Have You Ever Been to a Concert Composed Entirely of Movie Themes?

Screen shot from交响组曲 · 魔法少女小圆 © Imperial 9 Symphony (P.R.China)

Yes, occasionally, an orchestra or band will play a movie or TV theme song as part of a bigger set. The Boston Pops do that sort of thing — they’ve played themes from “James Bond”, “E.T.”, “Jaws” and “Star Trek”, among others, and audiences eat it up.

Here, John Williams is conducting the Pops in a medley of movie themes. I actually felt a stab of emotion at the little excerpt from “Cinema Paradiso.” It only lasts a few seconds, but I immediately found myself back in Giancaldo, with Toto and Alberto.

If you watch this, I’d love to know: Are there any moments like that for you, which bring back what you felt when you watched the original movie?

Still, I haven’t heard of many concerts dedicated to movie themes, at least here. That would be sort of like Williams or Ennio Morricone (RIP) taking their studio orchestras on tour to play full concerts of their scores from “Once Upon A Time in the West” or “Star Wars.”

But it does happen in Japan and China, where composers of movie scores are as well known as the movie directors and even the actors. Here I take a look at an Anime score which has been performed live in many variations.

I discovered Anime through the music. Yes, that’s getting it kind of backward — it would be like someone discovering the Marvel Superhero universe by first hearing the soundtracks of the movies. But there was no other way.

Anime doesn’t get much attention here in the U.S. Anime fans here are a unique subculture: young, nerdy, and into fantasy (Ok, so I check two of those three boxes…). Most people here would only find it by accident.

“Anime” is short for “animation,” and it’s easy to assume — as I used to — that it is just the Japanese equivalent of our Saturday morning cartoons from the TV era. Some of the our most popular Saturday morning cartoons (eg. Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Gigantor, 8th Man, Sailor Moon) in the era of broadcast television were in fact re-dubbed versions of Japanese animated TV series.

So, most Americans of all ages have been exposed to Anime whether or not they realized it. But the old cartoons barely scratched the surface. Today, there is a ton of Anime available on streaming platforms. And there is a lot of music from the sound-tracks.

Anime today is far more developed than serial TV shows like “Astro Boy” or “Sailor Moon.” The major Anime story-lines are plotted on a scale comparable to the Marvel universe. Japanese studios co-produced blockbuster American franchises such as “Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Transformers”, which are based on Anime series.

However, Anime stories usually go deeper into philosophical nuance than Marvel ever does. While “Turtles” and “Transformers” featured characters who were nominally teenagers, they took on more complex character development and psychological conflict than American producers are typically comfortable with.

The most famous Anime writer, Hayao Miyazawa, didn’t hold back from breaking conventions. His stories have no tidy endings. Lead characters, even children, endure great loss, including dying for their causes. His full-length Anime “Nausicaä” brought us the first female cartoon action heroes.

Of course, when “Nausicaä” was adapted for the U.S. market, it was drastically cut, and the female protagonist was relegated to a supporting role. So much for America being more progressive than Japan…

Miyazawa’s stories are dark and tragic in a Shakespearian kind of way. The characters are often morally ambiguous, something considered intolerable in American storytelling when the audience are children or teens. His movies set the tone for many of the movies and series that followed. They have music to match, which is how I got pulled in.

The greatest composer of Anime scores is Yuki Kajiura. She has written, composed, arranged, and produced soundtracks for some 60 films, including around two dozen Anime. She hand-picks the musicians to record them and is often one of the performers, playing keyboards and singing backing vocals.

I have written about her before here:

and here:

She ranks among the great composers of movie scores, along with Morricone, Williams, and Danny Elfman.

The songs from these scores have become popular hits independent of the films themselves. Kajiura and her performing ensembles give full-blown concerts based on movie soundtracks.

And so we come full circle to the question I posed at the beginning of this article: Have you been to any concerts consisting entirely of movie themes?

Some of Kajiura’s concerts are preserved on YouTube, which is where I found them. They are so beautiful and compelling that I had to learn more about the backstories. I’ve dug up a lot, but it’s obvious I’ve just dipped my toe in the water. I will never become an expert in those universes—there is just too much. But one story universe stood out for me because the music is so addictive: “Madoka Magica.”

The storyline is a bit like a cross between “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Lord of the Rings.” In this universe, a group of high-school-age girls have been granted supernatural powers to protect the world from demons bent on destroying it. These young women sometimes have to make terrible sacrifices to carry on the fight, much like Frodo having to forgo Middle Earth in order to save it.

The heroines also can’t let their friends in the “normie” world know anything about their parallel lives. In that sense, there are real similarities to the Superman and Batman tropes so beloved of Western superhero stories — the secret identities, the need to shield their loved ones from what they do, and the ever-present threat from implacable enemies.

Mami Tomoe is one of these young women. Like each character, she has a theme song that plays when she is on screen. This is the same technique Morricone used to great effect in the scores for Sergio Leone’s westerns including “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

Mami’s theme song is “Credens Justitiam”, or “Believe in Justice”. The song plays whenever she is on screen, including the beginning of her final scene. In that scene, she is killed in battle while saving her younger proteges from demons that are pursuing them.

Imperial 9 Symphony is a Chinese symphony orchestra founded and crowdfunded by fans of Japanese Anime. They have created medleys of favorite songs from some of the major Anime series.

Most of their work so far is based on compositions by Yuki Kajiura. This is their rendition of the main themes from “Madoka Magica.” The last song, “Credens Justitiam” is my favorite, but listen to the whole thing if you have time. (It is time stamped so you can skip among songs.)

Oh: Some of the orchestra members are dressed as characters from the series.

Here is “Credens Justitiam,” performed by Kajiura and FictionJunction, comprising:

Vocals (l-r):

• Wakana Ootaki — Soprano

• Yuriko Kaida — Soprano

• Keiko Kubota — Contralto

• Kaori Oda — Mezzo Soprano

Instruments:

• Yuki Kajiura composer, piano/keyboards

• Akagi Rie — flute

• Koichi Korenaga — guitars

• Hitoshi Konno — violin

• Kyoichi Sato — drums

• Tomoharu “Jr” Takahashi — bass guitar

• Yoshio Ohira — percussion and sound engineer)

The lyrics are neither Japanese nor English but in Latin, so don’t worry about understanding them.

…….