Music

January 16: Ensemble Vega concert

Akira Miyagawa struck again, leading his chamber music collective in a Sunday afternoon concert at the Grand Hall in Kurume City. Among the ten pieces they performed was the Space Battleship Yamato Montage for Chamber Music, which premiered in December 2016. Speaking of which…

March: Yamato Suite for Chamber Music

After far too long a wait, Akira Miyagawa’s 10-minute Yamato suite for chamber music was finally released on Youtube.

Click here and let it wash over you!

Photo posted on Twitter by host Androw Umeda

May 7: Radio Suite Be Forever Yamato

In the grand tradition of the vintage years, annual 4-hour radio shows devoted to Yamato music reappeared in the remake years. Clover radio broadcast three of them from May 2018 through May 2022, lovingly curated and featuring guests from the production side. After the third show, Clover went off the air. Luckily, another station (based in Saitama prefecture) absorbed Clover’s audience and brought the radio suite back to life with its original hosts, one of which is manga/production artist Michio Murakawa.

The Be Forever radio suite was broken down as follows…

Hour 1: BGM highlights from Series 1 (1974) through 2022
Hour 2: Yamato 2205 BGM highlights and dialogue comparisons of vintage “drama records”
Hour 3: Guest corner with Character Designer Nobuteru Yuuki
Hour 4: Listener requests (from Twitter) for classic tracks and rarities

Nobuteru Yuuki left behind the original art shown at right, and the entire show was rebroadcast two weeks later on the 21st. Contrary to the promo art shown above, it was NOT available worldwide. Alas. Let’s hope they fix that next time around.

Photos posted on Twitter by Saityorou

May 14: Shizuoka Hobby Show Concert

Bandai didn’t have any new 2205 products to debut, but Yamato still had a presence in two ways at the first big post-pandemic hobby show. First, exhibitions by private clubs featured custom-built kits to dazzle the eye. See a photo gallery here.

Second, this particular hobby show always includes live performances of anime themes. The Shizuoka Music Club presented a mini-suite of Yamato music that can be heard here:

Yamato victory theme | Final Yamato Cosmo Tiger theme | Garmillas national anthem (angle A) | Garmillas national anthem (angle B)

Photos posted on Twitter by mekamiyaph

August 14: Anime Japan Fes 2022

Comiket 100 took place the weekend of August 13 & 14, and it has become tradition for an anime song [anison] concert to happen close by on the Sunday evening. This one featured the “great gods” of anison: Ichiro Mizuki, Isao Sasaki, and Mitsuko Horie. With a lineup like that, you know Yamato and its contemporaries were well-served. (In fact, it’s an anison tradition for the entire performer lineup to combine for the Yamato theme as the last number.)

Read a recent interview with Mitsuko Horie here.

October 15: TV appearance

The Yamato theme blasted out of everyone’s TV screens on a program titled (deeeeep breath) Roar of Laughter Impersonation Red and White Singing Battle 2022 Autumn. A contestant belted out the first verse, then was joined on stage by the very person he was impersonating: Isao Sasaki. Without missing a beat, they plowed through the second verse together and brought the house down.

November 17: Music special

Showa Songs Best Ten DX is a weekly TV Series that looks back at the vast and deep music catalog of the Showa era (1925-1989) for discovery and nostalgia. A different theme is chosen for each episode, and the theme for November 17 was a good one.

The website Note had this to say about the show…

The Great King and Queen of Anime Songs descend!
The Top Ten Best Anime Heroes & Heroines of the Showa Era

The guests were Isao Sasaki, the “Great King of the anime song world,” and Hiroko Moriguchi, the “Queen of Gundam!” Midori Oka also joined in. They sang and talked about the nostalgic anime heroes and heroines that were popular among children in the 70s and 80s.

Star singers of mood songs and enka who sang “anison”

In 1963, Astro Boy was the first anime program that started in Japan. A children’s choir, called Kamitakada Boys’ Chorus, sang the theme song for it and many other hero theme songs of the time, such as Super Jetter.

Around 1965, there were some unexpected star singers who sang anime songs. For example, 8 Man by Shigeru Katsumi and Kamui Gaiden by Hiroshi Mizuhara. In this best ten, Tiger Mask by Hideyo Morimoto and Inokappe Daisho by Yoshimi Tendo were also ranked.

The King and Queen of ANISON descend!

Ms. Moriguchi, who made her first appearance on the program, sang her debut song from the second half of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, With Love to the Stars of Water. Previously making her mark as a balladeer, she gained immortal status as an anison singer when the genre became a major player in the music market. When the “All Gundam Poll” was held in 2018 to commemorate Gundam‘s 40th anniversary, Moriguchi’s song was voted No. 1 out of more than 360 theme songs.

Isao Sasaki sang a special medley of Space Battleship Yamato and The Scarlet Scarf. Both songs were written by Yu Aku and composed by Hiroshi Miyagawa. The songs were not for children, as in the past, but are big works full of male romance and adult moods. Isao Sasaki’s dandy voice and overwhelming vocal ability were a perfect match, leading to a huge national hit.

Condor Joe gave birth to the king of anison

Sasaki, a singer, voice actor, and actor, made his way into the anison world. The big turning point was his role in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.

The theme song was sung by Masato Komon, but at the time Sasaki, the voice of Gatchaman‘s subleader “Condor Joe,” sang this song at a party. After that, he began receiving invitations to sing anime songs. In the special, Mr. Sasaki also shared a story behind his dubbing for Sylvester Stallone, saying Condor Joe gave him hints when he was recreating Stallone’s roles.

Watch Sasaki’s performance from the show here.

November 18: JSDF Music Festival ’22

The Yamato theme has been a standard for many years at JSDF music events, but the 2022 festival (titled WITH) was something special. This was the first festival in three years due to reasons we know too well, so the Maritime Band unleashed a dramatic windup and a rendition of the 2009 Resurrection version of the Yamato theme.

See it for yourself at these links:

Select performances (Yamato theme at 22:10)

Complete concert (Yamato theme at 1:08:00)

November 17 rehearsal video (:45)

December 1: One Earth Mission concert

We have to take a little ride to link this to Space Battleship Yamato, but we’ll get there in the end.

On the first day of December, renowned Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa led the Saito Kinen Orchestra in a live performance for a special audience: JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, stationed in orbit on the ISS. The connection between the two was described thusly on the event’s website:

In Japan’s history of human space activities, JAXA marks its 30th anniversary in 2022 since astronaut Mamoru Mohri took his first space mission. The Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, which is the home of the Saito Kinen Orchestra, also marks its 30th anniversary this year. The music will reach astronaut Koichi Wakata in space, and we will sense on a global scale that we all live on the same planet — One Earth Mission.

What music do you suppose was chosen for this expansive effort? If you just answered “the Yamato theme,” the answer is…not quite. Instead, it was Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. So what’s the Yamato connection? That same piece was used in the soundtrack for Yamato Resurrection. So if you frame this subjectively, you can say that a piece of Yamato movie music was performed live for an astronaut in space. See? We got there.

Now take a moment to visit the One Earth Mission website where you can watch the performance itself and learn more about this unique event.

December 3: Live Yamato suite

On this day, the 12th concert of the Shin-Yurigaoka General Hospital Music Department was streamed live on Youtube. In pre-Covid world, their performances took place in front of a live audience, but for the second year in a row they put it online for the whole world to watch. They opened with the Yamato suite and continued on with several others, concluding with Gustav Holst’s The Planets. For an encore, they performed a theme from E.T.

See the complete concert on Youtube here.

December 31: New Year’s Eve music special

You know him, you love him. Isao Sasaki rocked the house with the Yamato theme to close out 2022 at the 6th annual Momoiro Singing Match. This annual event is hosted by the idol group Momoiro Clover Z, who invite other singers to a massive musical bash at the Nippon Budokan theater in Tokyo. Everyone is divided into red and white teams to compete for audience popularity. Their 2022/2023 late-night special included 50 other acts, including our favorite guy.

See his performance here

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