#(it was trilobytes right) god anyway

[ourlordapollo]

Honestly finding it weirder and weirder how many videos there are analyzing Joe Hisaishi's music through a purely Western lens, like. A few people pay lip service to Japanese scales but you would think that at least one person would take a look at how music theory is taught in Japan

This is the kind of extensively obsessive deep dive I would take but 1) I don't care about Ghibli that much (sorry) 2) I have a job and it isn't "teaching music theory full time on YouTube 3) Despite my mom's best efforts, I don't speak Japanese

There's this great Japanese YouTuber who took an extremely close look at Tatsuro Yamashita's work in the context of his life and I feel like that's exactly what Hisaishi fans need. Except the Yamashita thing is kind of ironic considering how Western city pop is.

It's just like. The appeal, the spice, of Hisaishi's work is the Japanese-ness of it, that's what people like. So it seems obvious that you would have to take it in context rather than treating it as this isolated factor in a greater Western scene. To me, it feels like the equivalent of trying to analyze, I dunno, Pride and Prejudice without knowing anything about England's political climate or culture at the time. You'd be left with an incomplete picture devoid of context, and probably even several incorrect assumptions.