(no subject)

Woot, moodtheme. I wish I could edit the Nami one! But apparently Livejournal does not WANT me to edit. FINE. I'll just use the NEW one. So there.

This might be one of the dorkier things I've ever said, but you really do learn a good bit about a character by making a mood theme of them. All of Luffy's sad faces come from one scene. ONE. Angry and happy don't have enough SLOTS for all the variations, but in 140-odd episodes and six movies, I've seen him be sad once.

I should clean out my usericons. So many I don't use. Who uses 100 icons anyway? How do they scroll through the whole list every time they make a post?

Ahhh.

Spirited Away.

Round two of the ongoing effort to convert half of my family to the cult of Ghibli. Perhaps not as successful as round one- Dad says of Spirited Away that it had none of the levity of Howl's Moving Castle, that it was from beginning to end a nightmare. Next time I think Kiki's Delivery Service is in order.

There really is a fantastic difference between music that sets a background mood, and music that directly compliments the action. A well-timed chime of small bells when the light sparkles off of Chihiro's hairband. A chord struck just as Yubaba glares, woven perfectly in with the underlying melody. Come to think of it, this was also the first thing that truly gave me chills with the One Piece anime- and one of the things its movies sorely lack. One Piece has glorious music all the way through, but there's just such a huge leap between its passive and active roles.

An example, and the first instance I recall. When Zoro first meets Nami, saving her from Buggy's pirates, Luffy calls out and his theme cues up. It's mostly percussion and strings, unusually loud for background music, and their voices have to cut through it to be heard- this is not a problem for Buggy, who can be described as piercing under the best of circumstances. He challenges Zoro to a fight. Zoro turns, and at that exact second a piccolo sharply descends a minor scale. It's the perfect punctuation for the eye contact. I literally got the shivers. The moment ends and the strings return as Zoro tells Buggy where to shove it.

MORE ANIME NEED TO DO THIS. I love it when it happens. It's always so unexpected; background music is for background! You're not supposed to pay attention to it, just react to the mood it sets. When it leaps up and grabs the attention, it's a destabilizing shock to the way we experience anime, momentarily resetting our priorities and forcing us to notice things we haven't.

That's about it for music. ( A few more things for Spirited Away, though. )