Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2]

Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2]

The two members of the band angela spoke in the previous installment about “pursuing their style.” The pair have offered up numerous songs from anime series and films and will continue to move forward even more.

In this second half of our interview, we asked them to speak on their experiences performing abroad and what spreading anime songs to the world means to them.

[angela Profile]
Band consisting of atsuko and KATSU. Vocalist atsuko handles lyrics and music composition. KATSU plays keyboard and guitar and handles music composition and arrangement. Starting as street musicians in 2000, they made their major record label debut in 2003 with “Asu e no Brilliant Road.” Afterwards, they took on several anime songs, such as “Shangri-La,” the opening theme to anime Fafner in the Azure. They belong to music wonder circus and King Records/StarChild.

**The first time performing abroad was frightening**

TOM: You have been putting on performances in other countries.

atsuko: Right. We debuted in the spring of 2003, and in the summer of 2004 the following year, we participated in Otakon in Baltimore. We didn’t have many songs at the time, and performed having only released five singles and one album. Man... I had nothing but anxiety.

TOM: What did you struggle with while you were there?

atsuko: It was so terrible. The day before, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to throw up. My stomach hurt and I couldn’t eat. Thinking about it now, I’m certain it was all symptoms of nervousness and anxiety. Standing next to the stage right up until the point that we went on, I really felt like, “Oh, what if I feel sick during the show? I still feel sick now.” But it completely changed when I went on stage. People in America stay true to their instincts, and even when it’s a song they don’t know, if the singer is singing with passion, they’ll respond to you directly. Even when I sang a ballad, people got into it and would shout, “Whooooo!” It was exciting. I didn’t know any English at the time, but the fans at the venue helped us out a lot.

If you approach it honestly, they understand. Because of that, I thought, “There was no reason to stress out the day before,” which made me relieved.

Making use of gestures, atsuko reflects back on the concert.


TOM: So, you’re saying from that, performing abroad isn’t scary anymore.

atsuko: That’s right. Being nervous each time hasn’t changed though.

**Putting out an international greatest hits album**

TOM: angela is putting out a greatest hits album aimed at overseas fans entitled Anime no Uta. This isn’t something many other artists from Japan have tried. What was behind the idea?

KATSU: There are quite a number of people in other countries who listen to anime songs. They all have to import albums from Japan. So the topic of an international album came up and we ended up actually doing it. The songs on it are primarily from anime.



atsuko: When we do concerts and events abroad, we sing our own songs. But, when it comes to the setlist, we can never be like, “All of the songs are on this CD.” So, it’s hard always having to keep importing CDs from Japan in order to get to know our songs. With that, we thought all of our fans would be happier if we put out an international CD. It has our debut song and our most well-known songs. We hope to update it in the future with new songs.

TOM: Do you get the impression that all of your fans watch anime?

atsuko: I do. When we do signings, there are a lot of people who will tell us, “Your songs are wonderful!” in Japanese that they learned from anime. When we write anime theme songs, we always make it go well with the series. But, that in other countries, or rather, performing overseas is not something that we even imagined at the beginning. When I’ve said to the fans, “Let’s all sing along!” on stage in the countries we’ve been to, they sing with us. Though it makes me really happy, it also surprises me, like, “How do you know this? How can you sing this?” I think that’s the influence of anime, which I find surprising.



KATSU: We don’t really make anime songs while thinking about what will please the people at our concerts. We look at the anime itself and read the original manga or script to write the song. And then, when this song that we created for an anime is listened to by people we don’t know in countries we don’t know, there’s a strange feeling about it that’s hard to put in words.

atsuko: But, I’m sure even Mozart didn’t think that people in Japan would say, “This song boosts alpha waves,” and have his music sell there.

KATSU: Yeah, it’s like that, isn’t it. They’re the same thing.

atsuko: We just put ourselves on the same level as Mozart. [laughs]

**Anime songs have no borders**

TOM: This will be the last question. Do you have any words to give to the TOM readers?

atsuko: We will perform at Anime Expo in Los Angeles in July. If you’ll be at the expo, I hope you’ll come by and see what kind of performance angela puts on.



KATSU: It’s a bit cliche, but whenever we do performances in other countries, I always really feel the idea that “(anime songs) have no borders.” Anime and anime songs are types of art from Japan that are spread to other countries and I think they’re a part of Japanese culture. Though anime song culture will continue to spread throughout the world, it still has a short history. The angela generation is slowly widening the small, narrow path laid out by people performing in each country like Ichirou Mizuki and Hironobu Kageyama...

atsuko: Planting flowers along the way. [laughs]

KATSU: Right. [laughs] Planting flowers along the way. Spreading anime and anime songs still unknown in other countries to the people there and broadening the path that future generations will travel. That’s our destiny and mission.

atsuko: But you also said, “I want to eat hamburgers,” right? In America.

KATSU: Yeah, that’s true. [laughs] American hamburgers taste good after all. [laughs] Anyway, I think our job is to keep spreading more and more anime songs throughout the world. Of course, I personally don’t really see it as a job. [laughs]



angela Official Site
angela Goods

*This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.*

angela "Sidonia" PV (Short Ver.)
angela "Sidonia" PV (Short Ver.)
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 2
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 3
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 4
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 5
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 6
Interview: Musical Band angela [2/2] 7

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