[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

Your going to have to explain to me how an opening about a girl who's opening up again and becoming more optimistic after going through tough times is considered ''emo''.

Well, ok. I hear a female voice trying too hard to cute and ultimately sounds whiny. I suppose not knowing Japanese hurts.

Generalization, and not to mention just a very strange criticism. So what if the BGM isn't there all the time?Silence is just as important as any track in an episode. Otherwise it would sound like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Well, of course it's a generalization, lol. It's an overall impression of the whole series. And I've noticed that there's a very low amount of BGM.

You are correct that silence is useful and you don't need it all the time. I'm just saying it's not used very much, and the BGMs that do show up are almost always the same, making it extremely bland.

They say a good background music isn't going to come up to the forefront and distract people. But it needs to be there, somewhere.

You need to pay more attention to the audio usage in anime then. :/

And if I'm not paying attention, whose fault is it? It's their job to get my attention. I can pick any random anime from, I don't know, say my top 30 anime where I paid attention to the audio usage. I don't think that's the problem. Do I happen to only watch shows with good soundtracks? *shrugs*

See, this is not a complaint I usually use for the majority of anime. I'm generally not very critical of these things unless I don't feel it's there.

And I think your convincing yourself that the weaker episodes have less music, when in fact they at best have the same or more than the usual.YnS had the good fortunate of a great OST and excellent music placement. That's why it's better than Hanasaku in that area, because it is a better OST with a better usage. That doesn't mean anything less would be shit, since the music in YnS is at such a high standard.

Music placement is everything though; I don't care about the tunes by themselves. Umineko anime had great songs but they weren't always used right.

Well, how about less memorable music? I'm actually watching an episode (what was it? The end of the Einshi arc where it became really notable.

I hated .hack sign, but I'll be damned if I said the music there wasn't anything short of awesome. So I'm not going out of my way to make this criticism; I certainly liked watching HSI enough to not make unwarranted criticism of it, nor would I bother trying to convince myself this show is bad or anything.

It started in episode 3. Yes, I know it's one of the weaker ones, but most notably during the car chase scene. Now, people can go on about how crap that episode was, but it could have at least been humorous. But the BGM didn't help at all. That's an example of a missed opportunity to set the mood.

And yes, I know that YnS is a pretty high standard, but I'm just using that as an example of it done right. Otherwise I'm just comparing to thin air, and nobody wants that. Didn't I already say that before?

I'm not saying "It's not as good as Yosuga no Sora, it's shit". I'm saying it could be more like in that vein to be considered good.

To me, the greatest difference between Hanasaku and True Tears is that there is a clear planing problem in Hanasaku (which I think lies squarely in the hands of Ms.Whimsical) not on the atmosphere, and certainly not the music. There hadn't been an instance where I thought that the lead up from the silence to the music, the volume, their actual usage, or the quality of the tracks used.

Maybe you don't like the sort of atmosphere that the show sets up, or you think it can be done better, but what you say about the lack of music is simply untrue.

Well, tell me then. What kind of atmosphere does Hana Saku Iroha set up? Because I have nothing.

True Tears, at least I could feel the emotional tension between the characters. It set itself up as a dramatic romantic drama. It's not the most complex of things, but hey I could watch it and be like hey I'm on the stage of this show.

TT doesn't have the most awesome soundtrack either. But it works. Noe's theme? A character defining song that outlines her personality perfectly. Sono Mama no Boku de? One of the most appropriate inserts to sum the mood? Hey, I remember these things existed and the scenes associated with them. That is what works. That is quality use of sound.