Joy Kim

I’ve just started watching the BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad anime courtesy of Netflix (verdict so far: not bad at all!), and it inspired me to brainstorm all the manga and anime that I know that feature rock music as a subject or as a central theme.

First, there are the obvious shojo and shonen-ai counterparts to BECK: NANA and Gravitation, respectively. I think Yazawa Ai’s NANA is brilliant, but I found Murakami Maki’s Gravitation nearly unreadable. Then there’s 20th Century Boys by Urasawa Naoki. In this wonderful series, rock music is a important theme and motif, but the story is not structured around the central character’s musical career.

Beyond this, I have to look to western comics to find more series about rock music or rock musicians. The very funny Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley has strong manga influences (don’t miss the NANA references in the backgrounds!); the title character is a twentysomething slacker who spends some of his copious free time performing in a very bad indie band.

And that’s all I can think of right now! The other music-centric anime and manga that I can think of are both about classical music students: Nodame Cantabile and La Corda d’Oro. What am I forgetting? And what are your favorites? Tell me in the comments.

skg046 says:

Far too random—the live-action first season of Gokusen shows an electric bass in the classroom. Uchiyama carries its case around occasionally; I guess it’s his. It’s an odd thing to have added to the jdrama, but I don’t know offhand whether it features in the manga or anime, nor is it the sort of thing that’d be mentioned in summaries. hmm.

That might be what gets me at least to skim the manga. I’d forgotten about the bass till seeing this post. What piques my curiosity is that Uchi is quite different visually between the manga and jdrama versions. (The jdrama got tall, pretty Oguri Shun to play a guy who looks monsterlike.)

Posted on June 16th, 2008

Joy says:

I don’t remember the Gokusen anime well enough to say whether Uchiyama has a guitar in it; his character design certainly is a far cry from the pretty actor cast to play him in the drama. Only Sawada is supposed to be as much of a bishounen as he is in the drama. (Also, having just googled Oguri Shun because of your reference, I am deeply amused by the contradiction of casting the actor who played Sano in Hana Kimi as Uchi. Ha!)

I think the Gokusen manga and anime are also generally worth investigating because they offer a different characterization of Yankumi; she comes off as much less naive than she is in the drama.

Posted on June 16th, 2008

Joy says:

Side note: I’ve thought of a couple other series with references to rock music, though they’re minor at best. The Kare Kano manga by Tsuda Masami has a supporting character who is a teen rock star; he’s featured in a volume or two, but pretty much sidelined after that. And The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya anime has a rock band performance as the highlight of its obligatory school festival episode; it’s actually one of the strongest episodes of that series. However, in both these cases, the rock music motif doesn’t run throughout the series as a whole.

Posted on June 16th, 2008

skg046 says:

I wonder why rock/pop is relatively, er, minimal (saved from “low-key”). Does anime with contemporary subjects tend to insert pop songs the way contemporary-set jdramas do, or are the conventions simply different?

I’m far enough into the Gokusen manga to be fairly sure that Uchi doesn’t play bass there—finished vol. 4 today.

Posted on June 18th, 2008

Joy says:

Does anime with contemporary subjects tend to insert pop songs the way contemporary-set jdramas do, or are the conventions simply different?

I don’t know if I have enough of a sample size to say for sure, but I’m inclined to say no. Honey and Clover has insert songs in nearly every episode, but I think that’s something of an exception; the source manga series is linked to the insert songs via the series name, which references albums by Spitz and Suga Shikao. In general, I’d say anime (including those with contemporary subjects) tends to feature pop/rock music primarily in the opening and ending songs and relies on the usual instrumental score during the episode itself.

An interesting anime-rock/pop music connection is the phenomenon of “character songs”: usually singles with a few tracks sung by voice actor(s) in character.

Which leads me to another anime to add to the “sorta, but in a different way list”: Weiss Kreuz (also known as Knight Hunters) is about four bishounen who are florists by day and assassins by night. The four voice actors for the main ensemble ended up forming a boy band (in which they perform, in character, complete with costumes). From what I’ve seen/heard, neither the anime nor music is particularly good, though the former at least is often unintentionally funny. Also, hilariously, I’m told there’s another series based on the same bizarre premise, though the name escapes me right now.

Posted on June 18th, 2008

just passing through says:

I’m trying to find a certain manga. I don’t remember the name of the manga since it’s been such a long time. I know that the main character’s name Sakura and he’s the lead singer in a rock band that oddly resembles L’arc en Ciel. The Music motif is strong and central through out.

The storyline is a rocky love story between Sakura and his girl who’s a bit of a wet rag.

If you could let me know what the name of that manga was…

Posted on May 18th, 2009

stephane "manga" meer says:

I’m a musician myself and I like to find music in the center of a manga theme. I had to work on the french rock songs of several series and they always sound the same. There could be an opening to a wider range of styles.

Posted on July 4th, 2009