They are either too satirical or too fantastical, and worst of all, the instruments are never animated correctly. Angel Beats has none of those problems: its portrayal of Girls Dead Monster is perfect.
The performance of Alchemy in Angel Beats will stand the test of time as one of the greatest musical moments in anime. Featuring soaring vocals from J-rock star Lisa, who has lent her songs to many anime, Girls Dead Monster’s performance is electric. The guitar chords and drum parts are animated accurately and flow smoothly: this must be where the entire anime’s budget went.
