Ongaku: Our Sound is a beautiful example of the essence of art. I’ll be doing a fairly long talk about it and there will be spoilers, so I’d recommend watching it before reading this post, it’s only a little over an hour, so not too long. Please don’t dismiss it because of it’s art and animation style, which I’ll be talking about that in this first section, so please read that where I explain the animation technique they used. I hope you enjoy the movie as much as I did, and if not, I hope you’ll at least appreciate it once you read this post, so let’s get started!
Animation
The first thing I want to mention about this movie is that there’s no official studio that made this anime. This was a passion project led by Iwaisawa Kenji who acted as director, character designer, art director, script writer, storyboard, and animator. As for how they animated this, they used a method called rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is basically when you film videos irl and then trace over those videos to make the animation. I linked a behind the scenes video of them doing that below. This was a genius decision to use this method imo bc it meant they didn’t have to completely make everything from scratch, they just had to turn the irl videos into the characters and stuff, making it much easier and cheaper, plus they seemed to have a lot of fun making it. Though this was still a lot of work, and as shown in the video, they traced and drew everything by hand on paper. This is extremely impressive to me, because this movie was over 40,000 frames, and each one of those frames was drawn entirely by hand on paper. Plus it took them 7 years to complete this movie, so definitely don’t dismiss this movie for having a weird looking animation style.
For the rest of this post, the way I’m gonna do it is I’m gonna talk about sections of the movie in chronological order rather than just breaking it into sections like in the Thermae Romae post. There will be a lot of spoilers after this, so please watch the movie before continuing to read.
*SPOILERS*
Boredom
The movie starts with some delinquents sitting in a restaurant talking when Kenji shows up behind them, scaring them off. Kenji doesn’t say anything, just kind of stands there staring, and that’s a reoccurring thing that happens throughout the movie, Kenji just staring silently then giving a delayed response. The reason for this isn’t necessarily because he’s weird or anything, but bc it conveys his boredom. That’s a relatable feeling when you’re bored out of your mind, you just kind of laze around and stare in silence, then give a delayed response. Ik I’ve done that when I’ve been bored before.
In the following scenes, Kenji’s walking around, then arrives at school where he plops down and plays some video games. Ota then mentions that some delinquents from another high school wants to fight them. When Kenji asks when, Ota says whenever. Despite having just sat down and having only played one match, Kenji says how about now. That’s another sign of boredom. When you’re bored, you try doing something to cure your boredom, but a lot of the times you’ll do something for a minute, still feel bored, then go do something else. That’s what Kenji did. He could have just said later, I’m in the middle of playing a game, kind of like how he ignored the fight request later, and like shown later, he doesn’t really care about fighting the other gang, he just wanted something to do to fix his boredom.
They add in a little bit of comedy by walking around, then realizing they have no clue where the other high school is lmao. However, Kenji says he’ll go ask where the school is, but once they go into the boxing facility, they watch for a second, then leave without asking. This further supports what I was saying earlier about jumping between activities when you’re bored. If Kenji really cared about fighting them, he would have asked where the school is, but instead he lost interest and just turned around and left. Then the next day they were back in their “club” room at school, and when Ota asked if they’re raiding the other school today, Kenji gives delayed responses and just says he couldn’t be bothered, again, showing his lack of interest and boredom.
Interest in Music
On the way home from school, Kenji ends up holding a bass guitar that someone asked him to hold as they chased down a thief. Kenji decides to talk the bass home with him lmao, which ignites his interest in music. The next day he tells Ota and Asakura that he wants to start a band. Ofc, the main problem they face, is that none of them know how to play instruments lmao. Kenji replies to the concern saying, “That’s the whole point.”
That quote has a ton of meaning. If you’re interested in music, don’t dismiss the idea because you don’t know how to play an instrument, instead learn how to play one. Don’t be afraid to pick up an instrument and start fiddling around. Many people get trapped into the idea that if they don’t know the first thing about how to play an instrument and can’t sound as good as the famous musicians they listen to, there’s no point in learning and instead should just stick to being a listener. If you have an interest in something, go for it, give it a try.
When the 3 of them go to the music room to steal some instruments, Ota holds up a guitar and a base, and Kenji says that he already has a guitar. This shows the level of knowledge that he has about music and bands and stuff, that being 0 knowledge lmao. In a way, this also reminds me of bocchi the rock when Kita got a 6 string base instead of a guitar. That’s another good example of someone with no musical knowledge jumping into the unknown and giving it a shot anyway. Kita didn’t even know how to hold a guitar let alone play one, but she asked bocchi to teach her, and she eventually made it to the point where she could improvise a solo on the spot to save bocchi in ep 12.
Another sign of inexperience is Asakura with the drums. To start with, the way he picked up the snare drum, please never do that, ever lmao. Snare drums usually aren’t wedged that tightly to the stand, they just sit on top of it, so if you do pick it up like that, it will very much fall. As a drummer myself, seeing him do that was just painful lmao. Another sign of inexperience is the fact that he took a snare drum and floor tom. Since he couldn’t take the whole drum set, he just took what he could carry. If he had any knowledge about drumming, he’d probably take the snare drum and the hi-hat. The kick drum is also really important, but even a big guy like him would need to use 2 hands to carry it, so it’s better to leave that out. Hi-hat is really important when it comes to any form of rock and playing the drum set in general. Most drum set rhythms use hi-hat extensively, and if you name any rock song, the hi-hat is one of the most played parts of the set along side the snare drum and kick drum. So if he had any knowledge or experience, he would have taken snare and hi-hat.
As they’re bringing the instruments to Kenji’s place, they go across a crosswalk, and idk if this was intentional or not (I’d imagine it is), but it seems like a reference to the famous album cover of the Beatles going across the crosswalk, which is a nice feature.
Once they get to Kenji’s place, Ota points out the instrument Kenji had at home was a bass, not a guitar, so now they have 2 basses instead of 1 bass and 1 guitar. Normally you’d think this wouldn’t work out because bands are supposed to have 1 bass and 1 guitar because that’s how it always is, but Kenji just says, “whatever, let’s just do it.” Yet another amazing quote. Sometimes you have to just ignore the norm and just do it anyway. People always get too caught up in following the rules and formulas for doing things, that they don’t go out of the box and just explore. Someone like Kenji is able to explore and ignore the rules and formulas bc he doesn’t even know what they are. The same can be sad about Asakura who took the snare drum and the floor tom instead of the snare and the hi-hat. This type of exploring can lead to new ideas and even new genres of music that people wouldn’t have thought about otherwise. Same goes for anything else too, not just music.
First Time Playing
When the 3 of them hit that first note together, they all having this feeling of an awaking kind of. Kenji says that what just happened felt really good. I’m very familiar with this feeling, the feeling of doing something and feeling really good about it, bc you were able to do it. I never really got this feeling when playing an instrument for the first time, but I have gotten this feeling when doing things like playing a clear sounding barre chord for the first time, getting a nice in-tune bend for the first time, or playing an anipiano song for the first time. The feeling of you being capable of doing something, is just an amazing feeling. The feeling of being someone who’s just a listener and consumer, to being someone who’s a creator. It’s really such a great feeling.
Now forgive me for sounding like one of those art critics that writes paragraphs about something so simple like a banana taped to a wall, but I’m going to be writing paragraphs about that first “performance” they did.
When they play on after that first hit, they just do something very simple, something people with no music experience would do. Asakura just bangs the snare drum and floor tom together in just a steady 8th note rhythm. Nothing complicated, though I will say that he has some crazy muscles and endurance to be banging like that with full arm motion without getting tired and slowing down lmao. Then the other 2 guys just fret a random note and just start strumming that one note over and over again in the same 8th note rhythm. This is super simple playing, and technically most people wouldn’t even call it music, just noise. But tbf, the way I describe music is organized sound, and I would actually call this organized sound, bc they are playing in time with each other in a rhythm, just a steady 8th note rhythm while playing the same note over and over again. If John Cage’s 4’33” is music, so is this lmao.
Now here comes the over analytical part. What they just played is, imo, the foundation and basic essence of punk rock music. Punk rock is a form of rock music characterized by simple chords, fast tempos, simple rhythms, and kind of a raw sound. Punk rock originated around the 60s and 70s from garage rock. A lot of people just play rock music in their garage as a hobby rather than being professional players, and many people like that are self-taught or might not have the creativity or time to compose more complex rock music, so punk rock started to form.
One of my favorite bands of all time is Mongol800, which is a Jpunk band. To use one of their songs, “Face to Face”, as an example, it has a very simple chord progression. The main chord progression is A, Em, F#m, D, and during the chorus they just rearrange it to D, A, Em, F#m. Those 4 chords make up the whole piece essentially, minus the guitar solo, but this is a very simple progression that’s been used a million times and anyone can use it to make a good sounding song. The melody is also really simple, if you look at the actual notes and rhythm he’s singing, it’s basically the same thing over and over again, but with different lyrics over it, and even then, the lyrics have a repeating tendency to them. This is such a simple song when you break it down, yet it sounds so good. This is what punk music is, simplified rock with simple rhythms, chord progressions, and melodies that anyone can make, and heck, you don’t even need singing either, like shown here in Ongaku. Also I’ll point out that these guys are punks playing the foundation of punk music, quite fitting lmao.
So Ik that was a lot of yapping about such simple playing, but what Kenji, Ota, and Asakura did really is punk rock broken down to its simplest foundation, and that’s actually mentioned later on in the movie too.
Exploration
The next scene shows the other delinquents from before who are taking note of Kenji and planning a duel, which will play out later in the story.
The main thing I wanna talk about in this section, is how they start exploring their instrument. Ota asks what that thing is at the head of the bass, which Kenji says he was wondering about too. The thing they’re talking about are the tuning pegs. None of them actually tuned their basses throughout the whole movie since none of them ever learned what it is, but luckily the bass is low enough that with enough noise, the lack of tuning can be kind of hidden to the untrained ear. But anyway, Kenji says that turning the knob makes a “boing” sound. That’s not really the right onomatopoeia, but there isn’t really a right one to use in english, the sound he made in japanese was more accurate. But anyway, what Kenji was doing there is exploring the sounds of his instrument, which is a really good thing to do. Having an understanding what kind of sounds and stuff you can do with your instrument can lead to a lot of creative moments. A good example is this video. The player here is playing a guitar part that’s originally played on a Strat, which has a whammy bar, but what he’s playing is a Les Paul, which does not have a whammy bar. In order to get the whammy bar effect without actually having one, he uses the tuning peg to emulate the whammy bar sound, which is a really good example of creativity.
During their discussion Aya shows up and informs Kenji that the other delinquent wants to duel and stuff, but Kenji says he doesn’t have time for that idiot and is crazy about music rn. That’s definitely a relatable feeling when you start ignoring other things when you get obsessed with something like music lmao, though tbf, Kenji never seemed to really care about fighting those guys anyway. More importantly, Kenji asks Aya to refer to them as musicians from now on. I remember a while ago having a discussion with some other people about when can someone be considered a musician. Can you just be able to play a couple notes on an instrument and be called a musician, do you have to actually learn and study pieces and music theory, do you have to get to a certain level of popularity with your compositions? The answer I gave is a musician is someone who can create organized sound. This connects to what I said earlier about how I define music, and like I said earlier, what they played was about as simple as you can get, and almost borderline random noise, but it was in fact organized sound still, and since they were able to create organized sound, I would in fact consider them musicians. But I’m also over complicating this since in reality being a musician is much more of an arbitrary thing, but it is an interesting discussion to have.
Band Name
Aya asks to hear their playing before calling them musicians, so they go to Kenjis place and perform the same “song” they played earlier. Aya says that it’s “good and manly”, which I would have to agree. The low tones of the 2 basses and the drums match the natural lower tone of male voices, and the consistent pounding 8th notes also reflects the male nature of simplicity. I’m probably over analyzing this again though bc Aya was probably just being nice to them lmao.
Another thing Aya brings up is that there’s no vocals. Vocals are naturally a very attractive thing in music, it’s something most people can understand pretty easily, and it’s a way for people that don’t play any instruments to engage in music. However, I don’t believe vocals are necessary in music. A common criticism of classical music is the lack of vocals, which makes it “boring.” I’ve always disliked that opinion because as someone who loves playing classical music, especially from the romance era, there’s usually a lot going on and a story being told, even without having vocals. A good example I love to use is Chopin’s prelude Op. 28 No. 4, it’s a piece that has no vocals or anything, just solo piano playing, but within the music, Chopin writes sighs in the right hand and conveys feelings of depression and sadness, which turns to an outburst of frustration, then dies down into hopelessness and acceptance. This is something I love about Chopin, he composes these pieces with so much emotion and such packed stories in them without needing to use lyrics, he conveys it all through the keys of the piano, so that’s why I dislike the argument of classical music being boring due to the lack of lyrics in it.
So anyway, Aya then asks what their band name is. Some people spend a lot of time thinking about their band name and trying to pick a name that sounds cool or marketable, but plenty of people just pick a name like the 3 of them do here. Asakura just randomly says Kobujutsu since his uncle being into martial arts popped into his head, and he has no clue what it is, but just said it anyway. Kenji immediately says that’s it and Aya was surprised by how little effort was put into the name. This isn’t really too uncommon though, for example Mongol800, they decided on that name just because they randomly thought of it. They didn’t pick the name because of an interest or connection to Mongolia or its people, it was just a random thought. Also in Girls Band Cry, they got their name just from Nina reading the words off someone’s shirt lmao. So there’s really no reason to overcomplicate choosing a band name, just go with the flow.
Kobijutsu
So after that we get a nice comedy scene of the other high school’s gang getting caught up in some part time job, a nice comedy break that gave me a chuckle lmao. After that, Asakura comes busting in saying that there’s a band named Kobijutsu, which he views as a problem since it’s so close to their band name. When he asks Kenji what they should do, Kenji just replies, “nothing.” Yet another brilliant move by Kenji. The event of 2 bands having similar or even the same band name is something that happens all the time, and usually, there’s not really much that can be done about it. They can fight it out for the name, or just ignore each other. In reality, whichever one gets more popular wins I guess. But Asakura says he’ll get them to change their name, but Kenji says that before that he’d like to hear their music. And yet again, another brilliant move by Kenji. He’s not as interested about the name conflict, but more interested in exploring the music of other bands. In a similar way to how reading is important in learning how to write, listening to other people’s music is important in learning to play your own music. It gives you inspiration, ideas, a way to hear something done right, and for a lot of people, copying someone else’s playing is a good way to get a feel to playing something. Never be afraid to mimic someone else’s playing in order to get a better feel for it yourself.
So anyway, as they go looking for Kobijutsu, one of the Kobijutsu members hears Kenji calling for them, and relays it to his other bandmates, which in response we get a little comedy as they start running away into a field to escape lmao. It’s only natural for a group of unpopular kids like that to be scared of a delinquent trio. We get some more comedy as Kenji literary rips the door off the wall lmao. Also I wanna point out the Beatles influence in their hair style and stuff. Anyway, now we get to their performance.
The song that they play is absolutely beautiful. An acoustic guitar trio featuring a Travis picking rhythm at the start with harmonies and little ornamentations added in by the supporting guitars. Then comes the singing which enchants the listener with this feeling of sadness and longing. Then we reach the chorus where we switch from Travis picking to strumming the minor chord progression. The strumming pattern gives a feeling of someone running and chasing after something, which is supplemented visually by the wind blowing Morita’s hair.
As for the lyrics, it tells of someone who’s trying to find their way to a lost lover or the sort. In the beginning of the song their recounting their memories of that person, “your silhouette was so wonderful. Picking up shiny shells by the surf.” Then they talk about their longing for that person, “The rhythm of the steps of your supple legs collaborates with my heartbeat.” Then the singer starts trying to find their way to that person, “taking a local line to your town.” Then the singer says, “I watched the sunset like a TV drama.” The way I interpret this is that they know that the person their looking for can no longer be found, so instead they want this to be as if they’re in a TV drama, a fictional world where they can reunite with that person. “After many sleepless nights, a pale light in the darkness.” The way I interpret this line is after searching and failing to find that person for days, their hope is dimming away. “Rides the south wind to your star.” Ofc the implication is the person they’re looking for has passed away, so the pale light moving to their star means that the singer’s hope is approaching the world of the dead, aka their hope of finding them is dying. Again the TV drama is mentioned as the singer tries to cling onto a way of believing that it’s still possible to find them. “Following a path I cannot return. A pale light sheds in the darkness.” Then to end it on a dark note, the song ends with the singer committing unaliving since that’s the only way they can realistically be reunited with that person. And that’s the end of the song, quite a sad and kind of depressing song of searching for a lost lover, but nonetheless, a really good song.
I probably way overanalyzed that, but that’s essentially the overall gist of the song, in my interpretation at least. Also now would be a good time to mention that you can find 10 of the songs from this movie on youtube, I’ll link this song right here.
Kobujutsu’s Turn to Play
So now it’s Kobujutsu’s turn to play for Kobijutsu, and ofc they play their signature song, or whatever you’d call it lmao. As Morita listens, he (yes, Morita’s a man) starts to become like me and finds a really deep meaning and significance behind their banging lmao. Unlike me talking about it, Morita’s thoughts are able to be visually shown since it’s an animation and stuff, and in his thoughts, we see some chaos, randomness, and as mentioned earlier, manliness through the canon shooting down the blimp. All these feelings perfectly describe what’s going on in their playing. Then Morita gets turned into a rock, falls into water, and is left floating in a beautiful river surrounded with flowers as his eyes still have rocks coming out of them. This shows his thoughts of this being, as he describes, “the primitive impulse of rock music” by having literal rocks show up, and having him literally seeing rocks through his eyes. This is exactly how I feel about their music too, just more specifically punk rock rather than just rock.
Also I will say the way Morita kind of goes crazy giving Kobujutsu praise is relatable, bc I’m also kind of like that. Irl I’m usually all introverted and awkward, but when I come across something I love, I just start yapping and going crazy over it, for example writing this long ahh post about this movie lmao. Then ofc Morita invites them to play in the rock fest happening in August, which we’ll see later on in the movie.
Recording
Skip a few minutes ahead, and Morita suggests recording their playing and listening back to it. This really is a great thing to do because while you’re playing, you hear the music differently than someone who’s listening in the audience. Listening to your recording allows you to identify mistakes easier and helps you improve your playing. Definitely recommend doing it, though tbh, I don’t record myself practicing that often bc the little bit of practice I do have time for nowadays it’s long enough and serious enough to really get into it lmao. Though I usually do record myself and listen back to it when I’m practicing a few days before a performance.
Anyway, Kobujutsu pulls out a cassette tape to record their playing. I’ve never actually used a cassette tape before, I’ve only ever gone as far back as CDs. But anyway, when they listen back to their recording, Ota says that it sounds amazing and Asakura agreed. For most people, including myself, normally when we listen back to our recordings, we tend to get obsessed with our mistakes and stuff, but Ota and Asakura just said that their playing is perfectly good and there’s nothing to worry about lmao. For those of us that do obsess over the mistakes, it probably is a good idea to tone it back a little and look at the things we did well like Ota and Asakura did. That will give you more motivation to get better rather than constantly beating yourself over mistakes, but ofc don’t go to the extreme like Ota and Asakura did and say that it’s perfect or anything, still good to find ways to improve.
Kenji on the other hand, after listening, we get a plot twist. Kenji says that he’s bored with the band and quits it. I’m honestly not totally sure what his reason is for leaving other than him saying he’s bored with it, but it sets us up for the stuff that happens later on. Also, Morita’s CD collection is insane, I’d like to be able to go through it. At first I thought that scene was in a music store until he said that lmao.
Handing Out Fliers
We get a little bit of comedy with Kenji grabing Aya’s butt after she went looking for him. Idk if there was some type of meaning behind that, or if it was just for the comedy, but if you look at the behind the scenes of that scene in the first video in this post, they had a guy acting as Aya for the grabbing part, so you just see a guy grabbing another guy’s ass which is kinda funny lmao.
Anyway, we get to the scene of Kobijutsu handing out fliers for the festival with little success. Luckily I’ve never been in a position where I had to be handing out fliers like that, but it’s a nightmare for introverts to have to be proactive like that and constantly being rejected by people. It’s also ofc pretty frustrating when they’re not just ignoring the fliers, but your music as well, so Morita’s little outburst is completely understandable. Also that silent pause where the 3 of them just freeze and stop doing anything right before that, was the perfect amount of time to show them giving up and then releasing their frustrations.
As Morita’s playing, we see the first instance of a change in art style while they’re playing music. This more unrefined pencil style matches the idea that Morita isn’t playing right now to be musical or elegant or anything, he’s not playing with a well colored image, but instead is like letting his raw emotions and frustration out, just strumming the guitar like a madman not caring about a defined rhythm or anything.
After Morita starts his outburst, all of sudden people started to gather around and listen. People don’t usually care as much about the musicality of someone’s playing, but rather the attractiveness. For some random person walking by, hearing a guy going ham on the guitar is much more likely to gain your attention than some soft playing that blends in with the background. That’s why a lot of people listen to pop songs with catchy choruses even though musically those songs are simple as can be.
Also if I’m not mistaken, you can see Kenji’s bald head in the back of the crowd walking around. That might potentially have been an influence for him deciding to rejoin the band later on, but don’t quote me on that bc I’m not 100% sure about that one.
Rock Fest Start
We see Ota and Asakura practicing and all that. Asakura asks if Kenji will show up, and Ota replies that he thinks he will since he was keeping time with his ass which I found kinda funny lmao. He’s gotta be on that patrick star butt routine to be able to keep time with his ass like that bc it’s not easy lmao. They then hear a recorder sound coming from the distance, which we know is Kenji.
The other high school’s gang decides to show up to Kenji’s place after seeing that he’s in the rock fest and ignored them. When the gang leader, Oba, says that Kenji has 2 options, fight him or destroy the bass, Kenji destroys the bass without hesitation which had me completely shocked lmao. I was not expecting him to immediately smash the bass. I’ve always had mixed feelings about smashing guitars and basses bc it’s pretty cool and hype, but also I prefer to treat instruments with respect and that’s also hundreds to thousands of dollars down the drain.
After he smashes the bass though, he pulls out a recorder, and that’s when I realized he was the one playing earlier, and I was curious what he was planning to do with a recorder at a rock concert, bc recorders aren’t traditionally a rock instrument lmao. I have no idea how Kenji got so good at recorder, but damn he’s good. I thought at first he might have known from playing it as a kid since elementary school kids tend to play recorder or something school, but he also had no music knowledge earlier, so who knows, maybe he had that much dedication.
What really impressed me though is when he started running and dodging while playing. The only wind instruments I’ve ever played are recorder and a variety of different whistles used in percussion, but even I know as much that being able to maintain good sound quality and intonation while running around like that is crazy. It’s completely unrealistic, though this is ofc an anime, not reality lmao. It’s also nice comedy seeing him causally shredding on recorder while dodging the other gang, not to mention outrunning them too lmao.
The next scene we see is one of the performers performing, and something I wanna point out is that this guy’s lyrics is just repeating “Love. That’s love” over and over again, and I’ve heard so many songs where they lyrics just repeat like that lmao. It’s whatever if the melody and stuff sounds good, but I do find songs like that pretty boring, not that I can do much better lyrics wise though.
Kobijutsu Rock Fest
Kobijutsu performs an original song called “Bankara Bakuchi”, which the full version is available on youtube, linked below. This has definitely gotta be my favorite song in the movie, it embodies the rock n’ roll of the 60’s, the type you’d hear from the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It’s got a nice groovy rock rhythm, some really nice licks in the guitar, but the guitar part isn’t too overly complicated, maybe a little more than your average 60’s rock n’ roll song, but definitely less soloistic than something you’d hear in 70s or 80s rock like with guns n roses or something. The vocals 100% fit the 60’s rock n’ roll vibe with its energy, up-beatedness, and those vocal flares. Definitely like this song a ton.
While Kobijutsu is playing, Morita’s guitar strap breaks bringing the song to an abrupt stop. I gotta say, this is why you use good straps, or at least get those add on locks to keep it from falling off, don’t just use the basic ones where you put it through the loop and call it a day. Not only is it embarrassing and ruins the performance if you strap breaks, but it can also damage your guitar, so definitely invest in a good strap. But anyway, fails like this in music performances are always embarrassing, but they make for some great humor when you think back on it later on. I’ve never personally had major slipups like that before, but I can remember times other people have. One time in 5th grade, a trombone player’s slide came flying off during a concert which was hilarious. Also the classic falling crash cymbals has happened plenty of times, though again, not by me. Well, not by me while playing, I have dropped crash cymbals while moving the stand and stuff though, which is where I started to realize maybe I should take the crash cymbals off the stand before moving it lmao.
But anyway, unfortunate events like this are bound to happen, especially during live performances. And stuff like this can happen to everyone, not just musicians. So while you may feel embarrassed at the moment, most people don’t think too much of it and will probably laugh it off with you later on.
Kobujutsu’s Performance
Onto Kobujutsu’s performance! Ota and Asakura are pretty nervous before they get on stage, which is relatable as hell. While I enjoy playing music and stuff, if I gotta be fully honest, I really don’t like performing in front of people. It’s much worse when you add in my irl introvertness and social awkwardness, bc those aspects are noticeable in my music playing too. Whenever I play alone, I can play pretty well, but put me in front of people, and my skill gets massively debuffed. Something I like about Chopin is his relatability. Chopin despite being a famous musician and composer, only performed publicly about 30 times in his whole life. He preferred to just play in the company of friends and the such, which I very much relate to. Plus most people get nervous when performing in front of people like this anyway, unless you’re one of those crazy theater kids.
Anyway, moving on from that tangent, Kenji just shows up out of nowhere with his recorder playing a beautiful tune right as they were about to start. After he finishes, Kenji declares that the first piece is done.
Alright, so the song they play next is extremely interesting. As I previously mentioned, recorder is obviously not a traditional rock instrument, so this is already pretty interesting. Psychedelic rock is a form of rock that came about in the 60s as well, and as it’s name entails, it’s a form of rock that emulates the characteristics of psychedelics. This song that they’re performing is a perfect example of psychedelic rock. The repeated drum and bass hits that we heard earlier has evolved from just being the primitive basics of punk rock to being the foundation of this type of psychedelic rock. What I’m mainly talking about with that is that having those repeated hits under all the noise dulls the senses and creates a throbbing sense. Ofc I’ve never used psychedelics or alcohol or even anesthesia or painkillers before, but I’d imagine this is the type of feeling you’d get. That throbbing headache feel of this constant pulse. Then you add in that random high pitch noises of the recorder, which matches that kind of high pitch ringing and stuff that you might hear with a headache. I also imagine the sound of those random high pitched recorder sounds as kind of a random splash of colors and flashing lights. Then you add in the guitar bringing in the rock aspects with its riffs and solo lines. The guitar also uses distortion and heavy reverb to add to the chaotic soup of sound, further bringing a hypnotic, headache throbbing, type of feel to it (not that this music gives me a headache, but it reminds me of one). Lastly, add in the animation. The animation features these random, wild movements with lines dashing throughout the background, and very raw, blended colors that’s not as cleanly drawn as the normal animation. The art style shifts all over the place, at one point even giving it that realistic 60s live concert type of video look. The movement and dancing in the crowd is exactly how I would move around and stuff to music like this too, it just feels right. This is an absolutely masterfully crafted work of art right here that perfectly captures the idea of psychedelic rock in all ways, plus the added creativity of using a recorder to do it. Brilliant.
At the end of the song, Kenji just kind of breaks out singing while he’s still on that energy rush and in the moment. This is the type of thing that you just do and then think about 5 years later at 2am thinking about how stupid you were and why did you do that lmao. Reminds me of bocchi stage diving in ep 12, just did it in the moment and completely regretted it, such a relatable feeling lmao.
Ending
We return back to the school where Kenji’s just sitting alone at a desk. Aya comes in and says she didn’t know he could sing, and luckily for him, Kenji’s just not the type of guy who seems to give af, so rather than being embarrassed, he just replies with “Of course I do.” Giga chad moment right there. We also learn that the band broke up, which while that may seem disappointing, brings us back to that theme of boredom. They didn’t start playing music necessarily because they found a full on passion to purse a career in music, but simply because they’re bored teenagers that want something to do, so they did it, and are now moving on. It’s like wanting to play a video game, finishing the game, then moving onto something else, which I think is a really beautiful way of bringing us back to the reality after that crazy performance.
Conclusion
This is an absolutely incredible work of art and passion that displays how anyone can freely create art. You don’t need to conform to set rules or have any previous experience to just fuck around and make something up. This movie itself is an example of that too. It wasn’t made by any big studio, or even any official studio at all. It wasn’t high budget or anything like that. It was a bunch of people with passion who just put it together and created a masterpiece of a movie. I think this is a great movie for anyone to watch. Musicians will enjoy the brilliantly composed songs in this movie and non-musicians may just find some inspiration to pick up and instrument or some other form of art and just play around with it. Easy 10/10 movie and one of my favorites by far.
If you read this whole thing, thanks for sticking around and reading! Also you’re crazy. Sorry for the lack of grammar or readability, the long paragraphs, the tangents, and all that, I was just freely writing what was coming to my mind, straight up brain to fingers without a filter in between. Also apologies for typos and stuff, I don’t really feel like proofreading all 7,000 words here, so I hope there wasn’t too many typos and that I still got my points across. Also apologies for this post’s delay bc I did get a little busy with other irl stuff. That’s about it, so thank you, bye
