Anime News Network reports that musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away on the 28th of March. He was a composer for several classic anime movies including Wings of Honneamise and Appleseed as well as one of the members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, a pioneering Japanese electronica music group. I only discovered the YMO last year, when feeling nostalgic for Hibike Euphonium I went to watch clips of the music performances in it and found this clip again:
Until then I’d always thought that it, like much of the other music in it, had been composed for the series, but the comments on it showed that it was actually a rather well known song. So I finally googled it and found out it was a Yellow Magical Orchestra song. Hibike Euphonium just turned it into a marching song. Having finally heard the original that turned out to be excellent as well.
This is of course just the tip of the iceberg with regards to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s work. But without this song having been used in Hibike Euphonium, I might’ve never heard of him or the Yellow Magic Orchestra and that would’ve been a pity.
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