I'm actually surprised Joe Hisaishi's name hasn't been mentioned as a potential dominator here.

I'll be curious to see how a typical Kanno/Kajiura track does against a typical JPOP OP/ED.

Fine: heres a list of decent anime composers:

Taku Iwasaki, Mark Mancina (one), Kotaro Nakagawa, Kou Otani (I know he spells it Kow, but that looks funny), Kohei Tanaka, ALI PROJECT (who is just weird sometimes), Tsuneyoshi Saito, Nagaoka Seikou, Naoki Sato

With already mentioned: Yuki Kajiura, Yoko Kanno, Joe Hisaishi, Toshiro Matsuda

And don't get me wrong, but I'm SURE you've never heard of some of those

Tons of vocalists who are good... and I mean tons (who did anime jpop):

angela, Sae, eufonius, kotoko, Porno Graffiti, Koda Kumi, Miyuki Hashimoto, yozuca, Mikuni Shimokawa, Asami Abe, Akino Arai, Mikio Sakai, Chihiro Yonekura, FLOW, Tatsuo Suzuki, Asami Izawa, Rie Tanaka, COACH, Yoko Ishida, Aya Hirano, Do as Infinity, Chihiro Onitsuka, Nami Tamaki, tiaraway, Eri Kawai, KEY, FictionJunction YUUKA (and the other small groups w/ Kajiura), See-Saw, AKINO, Kinya Kotani, Hitomi Takahashi, UVERworld, Mami Kawada, Romi Paku, Hoshi Souichiro, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Orange Range, TM Revolution, Every Little Thing, Younha, HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR, Michihiro Kuroda, savage genius...

Those are just quickly off my head...

By the way, I'm still looking for a quality anime music hub (VBR or CBR320). I find that WAY too often anime music is either ripped in 192kbps and 128kbps, and I like to keep my archive collection as high quality as possible. Anyone have some suggestions?

Agreed. I mean, going through this thread, most of the posts has either been "I know all these other composers" or "I'm worried that there's going to be a skew in the amount of music by Kajiura and Kanno". Thus, I think it's safe to say that the people that are going to nominate already knows "a few tracks besides the basics", as Mush puts it. I mean, if you didn't care about this contest, you wouldn't be posting in this thread to bounce ideas around, right?

What is "weird" about their music?

I think we've pretty much established that getting an ample amount of vocal tracks isn't going to be a problem, so you don't need to worry about that.

I think i've already named a huge list of perfect composers but anyway:


I always thought of Ali Project to be a little bit unique and different. I wasn't really a fan of Coppelia's Coffin but after that crap, they did a great job.

.hack//Roots (TV) : Music, Theme Song Performance (ED)
Avenger (TV) : Music, Theme Song Performance
Clamp School (TV) : Theme Song Performance (OP)
Maria-sama ga Miteru ~Haru~ (TV) : Theme Song Performance (OP)
Noir (TV) : Theme Song Performance (OP)
Rozen Maiden (TV) : Theme Song Vocals (OP)
Rozen Maiden: Träumend (TV) : Theme Song Performance (OP)
St. Luminous Mission High School (TV) : Theme Song Performance (ED)
Wish (special) : Theme Song Performance

They aren't that bad in the end. I usually see them and Kaijira working together. Its a good mix anyway.

If quality is your primary concern, shouldn't you be getting lossless? ;(

Nope, because lossless and VBR are pretty much undistinguishable. the difference is 128kbps enters territory when your ears can easily hear the compression on songs that have a ton of instruments.

Of course!!! Anime music is even wealthier and more interesting than VGM. Although... I think Yoko Kanno would dominate the entire contest... but there are others like Seisouhen or Gundam.

Basic thing is I just want to get to know the best anime music there is and a contest is the means to get it. Just like a world war is a good thing for getting new technology.

And another thing. I don't know much about anime music and maybe there are others who are similar to me. So you could see it as a recommendation contest for people like me.

Also, in my opinion people don't have to know the basics of anime music, they just have to nominate what they know. The idea of instrumental anime music together with sung music is better than only sung music because it's more flexible and will have a bigger spectrum in getting to know good music. Don't confine yourself in vocal music... this means also: don't confine yourself to the Op/End themes.

If the Op/End themes are really, really good, they will automatically appear in the contest, you don't need to make an Op/End contest. The basic thing is: all anime music should be accounted for, whether it's memorable or not, beautiful music is the most important factor.