Professors John Marr and Elliot Jones return to Anime Expo to a completely packed room with a brand new music analysis; this time, they spoke on RADWIMPS and the music from the Makoto Shinkai films. The room was completely full and the speakers even invited attendees to sit with them on the panel to generously accommodate more fans who had been waiting for hours in line.

Professor Marr started off the panel with a brief overview of prolific producer Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Garden of Words, Suzume, Weathering with You, Voices of a Distant Star, 5 Centimeters Per Second, etc). Shinkai is very famously known for his rather heart-wrenching and complicated films featuring yearning and the concept of separation by time and/or space. To highlight this, Professor Marr chose the track “Through the Years and Far Away” from Voices of a Distant Star. The song is played during the final scene of the film where the featured couple are about to be separated by time and space. The female protagonist is on a spaceship traveling at the speed of sound, and is therefore aging slower than her counterpart on Earth.

Professor Jones continued with discussing RADWIMPS, who had risen to fame following their extensive contributions to Makoto Shinkai’s films, including Your Name (2016), Weathering with You (2019), and Suzume (2002). Interestingly, though Shinkai was a fan of RADWIMPS, he initiated the collaboration because he wanted to draw a distinction between his work and Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films. He “wanted to do something Miyazaki would never do in one of his films, which was use rock music” (Shinkai, 2023). Shinkai would send the script to the band, and the band would write the melody and lyrics inspired solely by the script. Professor Jones explored this collaborative work through the song “Sky Above Tokyo” from the film Suzume. He points out the new musical styles, instrumentation, and vocal samples that RADWIMPS explored to tailor the song specifically to the film.

Next up, Professor Marr discusses “One More Time, One More Chance” from 5 Centimeters per Second, which was used as source music in the film before it becomes the ending song.

They also discussed “Grand Escape” from Weathering with You, speaking on soundtrack composition and how it had influenced Shinkai to expand the film sequence where the main characters fall from the sky. Uniquely, this song actually has both a film and a soundtrack version, each featuring various differences that were pointed out. To engage the audience, Professor Jones wrapped up the panel with a full-audience sing-a-long, to which the crowd cheerfully clapped to and participated.

The professors’ passion for music and anime shone through in these panels, making them a true pleasure to listen to. For those interested in performing anime music as part of a choir, Professors Marr and Jones also organize the Anime Spectacular concert at Santa Ana College.

For those who missed it, the full lecture is available here:

For Anime Expo 2024, they also presented a second panel that continued their Evangelion series here. Catch them at their next anime music panel at a future convention.