Between Moments

I attended the second of two concerts of “Fantasy Comes Alive”, a chamber orchestral rendition of music from Video Games and Anime.

I’m not a big Anime fan, but have watched “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” in the cinema and enjoyed what I saw. I have also heard snatches of the Final Fantasy themes largely from being sent Youtube videos. However, my background is large classical ‘though I also enjoy pop music. Similarly, I am into games but largely PC ones like “Mass Effect” and the “Witcher”, so was a little worried as to how much I would “get” the music featured in the concert.

Although the renditions were not exactly perfect, I really enjoyed what I heard on Saturday night. Adrian Tan conducted a very young and mostly polished chamber orchestra (although a guitarist really needed to get his act together), on an epic journey through themes from video games, ranging from recent Korean MMORPG Granado Espada, through to ’80s cult classic Megaman and of course taking in the aforementioned Final Fantasy themes (12 and Tactics mostly).

On the Anime front, we had music from Macross Frontier, Merry-go-round music from “Howl’s Moving Castle” and other music from “”My Neighbour Totoro”. Some of this was accompanied by images from the anime or game aired on a central large screen. One of the highlights of the evening was a rocking piece from “Neon Genesis Evangelion” which both musicians and audience really enjoyed both during the concert and as one of many encores.

We were also graced by the presence of video game composers, Hitoshi Sakimoto and Hideki Sakamoto, both of which were brought up on stage to give a short speech of thanks (in Japanese with translation). They were also present at a meet and greet session after the show, ‘though given my lack of Japanese and also unfamilarity with most of the actual games featured, I decided to miss.

I was amazed at how much of a nod the games and anime gave to classical music, from Baroque onwards. There were a couple that veered towards J-pop and rock music (notably the Neon Genesis Evangelion piece) but many of the pieces played that evening would not have been terribly out of place if inserted in an SSO classical programme. They certainly would have been welcome in a movie music concert.

The University Cultural Centre wasn’t full, perhaps because the concert wasn’t advertised as much as some others. Also, many people who might have enjoyed the music probably would have given it a miss simply because of unfamilarity with the whole Anime/Games scene - their loss.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pieces - a lovely Violin concerto “Prime 7” from the game Echochrome (Hideki Sakamoto) and the Odin’s sphere main theme (Hitoshi Sakimoto). Oh and “Thesis of a Cruel Angel” from Neon Genesis Evangelion!

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