Who is behind the music of the Pokémon anime?

[Zhen Lin]

We know that most of the music is composed and/or arranged by 宮崎慎二 Miyazaki Shinji; we also know that portions of the music are based on the game music, which were composed by 増田順一 Masuda Jun'ichi (not in the M8 credits, for some reason...), 一之瀬剛 Ichinose Gō and 青木森一 Aoki Morikazu.

But do we know who actually performs it? This little piece of information has never been listed in movie credits, TV credits or even OST credits, to the best of my knowledge.

I guess, the first step to researching this is to find out what company Miyazaki Shinji is associated with - TV Tokyo, OLM, Half HP Studios, and Media Factory are possible candidates. (Probably not Game Freak - if that were the case, he'd probably be composing for the games as well; nor Nintendo - after all, Nintendo was the company [wp]Tanaka Hirokazu[/wp] quit in order to pursue Pokémon anime.)

 

[Argy]

Well, it seems that the logical first step in doing research would be finding out any other anime Miyazaki composes for. I see he did OP/ED work for Pretty Sammy and another show I've never heard of...

 

[fruitsmoothierevenge]

I think that most of the composers play the music as well. If they don't play the actual instruments themselves, they hire others to do so. (That's the way Inuyasha does it.)

 

[TSS_Killer]

I think I've heard about GARDEN performing some of the background music (the later ones I imagine), but I'm not exactly sure who has done the BGM for the earlier seasons. I also imagine that perhaps there is a specific name for the orchestra, but once again, I'm not certain.

 

[eX.A.K.R.]

I believe that whoever performed the background music for the animé series could also be behind the Pokémon Symphonic Medley, which is performed by a "Pokémon Symphonic Orchestra". I think that this orchestra might consist of not only people within the music studios working on Pokémon music, but may also comprise of other music performers; there are quite a number of amateur orchestras in Japan, and I believe that they may had a part in performing the Pokémon music.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Pokeani credits PSM to a Pokémon Symphonic Orchestra; but it's not in the credits of the TV OP - which instead states "arrangement & all instruments: Kazumi Mitome" - in English. The Battle Frontier CD states essentially the same thing for the other PSM: "演奏・編曲：三留一純". Then again, maybe they're hinting to us that the instruments are synth... [I personally find the strings part of PSM a little unconvincing.] (And that still leaves the puzzle of the chorus.) But I'm pretty sure I've seen an orchestra in one of those "Making of ..." videos.

I do think that an in-house orchestra performs the orchestral pieces - the question is, which company, if at all, does this orchestra belong to? Are they mostly professional musicians, or mostly amateurs?

Certainly, composers might perform one part of their own piece. Joe Hisaishi, of Studio Ghibli, performs the piano part of many of his pieces. But composers certainly can't perform all the parts - that would be quite troublesome.

Some recurring names in Pokémon music:

• 田中宏和 Tanaka Hirokazu (never credited in kanji though...) - composed most of the theme songs, and arranged many of them.
• 戸田昭吾 Toda Akihito - wrote the lyrics for many songs.
• 三留一純 Mitome Kazumi - arranged PSM, composed soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, and also arranged the music box versions of soko-ni sora-ga aru kara and [/i]boku-no best friend-e[/i].
• 恩田直幸 Onda Naoyuki - performed the piano part of boku-no best friend-e, though the composer there was Tanaka Hirokazu; later, he does the arrangement for soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, Smile, Onda Naoyuki later does the arrangement for soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, ippai summer.
  [*] 斉藤裕二 (齋藤 as listed on the company website, also spelt 斎藤) Saitō Yūji - music producer for all 8 movies. He is always listed as belonging to イマジン - Imagine. Aha, bingo! Miyazaki Shinji is an employee of this company. And their major customers include TV Tokyo and Shōgakukan Productions...
  [*] 宮崎慎二 Miyazaki Shinji - composer for Pokémon anime, an employee of Imagine (see above)
  

And... from the Imagine website, there is a link to Koike Strings, a strings group. And, if you look at their recording diary, the entry for June 11, 2005 is... movie 8. In fact... looking through their recording diary brings up a few other artists and shows I recognise...

Considering that the Japanese are generally quite meticulous when it comes to crediting people (music albums list down who played what instrument on a per track basis!) - this is highly unusual.

But... looking at some of the older singles I have, I find some slightly more detailed credits... For 風といっしょに kaze-to issho-ni:
コーラス：ポケモンキッズ
音羽ゆりかご会 (by the courtesy of Sony Records)
The first line tells us that the chorus is by Pokémon Kids. The second line mentions a "Otowa Yurikago-Kai" - a singing school for children - which apparently is so well known it has a Japanese Wikipedi article.

And for ぼくのベストフレンドへ boku-no best friend-e:
トラック・プログラミング：たなか　ひろかず
シンセサイザー・プログラミング：山崎哲雄
E.ギター：古川　望
Track Programming: Tanaka Hirokazu
Synthesiser Programming: Yamazaki Tetsuo
Electric Guitar: Furukawa Nozomi

 

[eX.A.K.R.]

Pokeani credits PSM to a Pokémon Symphonic Orchestra; but it's not in the credits of the TV OP - which instead states "arrangement & all instruments: Kazumi Mitome" - in English. The Battle Frontier CD states essentially the same thing for the other PSM: "演奏・編曲：三留一純". Then again, maybe they're hinting to us that the instruments are synth... [I personally find the strings part of PSM a little unconvincing.] (And that still leaves the puzzle of the chorus.) But I'm pretty sure I've seen an orchestra in one of those "Making of ..." videos.

I do think that an in-house orchestra performs the orchestral pieces - the question is, which company, if at all, does this orchestra belong to? Are they mostly professional musicians, or mostly amateurs?

Certainly, composers might perform one part of their own piece. Joe Hisaishi, of Studio Ghibli, performs the piano part of many of his pieces. But composers certainly can't perform all the parts - that would be quite troublesome.

Some recurring names in Pokémon music:

• 田中宏和 Tanaka Hirokazu (never credited in kanji though...) - composed most of the theme songs, and arranged many of them.
• 戸田昭吾 Toda Akihito - wrote the lyrics for many songs.
• 三留一純 Mitome Kazumi - arranged PSM, composed soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, and also arranged the music box versions of soko-ni sora-ga aru kara and [/i]boku-no best friend-e[/i].
• 恩田直幸 Onda Naoyuki - performed the piano part of boku-no best friend-e, though the composer there was Tanaka Hirokazu; later, he does the arrangement for soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, Smile, Onda Naoyuki later does the arrangement for soko-ni sora-ga aru kara, ippai summer.
  [*] 斉藤裕二 (齋藤 as listed on the company website, also spelt 斎藤) Saitō Yūji - music producer for all 8 movies. He is always listed as belonging to イマジン - Imagine. Aha, bingo! Miyazaki Shinji is an employee of this company. And their major customers include TV Tokyo and Shōgakukan Productions...
  [*] 宮崎慎二 Miyazaki Shinji - composer for Pokémon anime, an employee of Imagine (see above)

And... from the Imagine website, there is a link to Koike Strings, a strings group. And, if you look at their recording diary, the entry for June 11, 2005 is... movie 8. In fact... looking through their recording diary brings up a few other artists and shows I recognise...

Considering that the Japanese are generally quite meticulous when it comes to crediting people (music albums list down who played what instrument on a per track basis!) - this is highly unusual.

But... looking at some of the older singles I have, I find some slightly more detailed credits... For 風といっしょに kaze-to issho-ni:
コーラス：ポケモンキッズ
音羽ゆりかご会 (by the courtesy of Sony Records)
The first line tells us that the chorus is by Pokémon Kids. The second line mentions a "Otowa Yurikago-Kai" - a singing school for children - which apparently is so well known it has a Japanese Wikipedi article.

And for ぼくのベストフレンドへ boku-no best friend-e:
トラック・プログラミング：たなか　ひろかず
シンセサイザー・プログラミング：山崎哲雄
E.ギター：古川　望
Track Programming: Tanaka Hirokazu
Synthesiser Programming: Yamazaki Tetsuo
Electric Guitar: Furukawa Nozomi

I listened carefully to the T.V. opening version of Pokémon Symphonic Medley, and except the « Polka O Dolka » part (for those who can't figure out which song goes into which part, it's the part in the opening video where Team Rocket digs a hole before being chased out by Aron and it's evolutions, and Brock flirts around with a bouquet of flowers before it was eaten by Munchlax), it sounds like that the music is synthesised; I listened for any oddities in the background and found quite some abrupt "ends" to a few of the notes; it just stops instead of naturally fading out. The « Sokoni Soraga Arukara » portion sounds like a bit of both. I believe that the « Polka O Dolka » part of the song could very well be performed by some orchestra; notice a male voice singing in the background? Yet again, that voice could very well have been synthesised, too; I know of one song where the female voice in the background is nothing more than just a key on a synthesiser. If they involved a famous children's singing school in Japan to do some Pokémon music, though, I won't be surprised if they actually found an actual orchestra to perform some of the music for them. Crediting Kazumi Mitome for "arrangement & all instruments" could also be that he supervised the musical instruments, and maybe even conducted the orchestra.

As for the other songs, I decided to performed a search on Google for one of the performers, Furukawa Nozomi, and it turned up some interesting results. From the short summary of some of the pages listed nearer to the top (below the result link), you could see that his name appears in what seems to be credits for songs and soundtracks (all of which I never heard of), and every time, he seems to be credited for the guitar (which fits into his role as performing the electric guitar in « Boku no Best Friend e &#xbb. Another result turned up a photo gallery of sorts; one of the pictures shows three people standing next to each other, and gives the name of one of them as "Furukawa Nozomi". That photo was categorised under a category called "Choub Gospel Choir", and shows a group of musical performers rehearsing and recording a new CD. Could this be one of the choirs that has worked on Pokémon music, or could the person shown here be just another person who happens to have the same name?

 

[Zhen Lin]

I'm not sure. I found at least two 古川望 - one was in his 40s, another in his 20s... the former was part of a duo - the Furukawa brothers - and plays electric guitar.

Now, I'm assuming the name is meant to be read Furukawa Nozomi. But I do know the 古川望 of the Furukawa brothers is read Furukawa Nozomi - which is indeed depicted in that photo.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Ah, a two more names - also from Imagine Music:

丸尾　稔 Maruo Minoru, synthesiser operator, has worked on the Pokémon series and movies.
中村充時 Nakamura Jūji, recording engineer, has worked on the series and movies - he specifically mentions movies 1 - 5 and movie 8. He is credited in M8 as recording mixer for theatrical use. Apparently, he did the 5.1 mix for Battle Frontier and kazoeuta.

And from Nakamura Jūji's website... the truth begins to emerge.

On June 17, 1997, he recorded part of the Pokémon anime BGM. "All instruments recorded by synthesizers & samplers except Guitars." They did another session on July 7.

On May 30, 2000, they did the orchestral recording for M3. Various groups are named... doesn't seem to be a single orchestral group. On May 31 they did some mixing and editing for 5.1 surround sound. On June 2 and 3 they did it for stereo sound.

And one more puzzle:
Who is 篠原一雄 Shinohara Kazuo? He's not with Imagine Music. But he is credited as Music Producer. However... looking at the credits for Gad Guard... we see some familiar names... 三間雅文 Mima Masafumi for sound supervisor. 斎藤祐二 Saitō Yūji for music producer, together with 篠原一雄 Shinohara Kazuo. A Imagine Music & Media Factory production. We could probably guess that Mima and Shinohara are with Media Factory. [Considering that Gad Guard is a Fuji TV anime, probably not TV Tokyo Music.]

 

[Nomekop Oen]

I always figured that Nintendo had something to do with Pokémon Symphonic Medley since the intro reminded me so much of the Pokemon stage in SSBM.

That,and there was also a report last year that Nintendo wanted to start it's own anime division.And since Pokemon just happens to be one of their biggest franchises,I just thought they wanted to get involved in the production of the anime somehow.