Re: Japan | 日本 | WV76: Jun Maeda - Distant Years
Hey hey - it's time for some green room posting! First up, a super-belated introduction to my entry for WV76:
Distant Years, composed by
Jun Maeda. I didn't have time to do up a post on this last week, but thank you all so much for getting this to the final! It's a beautiful piece I've loved for years now, and I'm so pleasantly surprised to see it doing well.
Distant Years is a track taken from the fantastic soundtrack of the equally-fantastic anime series (and visual novel)
Clannad. This isn't the first time I've shown WV some music from the series (
Toki wo Kizamu Uta, also composed by Jun Maeda, came a competitive second in my WV70 NF), but it's the first time sending any to the contest itself. Similarly, Jun Maeda has popped up before (both in the aforementioned NF and as the composer of my WV72 entry
Aozora), but this is my first time sending him as the 'main' artist with an instrumental piece.
To be honest, I wasn't particularly a fan of Distant Years for quite a while after first hearing it (back in... 2009? 2010?). I've always loved the little piano interlude that comes in at around 1:50, and that remains my favourite part of the song, but I thought the more atmospheric string sections around it were boring. However, the song holds what is probably the record for
'the slowest and most surely a song has ever grown on me'; hearing it in my playlists over the course of three or four years, I slowly came to adore it, and I continue to do so to this day. I'm happy to see that others do as well!
Jun Maeda himself is a bit of a legend to me. He's probably the first Japanese composer whose name I came to know, and remains my favourite to this day, at least in terms of the sheer quantity of his stuff that I like (I think I must have about 50 songs of his in my playlists).
He's impressively versatile, too: not only does he write a lot of music (both instrumental and with vocals), but he's also the co-founder of successful visual novel company KEY, and has written plots and scripts for manga, anime, and bestselling visual novels. To anybody who may have noticed similarities between this entry and my WV67 entry
Sanka, it's no coincidence - while Maeda didn't write the piece himself, composer Ryo Mizutsuki wrote it as a part of KEY Studios, the musical style of which takes significant issues from Maeda, the studio's head composer.
I'm really hoping people will continue to enjoy this entry (though honestly, I'm happy just to have made the final) - and
don't think this will be the last WV sees of Maeda! As a prolific composer, I've got many more of his songs lined up for the future, both instrumental and with vocals, in a broad variety of styles.
Oh, and
stay tuned - I'm just about to write up the post for my long-delayed
Suggestions NF, the winner of which will go on to represent me at WV77. Look forward to it!
is back to wv xwhistle
You had some super-hot entries in your time as 
