The Power of Rock and Roll

Little did I know that upon watching the first episode of an anime series called Beck (no relation to the singer of the same name) that I would get hooked on it and consider it one of my favorite anime series of the year. Beck is an anime about a group of guys who decide to form a band, kind of like Gravitation without all the bishounen. In a way it is Anime’s tribute to Rock.

At the beginning of the series Yukio Tanaka, who is called Koyuki by his friends, is a timid middle schooler. He isn’t particularly talented in anything; he isn’t athletic nor is he inclined towards any hobbies. His nights comprise of listening to the latest J-pop Idol singing about how everything’s going to be okay. He has a crush on his old childhood friend Izumi, and lately she’s been playing a larger role in his life. One day she lets him listen to the (fictional) band Dying Breed. This isn’t the music he’s accustomed to, and he’s intrigued. After meeting a guitarist named Ryusuke, he soon begins traversing the path onto becoming a rock musician and becoming .

The anime, like most other series about a certain topic, focuses on its many aspects, in this case, the aspects of rock music and becoming a rock musician – learning the guitar, hearing other bands, performing a live gig. Various references are made to famous luminaries of rock – Lennon, Cobain, The Lizard King and so on (a panorama of personalities from the local and international rock scene even appears during the end credits.) This anime is bilingual – English and Japanese, so expect the occasional line of English dialogue to pop up (and this doesn’t even include the songs, more on that later)

Beck is also a slice of life story – focusing on the different aspects of Koyuki’s life and how he deals with the people around him. I liked the romance angle that pops up every now and then, and Beck does it in a refreshing way – without all the cuteness and/or ecchiness that seems to work its way into other anime (unless you take into consideration that one scene in the swimming pool...)

Being an anime about a band, naturally the series has its own music. Many songs from Japanese indie rock and some other classic rock songs appear too, including an appearance by the Pillows, who we know better from the Gainax anime FLCL.

“Moon on the Water,” Beck’s love theme, has got to be one of the best sounding songs I’ve heard in an anime for a long time. Sung by either Koyuki’s singing voice actor or by J-pop artist Sowelu, it’s a cool rock ballad that is catchy and managed to keep me on LSS mode for a long time. However, here’s where the problem arises: most of Beck’s songs are in English, and apparently whoever wrote the lyrics did so in Engrish. While some of the other singers on the show have no problem singing it, it sounds really awkward to the native English speaker (I wonder why they didn’t just have Yoko Kanno staple Tim Jensen do the lyrics… he did the ending song after all.) It’s up to the viewer to accept the music and not concentrate on the lyrics or not. Having listened to my fair share of good-sounding-but-strangely-worded songs, I forgave the music and enjoyed it for what it was.

Another thing about the music is that we hear little of it before we cut to the next scene, and some of the songs are sung almost every episode. I can’t tell you how many times I heard ‘Typhoon 20! 20 Chiba! 24/7!’ then have the thing cut to the next scene… only to hear the same thing in the next episode. I mean, show me the rest of the song! Grrrr. Anime Soundtrack Marketing people at work, I guess.

One point that many fans seem to have a problem with is the ending. Like many anime series, Beck stops while the Manga continues. While the show could have stopped at episode 25 (IMO, a great resolution to the series) episode 26 tries hard to cram 3 volumes worth of manga story into one episode (actually ten minutes or so!) I don’t mind the way the director wanted to end the anime, but the extremely fast pace of the ending scenes may turn off some.

In closing, I left Beck still loving it, despite its flaws. It almost made me want to make music myself. It’s a quirky, fun anime that I won’t hesitate recommending. Maybe soon you’ll be singing along to Moon on the Water too…