Re: Japan | 日本 | WV65 | Takeshi Abo - Believe Me
I can finally reveal my WV debut entry: the beautiful piano piece
Believe Me, composed by Takeshi Abo!
The final results from my NF are as follows:
I've got to say, I'm actually pretty surprised! I figured I'd include an instrumental piece in my NF for some variety, but I didn't think it was one of the likely winners. My personal favourite here was actually
Hiiro Gekka (which at least got some hot top points from Lavi), and I thought it'd fight with
Maware! Setsugetsuka for the win. Guess I still don't have enough experience to predict the tastes of WV! Not complaining in the slightest, though:
Believe Me is a beautiful song, probably my second favourite of the lot, and I've listened to it countless times. On top of that, I've got a long list of similarly emotional soundtrack pieces that I'm hoping to send at some point, so I like knowing that some people will probably appreciate those as well. I'm thrilled to see that the winner here was something enjoyed by a majority of voters - getting the top points from 5 of 9 people is no small feat!
Some comments on how the voting progressed:
Kuusou Rumba was actually a close contender in the first half of the voting, missing out on that lovely 10 but getting a 7 or 5 from every one of the first 5 voters. It suddenly dropped in the second half as some voters came in with different tastes, killing its chances and by putting it last or second last in their rankings. At the same time, these voters gave a massive boost to
Maware! Setsugetsuka: the hyper ethnic number, which had been sitting in a pretty firm last place, ended up taking a bunch of high scores, and would actually have been the overall winner if I'd only counted votes from the second half!
I found it quite interesting to look at how controversial each of these picks were. There was very much an agreed-upon sense of 'it's nice, but not a winner' on
I Miss You: it was neither first nor last on anybody's list, and was either third or fourth with everybody except Lupus, who gave it his second place. Completely the opposite of this was
Maware! Setsugetsuka, which was hugely polarising, ending either in the top two or bottom two of every single voter.
To anyone who enjoyed a song that fell short: you may well see them back at some later date! I don't yet have any concrete plans for the five that stayed in the NF, but anything I love as much as
Hiiro Gekka will probably get forced through in an internal selection at some point, and most other things here will probably appear again in separate genre-based NFs eventually, given as each song got some level of support.
Now, let's move on to some more information about the winning song!
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Believe Me was written by Japanese composer Takeshi Abo, (
Wikipedia, MAL) and first appeared on the soundtrack of the 2009
Steins;Gate visual novel (for anyone unfamiliar with visual novels: they're a medium largely unique to Japan, mixing elements of animation, literature, comics, games and choose-your-own-adventure books). The visual novel's soundtrack was eventually reused in the
2011 anime adaptation of Steins;Gate, which was met with critical acclaim and quickly became a modern classic, boasting the third highest user-generated score of any anime series (based on MAL, the internet's most prominent English-language anime database).
Steins;Gate itself is a science fiction story set in modern-day Tokyo. The plot revolves around university student and self-proclaimed 'mad scientist' Okabe Rintarou, who passes his time creating odd and mostly-useless gadgets with his friends in a run-down apartment building. One day, however, an invention of Okabe's is an inexplicable success: he finds it can send text messages to the past. As they test their new device and pry into secret research on time travel, Okabe and his companions find themselves far beyond their depth, attempting to deal with consequences beyond their understanding and stay safe from international societies targeting them and their research.
The track
Believe Me is used on numerous occasions throughout the series, appearing with particular impact in emotional scenes later in the story. Its effective use in the series is what led me to first take note of the song and decide to include it in this NF - if anybody else is interested, I'd highly recommend checking out the source material!
votes in this spectacular national final are in!
You're going to be marvelous with Japan.
I'm wishing you the best of luck ZoboCamel with your first edition. I hope you have fun.
even though, now and then, J-Pop can be pretty nice
