Best Anime Song Contest
 

Hey fans,

As you might know, there's currently a "Best VGM Song contest" being hold. So what do you think, should there be an Animespot equivalent once the VGM song contest is finished? Of course, there wouldn't be as many tracks as in the VGM contest, maybe 64 or 128 at the most. The main problem I see is that there are not too many good Anime tracks, but that shouldn't stop us. Or are you tired of song contests?

Just wanted to collect some opinions :)

I'm up for this. Theres still plenty of great tracks around, as long as you include any tracks from anime, vocal or not.

Does someone of you remember if there has been a contest like this one before the crash? I think there has been some Best OP/ED song contest last year, but I am not sure. If someone could share any info about that, that would be helpful.

I'd mentioned this to an admin once and he said he was always in the process of starting it but never got around to it. That said, I think it's a wonderful idea.

A Best OP/ED contest was started, some time ago. But as far as I can remember it never got any further than the nomination round.

There should be enough support to atleast pull of a smaller contest (64 or 128 sounds good), even though anime music tends to be less memorable than game music.

Skate was in the middle of organizing one before his computer troubles started.

And nonsense, there are plenty of memorable anime tracks =p 128 candidates sounds good to me.

Yeah definitely nonsense, I was kinda thinking 128 is too little if you want to give all of them a fair chance. There's the currently popular series, but then everyone has at least 5 of their personal favorites they'd like to get in. But the more songs get accepted, the more difficult it is for the arranger :(

Anyway, I'm all for this, ret's do diis!

Hmm I just thought it wouldn't be too great to have such a large contest again; people could lose interest. So maybe we should limit it to OP/ED tracks only?!

Sounds good to me, but even then everyone can still whip up a huge amount of nominations.

It seems like you might want to think about 2 contests -- one for Op/Eds, and one for BGM.

Yeah, I guess that would be a good idea.

So what would you guys like to see first? OP/ED or BGM? I prefer OP/ED, but there's still time for some discussion.

No, dude, if you make a contest, then make it for all anime music. 80% of anime openings and endings are boring j-pop, so it wouldn't be very exciting for me. I think 128 spots should be enough for both OPs/EDs and other music.

OPs/EDs are probably more accessible to most of the people here since those are a lot easier to recall than something like "First Love Final Love" from Sousei no Aquarion OST #2. Furthermore, the last time a thread popped up for "Guess the Anime from the Music," the vast majority of pieces posted for guessing were OPs/EDs.

Based on accessibility alone, I'd vote in favor of restricting it to just OPs/EDs. There are plenty of good OPs/EDs to fill out all 128 slots.

If the field does open up to other tracks however, be prepared for a massive onslaught of Kanno, Iwasaki, and Hisaishi nominations from me. :p

I can't say that I'm a big fan of anime or J-Pop, but I'd definitely check a contest like this out (and increase my exposure to the art form) if instrumental BGM from both televised shows and films were allowed.

There'll be a lot of J-Pop no matter what, of course--but allowing--or even encouraging--instrumental tracks might increase the appeal and bring new folks into the Animespot.

Naturally, only music made specifically for the series/film in question should be allowed. Just like in the game music contest.

This sounds like a great idea. One question though, what would insert vocal songs (Vocal songs not used as an OP/ED during a series) count as?

I think this is a good idea, and although I can't participate (my nomination for another best song contest was disqualified because I didn't have enough posts so I am assuming the same rules hold true here) I'd still like to see this happen.

I would like to see OP/ED/Image songs myself...This contest would be good because I listen to a lot of the more "classic" OP/ED/Image songs (since larger series' breed more songs), but I'm woefully behind anything past 2002, outside of the Galaxy Angel series. Good excuse to get caught up. And I wouldn't mind BGM being worked as well.

GO FOR 256! Or 128 + prelims.

I agree, although the most memorable tracks are usually OP/ED themes because you are exposed to them every single episode.

Honestly, I would be all for it, if we decided not to make it exclusively consist of OP/ED themes. Personally, I find the OP/ED themes to be the weak point of a majority of anime soundtracks (mainly because they all sound so similar) while the remainder of the tracks can be really creative. So I would not participate based on the fact that we would get 128 nominations that all sounded pretty much the same (jrock/pop with upbeat female vocals.)

Sweet! ;D I prodded at this idea a few months ago and let it gather dust as the Best VGM Song contest came up.

OP/ED's sound dandy to me. I could go scrounge up some lovely candidates... ;D 128, 256, it don't matter~ The folks here have fantastic taste in JPOP & such, so I'll be impressed I'm sure!

Well, you could make a 128 with OP/ED's, 128 with BGM, and have the final results run off against eachother.

Actually, that's what I'm afraid of: the people of Animespot like J-pop entirely too much. There are some great anime songs, OPs and EDs included, however, based on the Animespot soundtrack last year, I got the feeling that people mostly just enjoy the bubblegum music, not the more interesting and original tracks. Maybe something has changed now; I hope so.

Hmm. We'll see D; I've got a hefty number of OP/EDs I could nominate that all sound incredibly different. But we'll see I suppose. If folks are so picky, the OP/ED bracket could be narrowed down to 64 instead, but that'd make nominations a bit of a mess due to the few slots. But that's assuming this'd rival the Best Song Contest for VGM on popularity.