“This series was conceived with the intention of taking impressions from animation, comics, and other visual works and developing them into a completely fresh musical world using synthesizers.”
-Obi Strip Digital Trip Series Description, 1983 (SDF Macross DT, translated by Windii)
Intro
When I first started
listening through tokusatsu soundtracks, I was going through the two-disc set for Uchuu Keiji
Sharivan’s BGM and noticed that the second disc began with a set of songs
titled “DIGITAL TRIP Uchuu Keiji Sharivan SYNTHESIZER FANTASY.” Upon playing those
curious tracks, I was greeted with a very electronic, synthesized, and striking
series of compositions. They were still recognizable as variations of the OST
and BGM I’d heard earlier, yet they sounded almost otherworldly.
Years of anisong searching
and listening later, and now as an avid music enthusiast, I’ve plunged into the
huge range of the Digital Trip – Synthesizer Fantasy albums. Though only
lasting around five years, the series saw many releases from a variety of
arrangers offering their own, synthesizer-heavy takes on anime and other Japanese
media music.
Some of the albums recently
received worldwide streaming releases for the first time, but I wanted to write
about this series anyways because of how much I enjoyed listening through and
discovering so many favorites. I love synthesizer music of all kinds, especially
ones that aim for their own distinctive style. The Digital Trip series is unique
among both electronic and anime music, and I think it’s worth highlighting as a
creative and entertaining series of albums.
This retrospective is a
mix of contextual overview, notes on the styles of the main arrangers, a look
at some of the tech used, the end of the line itself, and ten personal album
recommendations.
(VGMDB is the source for most
of the credits and dates in this post.)
There is a rumor that’s spread about anime director Takeyuki Kanda’s sudden death in 1996 that has nothing to back it up. As best as I can tell, it remains unfounded and almost certainly false. The rumor is that he died in a car crash, but the only available information on Japanese sites doesn’t mention that at all. The oldest source I could find for that rumor was an uncited English Wikipedia article written by an account later banned for bad edits.
The only confirmed detail on Kanda’s death is that he suddenly
passed away at the age of 52. That much, at a minimum, is confirmed by an official
interview on the VOTOMS website with Ryosuke Takahashi that mentions Kanda’s
passing, specifically in its third footnote.
I was (and still am) working on a separate, more fun article
about a series of anime image albums, but I got sucked into this rabbit hole over
the last few days. I figured I’d tell the story of how this unraveled, as well
as share some thoughts on anime rumors in general.
I finished watching Turn A Gundam recently, and it’s already cemented itself as one of my favorite Gundam shows and anime in general. But one detail I appreciate is that, even with its Americana setting, it still works in some interesting, immense technological set pieces that give a great sense of scale to the show in the portions where it heads to outer space. To put it bluntly, I appreciate it when science fiction has what I like to call “Big Cool Sci-Fi Stuff,” both for the novelty but also realizing the unique potential the medium has to create a unique sense of wonder.
