Character Songs/CDs? And Another Question

[J Dude]

I'm just curious, but where did this idea originate and what made it click with the rest of the market that it started becoming somewhat of a norm?

Which might as well lead to me to another question. I remember once upon a time that I was watching Martian Successor Nadesico and just for giggles, I turn on the dub and it was a particular episode with singing involved from some of the characters. The funny thing is, the singing was in Japanese, clearly using the Japanese voices, even though it was the English dub track and everyone was speaking in English otherwise. Has there been any other cases in dubbing like this one of sheer laziness or foregoing having someone who probably hasn't had any training in singing attempt to sing? I know there are clearly differences in how the American and Japanese voice acting industry works for anime and that most seiyuu in Japan at least have some bit of training involved with singing, along with voice acting.

[tenshi_a]

Originally Posted by J Dude

I'm just curious, but where did this idea originate and what made it click with the rest of the market that it started becoming somewhat of a norm?

I was just listening to the song Saraba, Tomo yo, and it's a Gatchaman character song, a heartbreaking farewell from Joe. Ah.

Joe (the suspicious one who wore blue) was played by Sasaki Isao.

The song was released on this LP (it's a drama album with songs), then a month later as an EP of just songs. I own a CD with this song and more, but Sasaki Isao is the only member of the cast to sing.

The album was released in October 1977, so that's a good few years since Gatchaman finished airing. In the meantime, Sasaki Isao had become a popular anime singer and recorded a lot of opening themes with Columbia. Examples: Shinzo Ningen Casshan, Ginga Tetsudo 999 (Galaxy Express 999), Getta Robo, Grendizer, Hurricane Polymer, Danguard Ace, Gaiking, and the song that so often gets voted the greatest anime song of all time: Uchuu Senkan Yamato.

So, those are the first seiyuu-performed character songs I know of, a part played by a man who then became a famous singer, got to sing songs as his character.

There might be other earlier instances, or more influential instances of character songs (perhaps Lynn Minmay / Iijima Mari / Macross?), I am just going on my own personal music collection.

I guess you also have to bear in mind that a lot of opening themes, insert songs, battle themes, and ending themes were sung from the perspective of the people in the show, so they were also character songs of a kind, but were not usually sung by the actual voice actors.

EDIT: Information on the oldest character songs will probably be in http://anison.info/ but it's quite difficult to find that information in the format given. I'm thinking that if there was a list of songs of type IM (image), we could see what was there and have a better idea of what was available and when, to see if there's a distinct point where they really took off, or they've always been there - a steady flow of character songs on records. I guess we'd need sales figures as well to get a good picture. When I started thinking about the "Pop Idol" aspect of Macross, I thought there are likely to be character songs for Sasurai no Taiyou from 1971, and there was, released as an EP in 1971 as well... but I could be reading this site completely wrong, and this is just me thinking of something off the top of my head and seeing whether it exists, which isn't very methodical...

[ArcaJ]

Originally Posted by J Dude

I'm just curious, but where did this idea originate and what made it click with the rest of the market that it started becoming somewhat of a norm?

Which might as well lead to me to another question. I remember once upon a time that I was watching Martian Successor Nadesico and just for giggles, I turn on the dub and it was a particular episode with singing involved from some of the characters. The funny thing is, the singing was in Japanese, clearly using the Japanese voices, even though it was the English dub track and everyone was speaking in English otherwise. Has there been any other cases in dubbing like this one of sheer laziness or foregoing having someone who probably hasn't had any training in singing attempt to sing? I know there are clearly differences in how the American and Japanese voice acting industry works for anime and that most seiyuu in Japan at least have some bit of training involved with singing, along with voice acting.

Actually, I recall the Love Hina series did this. Particularly the episode where Naru became an idol, Horie Yui did all her own singing (great voice). All of the other actresses did songs as well. This carried over to the English dub (which I remember being so bad as to cause severe side-effects including post-nasal drip, sonic diarrhea, explosive nausea, etc.)

Anyway, most of the times the English dub decided to translate the songs as well, it's always made me very sorry I had ears.

::HUGS::

Arca Jeth