Authorship in Music and Sound Design / 6: Four Outstanding Cases in the Anime Industry, 1995–2016

This chapter delves into the music of notable auteur anime directors from the past two decades: Hideaki Anno and Shin’ichirō Watanabe, both of whom made anime that have been influential and popular on their own industries and in global reception; Kunihiko Ikuhara, known for surrealism and critical approaches to gender and sexuality; and Sayo Yamamoto, an upcoming young director and Watanabe’s protégée. Each of these directors use music in ways that form a distinctive relationship with their visual and narrative themes. All of these animation-makers have peculiar, ongoing relationships with composers with equally strong styles, many with training outside the world of anime. Some of the most notable director/composer relationships, from Watanabe’s partnership with Yōko Kanno across their bodies of work, to more recent collaborations such as Yamamoto’s with various composers, have resulted in the composers being given wide berth to express their own style. These composers have come to obtain celebrity status among many enthusiasts of animation at large and of Japanese animation in particular. The chapter explores these outstanding production relationships and their impact on the creation of anime music more broadly.