Music: The Role of Anime and Dorama

Hello!

This is likely going to turn into a recurring theme in this blog, but the Japanese entertainment industry is in general very interconnected. This allows for things like cross-media promotion, where a single story or idea is presented in a variety of media forms, books, movies, dorama, plays, etc. It also allows musicians to easily move into acting and vice-versa, which I'll touch on a little bit later. In this web of interconnected media forms, I think television may be at the centre, just because television is seriously EVERYWHERE in Japan. There are big screens playing commercials and countdown rankings near the stations (see below), 1-SEG allows you to view television on your cellphone and at least 99% of households have TVs in Japan. (1)

You can see the big screen on the right.
(Image source: http://eatlovego.com/tag/tokyoria/)

Television also plays an important role in promoting music and singles in particular. Today, I'm going to talk about one of the ways in which it does so, through television programs like anime and dorama..

Popular television programs will often use a song from a famous artist for its theme song prior to the release of the single. This gets the song exposure even before the CD hits the shelves. Not only is the song used in the opening theme, but instrumental versions and edited versions are often used throughout the show as well, especially during really important or emotional scenes. Its melody is repeated over and over again as you watch the show, guaranteeing that you will become familiar with it and associate it with certain scenes within the show.

Also, particularly in the case of very emotional dorama or anime, or even the nostalgic type, a certain sentimental value is subconsciously attached to the theme song. I remember way back when the popular manga, GTO, was turned into a dorama. The theme song was sung by the main actor, Sorimachi Takashi, who really can't sing to save his life. Seriously, listen to it.

It's pretty horrible when you just think about the song by itself. However, when you connect that song to the dorama that was fun and happy while dealing with many serious issues of the time like bullying and prostitution, all the emotions that were stirred up in you from watching the dorama become associated with that song. By the way, I ended up buying Sorimachi Takashi's best album just for this song...

With anime, many will create theme songs specifically for the show, sung by one of the voice actors or a popular anime song artist. However, some of the popular long-running series, like Crayon Shin-chan, Detective Conan or One Piece, tend to use songs by regular pop and rock artists, once again making it the opening theme before the release of the single. It is also not uncommon for them to advertise the release date for the single during the commercial break or after the show. Often large recording companies, like Sony Music, will sponsor these shows, which gives them some say in the music selection. (2)

In summary, television dramas and anime play a big role in promoting music. If the drama or anime is a hit, it almost always guarantees that the opening theme song will be a hit as well.

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For further reading:

(1) I could easily find statistics in Japanese, but I had trouble finding reliable sources for them in English. The data on this site is a little old (from 2004), but I think it is probably trustworthy.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/households-with-television-percent-wb-data.html
This report also mentions that the number of households with televisions is almost equal to the total number of households in Japan.
http://www.ntv.co.jp/english/ir/images/ar/2006-05.pdf

(2) Here's a list of anime that Sony has been involved with just to give you an idea.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/company.php?id=539