So you want to get in to Japanese rock music, or a beginner's guide to Japanese rock music made by a self proclaimed expert

Japanese rock music might seem like a weeb thing, it's easy to see any facet of Japanese culture embraced by a westerner as a weeb thing, and it's understandable. Japan has it's fair share of westerners romanticizing and fetishizing their culture in weird ways. One of my favorite bands in the history of ever is X Japan, probably all time favorite behind 80s British rock supergroup Asia, and you may say it's a weeb thing to like them. X Japan though have sold 30 million records and wide recognition and got praise from publications in the west like Loudwire, Kerang, Metalhammer and more. Compare this to Japanese groups talked about online like Fishmans or Les Rallizes Denudes, I'd say it's more of a weeb thing going out of your way to find some super underground Japanese band or listen because music nerds on forums (I visit one of these same forums (RYM forums) so I am not totally infallible) told you to, especially passing it off as amazing when in reality it's just a Japanese version of the same types of weird rock and pop subgenres many other bands are doing in the west. Or maybe I should point to another example like Asian Kung-Fu Generation, a band who's popularity in the west is almost entirely off the backs of the various anime they have soundtracked. For comparison Loudness was the first ever Japanese act to break through to the west by signing to major American and European record labels in the 80s. While most famous for pioneering the Japanese heavy metal scene admittedly western sounding first wave, they got big success in America and had a couple minor hit singles and one album that in the west is seen as an 80s metal classic, being held in high regards by many rock publications and still touring America to this day. (I'm actually supposed to see them live on Mothers Day) They fit right in to the American 80s rock scene and have some songs being played on classic metal radio here in the west. At the same time they are still releasing hit albums in Japan and selling out arenas over there. Now explain to me why liking Fishmans and Asian Kung-Fu Generation makes you less of a weeb than if you liked Loudness or X Japan?

Sorry for the confrontational attitude of the first paragraph, but it is very much needed to defend Japanese rock music proper and to differentiate weeb music and actual Japanese rock music. I don't deny that there is a lot of western influence in most Japanese rock music pre Visual Kei, and yes Loudness is not terribly unique if you can listen to a classic Loudness album in the same session as a classic Ratt album and not discern much musical difference, but many of these bands are quite great and some even fill such interesting niches. The point of this is to try and introduce more people to Japanese rock. I'll break down some good places to start, various types of Japanese rock, and some big names to check out in some of varying genres of rock incase one genre is more to your liking than the other.

Think about some big rock bands, Van Halen, Kiss, Guns n Roses, Nirvana, Imagine Dragons if you want to get modern. Some of these bands have amazing albums and have great music, (not Imagine Dragons though, I don't like them) but they wish they could have the success of B'z.

                                  

B'z has sold over hundred million records world wide, with an estimated 86 million being in Japan alone and an estimated 20 million internationally. They are a band that eclipses literally every other artist in the entire continent of Asia, and this is with zero exaggeration, look it up for yourself if you don't believe me. They were Aerosmith's favorite group to play with live, and they transcended all genres. They have had hits crossover into the dance charts (Bad Communication), the metal charts (Dinosaur), the pop charts (Easy Come, Easy Go), and they've even had entire albums rooted in blues rock. They are a band that continues to sell out the biggest venues, continues to get number 1 charting albums, continue to get number 1 charting hit singles (they have had a streak of number 1 hit singles since the early 90s that as of now remains unbroken) and continue to get gold and platinum certified albums. Their new album Highway X hasn't even been out six months as of writing this and it's already certified gold, these guys are outselling and outperforming on the charts most of Japan's young and relevant pop and rock artists while continuing to fill Japan's largest venues at max capacity. I guess that's just what happens when statistically 70% of the Japanese population owns at least one of your records. If you need any place to start a deep dive of Japanese rock music in general and no particular subgenres the definitive place to start is B'z. I'd personally recommend listening to Loose (their most popular and successful album), Brotherhood (considered by many hardcore fans to be their best), The "Bad Communication" EP (their biggest hit song of their entire career) and then Dinosaur or Highway X so you get a feel for their modern sound, and then from there you can jump around to anywhere you want in their discography or tackle it head on in chronological order. I never expected this to be the case, but I am enamored with their early new wave and dance music they did for their first 5 albums. Tak is a god on the guitar, and Koshi's voice seems ageless because he is a better vocalist now than he's ever been because of how well he's worked to preserve it and expand it's range. Where other bands fall off with age, B'z laughs at the question of age and plays music like no time has passed since they debuted, except for the fact the band is still building off 35 years of musical evolution and growth. One of the world's best guitarists; Steve Vai has collaborated with B'z and said they are one of the greatest bands in the world, Aerosmith and guitarist Slash from GNR have both said similar sentiments while another GOATed guitarist Marty Friedman has not only touted them as an all time great band, but Koshi as quite possibly the greatest vocalist in the entire world. Why haven't you heard of B'z? I suppose you could chalk it up to prejudice against Asian artists in the west, but I think a big part of it is that they are Japan's band. Japan heralds these guys as just as good as, if not, better than any of America and Europe's top rock acts and for good reason, this was a band that rose to stardom on their own, and are so huge there that these two are basically like heroes to them, and a big part of why Japan is the world's biggest market for rock and metal nowadays. Even if western success has evaded these guys, they don't need it considering they are bigger than the majority of western artists anyways.


Speaking of bands who were denied success in America, let's move on to a band with a story full of so much crazy stuff and controversy you'd have a hard time believing it all as real: X Japan

X Japan is one of the most wild bands in all of rock and metal, and they forever changed the musical landscape of Japan, having sold 30 million records domestically and an unknown amount internationally. Kamijo from the famed Visual Kei band Versailles said it best when he said "You can't really find a band in Japan who wasn't influenced by X Japan in some direct or indirect way." That's right this band is that ubiquitous among Japan despite only selling 30 million records. The band is perhaps best remembered for being the driving force in the spread and creation of the genre known as Visual Kei. Their story is wild and contains suicide, betrayal, brainwashing at the hands of an evil cult, blacklisting by the Japanese media, and fashion so crazy that hair metal bands would say it's too much. Despite this X Japan pressed on and became the most influential band in Japan during their peak, and they would even support other major rock bands in Japan and help prop them up to mainstream success, such as Glay (who has since outsold X Japan) and Luna Sea. The band was formed as part of drummer, pianist and bandleader Yoshiki's goal of challenging conservative Japan musically and stylistically with the most wild band and music possible. Aiding him in his quest was his best friend since he was five years old: Toshi, on lead vocals, Pata on Rhythm guitar, Taiji Sawada on bass whom were both famous for their work in some club bands, and Hideto Matsumoto on lead guitar. Under the name Hide he would go on to become the biggest rock star in all of Japan before tragically taking his own life in an accident he had while drunk. I cannot overstate how huge Hide was. When he died their were multiple suicides done by teenage girls surrounded in his merch, and multiple copycat suicides. They closed the major roadways in Japan because they were filled with mourning fans, and his funeral had so many people attending they needed a military escort for his hearse to keep back fans. (they football tackled a few of them who tried lunging for it) It's wrong to say Hide was the Japanese Kurt Kobain, because his fame, influence and impact in Japan alone eclipse of all Kurt Kobain's world wide. X Japan's music early on was speed metal that was compositionally influenced by classical music and punk rock. Then they moved towards a mix of heavy metal and classical crossover in their final years to the point of even using a full on orchestra and continued doing it when they reformed in 2008 too. They struck a chord with people who didn't like heavy metal and crossed over into the mainstream with the emotional resonance and power in their songs, even earning them a reputation as a band that "makes songs about depression that get you out of depression". While they only have five albums, all five are great. The sixth album has been in development hell for a decade with Yoshiki barely giving any updates on it, and has thusly given the band and Yoshiki himself many hate listeners when it comes to new stuff. If you want to get into X Japan I'd say where you start is up to preference. If you want kick ass heavy metal than start with Vanishing Vision and then go chronologically. If you want to see the emotional side of this band that made Japanese audiences fall in love with this band than check out the singles "Jade" and "I.V.", because the former shows the mix of metal and classical crossover well, then when after that check out Dahlia or Art of Life and then work your way around in whatever order to the rest of their discography.


While this next band has not sold as many albums domestically as X Japan has, with only 29 million sold domestically, they sold an estimated ten million records internationally. I'm talking about L'Arc～en～Ciel.

Originally formed as a Visual Kei band in the club scene, they abandoned VK when they got signed to a major label and gave us the album Tierra. Since then they have not only pioneered the J-rock genre of music, but have become one of Japan's most famous bands internationally, even being the first Japanese band to ever headline Madison Square Garden, and on the same tour playing concerts in Honolulu (the same city where the Pearl Harbor attacks took place) and being honored by the mayor of Honolulu with May 31st becoming a local holiday called "L'Arc～en～Ciel day" in honor of the bridge of friendship between Japan and Hawaii that they helped to build with their concerts in Honolulu. As of now the band is on a sort of hiatus since 2013 because they just got tired of the success and the level of work that comes with maintaining it, now just doing the occasional tour and new single every now and then. I'd describe L'Arc～en～Ciel's music as quintessential J-rock. They are a perfect example of the kind of commercial alternative rock that is popular in Japan, and that's not a bad thing. They pioneered the J-rock genre after all, so where better to get it than straight from the source? There's a certain eclectic feel and diversity in some albums like "Ray" and "Butterfly", the latter of which being one of my favorite albums by L'Arc～en～Ciel. They have also have had numerous soundtrack deals, including Gundam 00, Devil May Cry 4, Full Metal Alchemist and Resident Evil 7. This only reinforces just how successful they are. If you need a place to start that all depends. "Ray" and "Arc" were released at the same time and are their two most successful albums of their entire career, representing this band really well and even some songs experimenting into genres they haven't done since like trip hop and techno. "Butterfly" is a good album to just get an idea of all the different sides of this band, and if you want to see their early days where they were very much inspired by post punk and such you should start with "Tierra" and work your way forward from there. They actually wrapped up a 30th anniversary tour in 2022, and gave us two new singles in 2021, so it seems like more may still be on the horizon from them yet.


I realize I'm probably not scoring any points with zoomers or millennials naming only artists from before the 2000s, so let's move on to a younger icon of the visual kei scene, that being the Samurai guitarist Miyavi.

Miyavi was originally one of the many disenfranchised youth who got into Visual Kei as a way of expressing himself stylistically and musically in a way he couldn't otherwise. He joined the visual kei band Due Le Quartz who broke up shortly into their career on the indie music scene. Miyavi would go solo doing industrial rock and industrial metal before changing to pop rock and developing the style further over the years by incorporating elements of electropop. Miyavi's signature mix of electro pop and visual kei is defined especially by the guitar playing style he has innovated. Miyavi is credited as the inventor of and is known as the innovator of the slap guitar style of playing, where he plays guitar like a bass, and he uses this to basically shred on the acoustic and shred noise rock guitar riffs when either of those things would be kind of absurd. You would be hard pressed to find anyone on any corner of the globe who uses their instrument like an extension of their body and soul in the same way Miyavi does. Even in the electronic and noisy soundscapes presented in his music the sound of his fingers slapping against those guitar strings in a way that faintly sound like bass can still be heard, often accompanied by him using that whammy bar to manipulate noise rock riffs in a way that sound like synths. This man can adapt his guitar to basically any genre and I don't mean that lightly, just go to his YouTube and see how he adds guitar to songs by Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino. In the last decade Miyavi has since earned a cult following in America and makes music with both his Japanese and American fanbases in mind, doing both English and Japanese both in his songs, often switching between the two. Miyavi is one of Japan's most serious talents and on his own he has only flourished. Being an artist peaking in popularity in the age of the internet and music streaming has kind of neutered his chances at ever reaching a big number of albums sold, but being one of the only Japanese artists to achieve success and a fanbase in the much sought after American market is proof enough of the appeal and power of his music and his talent. If you want a good place to start with the Samurai guitarist's discography, I would say to first check out one of his newest singles "Strike It Out" and then his album "Holy Nights", and if you liked what you heard then feel free to jump around to whatever catches your interest in his discography, or start a full on discography binge starting with "MYV POPS". 


There's only a few more bands left on the agenda before I'm done. In Japan's alternative rock scene there is one band who has dipped their toes in many genres like post punk, shoegaze, gothic rock, art rock, punk, dream pop, hard rock, jangle pop, pop rock and proggressive rock. This band is the legendary visual kei group Luna Sea.

Luna Sea started as an independent visual kei band on Japan's club scene before being discovered by Hide from X Japan. Hide loved the band and had Yoshiki sign them to his independent label Extasy Records, where the band debuted and stayed until being picked by a major label and moving on to greater and greater success throughout the nineties. They broke up in 2000 because they wanted to keep from treading the same musical ground again, and then reunited in 2010. I love this band because of just how well they represent the bold and diverse nature of visual kei. Luna Sea has a bit of their own sound, but it's all very much under the umbrella of alternative rock. However the diverse and large lists of genres they've at least dipped their toes in or have taken inspiration from is what makes them unique. Like their biggest hit song Rosier, where Sugizo said he wanted to make a shoegaze song but said that Ryuichi is too good of a singer to even attempt shoegaze vocals so they made it faster paced and turned it into some mix of shoegaze and J-rock. Or on their first original album since reuniting "A Will", where they decided to end the heaviest album of their career with a classical instrumental. No there's no catch it's literally just a classical instrumental performed by a whole orchestra. When they got back together in 2010 reuniting after ten years broken up, the first thing they did wrote was an out of nowhere 23 minute proggressive rock epic and release it as their comeback single. And no, that song has not appeared on an album or even had any real impact on the band, they just did it because Sugizo wanted the band to do something new before going on to make a new album in earnest. The fact that this band has tried so many things while still sounding like themselves is just great. Sugizo and Inoran are one of Japan's most creative guitar duos and continue to prove that fact, while Shinya keeps time perfectly while adding his own personal touch with the drums to everyone's songs, and Ryuichi's wonderful voice delivering the message of each song and presenting it beautifully. All the while the beautiful touch of Sugizo's violin adds a new element and sound to every song it's used in. Seriously Sugizo is a wicked talented violin player in addition to guitar player. If you're one of those people who like their rock music weird or alternative and different, then Luna Sea is your band, combining the experimental approach with the approachable and inviting sounds of J-rock to create a best of both worlds. While the ten million records sold may seem meager next to some of their countrymen like X-Japan, it's incredible that a band as out there as Luna Sea even broke the eight figure range. I'd recommend you either start with "Style", "Mother" or "Cross" (your pick) and then jump around from there, or you can listen to the rerecording they did of their debut album in 2010 (it is way better than the original version, trust me) and then binge the rest of their discography from album 2 onwards.


I know this list said "Japanese rock music" and not "Japanese metal" but metal kind of falls under the rock umbrella and this band is so important to rock and metal as a whole in Japan that I can't leave them out of the discussion. I'm talking about Loudness.

Loudness was not only the first Japanese metal band to ever get major label releases and support in America, but they were the first Japanese band to ever get into the American market period. They did internationally what most Japanese rock and metal acts can only dream of doing, and they did it all in era were rock and metal were new to Japan, securing positions in both markets easily. Let me take you back to the seventies during the Heisei era. Japan is still a country steeped in tradition despite the presence of western influences coming in. A pop rock boy band by the name of Lazy was made up of boys who wanted to take their own spin on music by artists such as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Eventually fed up with management they made the album they wanted and were broken up by their management as retribution for daring to step away from the music of Japan to embrace such heavy rock music. The guitarist and drummer hired a new bassist and new vocalist and thusly they became loudness, the first Japanese band performing proper traditional heavy metal. They influenced pretty much almost every rock band in Japan during their reign of peak success in the eighties, including B'z. Out of every band on this list Loudness is the most famous in America, because they got an American record contract while making their fourth album with the deal that vocalist Minoru Niihara sings in English and they get a push to the mainstream markets. Loudness has since done many tours in America and Europe, with many hit singles in America such as "Crazy Nights", "Let it Go", "We Could Be Together" and "Rock n Roll Gypsy". They broke off from the American market in the 90s during their switch to Grunge and nu metal, and didn't return until the mid 2000s when they resumed touring and album releases here. Loudness's sound on the first 5 albums are very traditional heavy metal with "Thunder in the East" being considered a classic here in America and in Japan. Their sixth is a bit more commercial than Thunder in the East, and their seventh is full on glam metal. Albums eight and nine were done during a time where Minoru Niihara left and was replaced by American vocalist Mike Vescera. Both are excellent. Then everything from the 90s-2000s is a mixed bag. If you like grunge, groove metal or nu metal you might dig some of those albums. They even did a doom metal album around that time too. I'd recommend you start with Thunder in the East and then go to whichever of the eighties albums you want. If you like all that you can from there check out their albums from the 2010s and 2020s or go through everything including all the weird stuff from the 90s and 2000s. Even if you don't like metal, the rock and metal scenes in Japan owe a huge debt to Loudness for what they did, and they are too important to not mention.



I praised Luna Sea for being diverse and eclectic, an alternative rock band with their reach and influences spanning many genres. Let me tell you about a band that doesn't care about genre, that being visual kei pioneers Buck-Tick.

Buck-Tick fall under the "forget genres we make the music we want" umbrella. The only thing I can say about Buck-Tick definitively is that they are rock, I can't tell what kind of rock because the band is constantly transitioning to new genres with every album. Starting out as an independent power pop band in the eighties using wild hair cuts, make-up and business suits to set them apart from their contemporaries. Then after imposing demands giving them freedom to the major label that wanted them they went to new wave and post punk, then gothic rock, then industrial and noise rock, then techno, then alternative rock and industrial, back to gothic rock, then garage rock, then dance rock, then neo psychedelia, back to alternative rock, then electronic rock as of their most recent works. Does that sound hard to keep up with? Try being one of the fans who have stuck with them from their independent days. Buck-Tick isn't for everyone, but they have done so many different types of music across all their albums that I find it hard to believe you couldn't find one to enjoy. The fact this band has made this many types of music across 22 albums is just insane. They just make whatever it is they feel like at that point and for that they deserve respect. They aren't big sellers in Japan, but the fact that have only left the top ten on the charts three times since they got their first album up their should just show the staying power they have and the interest in them. They are one of the most influential rock groups in Japan's underground, and they've never truly left the mainstream public's conscious either judging by the fact their last two albums charted at 2 and 3 respectively. If you want a good place to start with Buck-Tick I recommend either doing a full deep dive of their discography, or looking at each album and deciding which one you want to listen to first going off of it's genres, artwork and whatever singles it may have. I also did a Buck-Tick album ranking list on Rate Your Music that you can find here if you want a couple in depth explanations of each album. My personal favorite is "Razzle Dazzle", which is a dance rock album combining pop and dance production and style with rock instrumentation. They do neat things with the synths and their drummer uses electronic drum pads to recreate the sound of the drum machines omni-present in dance music and pop music, but it sounds way more spirited and alive being a real person behind an actual drum kit. I'm also big on both their gothic rock albums, especially their second one "十三階は月光", which unlike their first gothic rock album is actually more inspired by the various developments in Japan's gothic rock scene, including elements of cabaret and neoclassical darkwave, very much inspired by Malice Mizer. Those are just my favorites though. Please go ahead and pick one for yourself that interests you.


Final entry and I saved the best for last, or at least the most interesting. Someone today (as of writing this) told me am I like an anime protagonist in real life, and to that I think that's nothing because I know an actual anime protagonist made real life and that is the visual kei legend Gackt, the living example of the phrase "reality is much stranger than fiction".

Gackt got his start as a drummer for a local house band at a Casino he was an employee at. Then he met a man who told him to take his music career seriously. From there he learned as many instruments as he could and joined gothic rock band Malice Mizer before he left due to clashes with the other members' toxic atmosphere. He got Malice Mizer's contract transferred to as solo contract for him and he quickly became the best selling male solo artist in Japan. The government held a poll and revealed 97 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 60 know who Gackt is making him the most well known male celebrity in Japan, and Gackt has won a monthly gameshow poll for sexiest person in Japan 62 times in a row. Gackt has not only become one of Japan's most famous musicians, but he is a famous actor, playwright, radio drama host and writer, as well as a sex symbol. He was the inspiration for the main protagonist of Final Fantasy 8, he collaborated with Square Enix on Final Fantasy VII Dirge of Cerberus to make the game's villain based directly on himself even voicing him and using his likeness, personality and interests as the basis for the character. There is also rampant rumors in Japan that Gackt was the main inspiration for the protagonist from Persona 5. No I am not making any of this up. He was Japan's biggest poker champion at one point, he claimed to be a 500 year old vampire born in Europe and when it started being accepted as fact and reported as real he had to dox his actual birth information to keep his good public image in tact. Gackt was saved from drowning by the desire to have sex at least one more time before he died, he claims the number of women he slept with is in the three figure range, but people close to him claim it's in the four figure range, Gackt is a blackbelt in Taekwondo, he's fluent in five languages and is huge nerd and fan when it comes to the Gundam franchise. Gackt is the most larger than life celebrity you will ever find and I will fight you on that point. Now on to his music. Gackt is considered in Japan as the master of the concept album. His music is a mix of visual kei, neo-proggressive rock, hard rock and J-pop. All this comes together in the form of his many concept albums. He has a set of albums about the story of a vampire and his journeys, and two albums telling the story of experimental nazi cyborgs sending people to extermination camps and the friendship of two Japanese soldiers working with the Nazi military and discovering the cyborgs. Gackt's albums get a pretty bad rep here in America for their weirdness and the weirdness of the man making them, but as someone who speaks Japanese pretty well I can safely tell you that Gackt's delivery and presentation of the stories presented in his albums is beautiful. His music may be a bit challenging to the untrained ear, especially with the language barrier, but Gackt is the master of the concept album and has earned his status as Japan's biggest selling male solo artist. Where to start with Gackt's discography is a tough question. I recommend you either listen to his debut album Mars, the Moon saga (a set of four albums he did about vampires), or the two albums he did set in world war 2 Re:Birth and Re:Born. Just make sure you listen to the concept albums in the order intended so you can somewhat follow the stories presented.


Well that was my sort of guide, you don't need to check out all eight or most of these, but I hope you enjoy one and that this list encourages you to go on and find more bands and artists from the country. There was a few bands I considered for this list like TM Network, but they are too pop music for this list and I went over them in my article on Tetsuya Komuro. Anyways I best be getting to bed, hope you enjoyed this week's article.

"Gundam Zeta" versus "Gundam Zeta: A New Translation", or is this a remaster or ruining a masterpiece?

My article I originally planned to publish today was getting too big and taking too long, but thankfully next Saturday's article is shorter, so I finished the rough draft in an hour and decided to publish it today instead.


Let me give you a list of things I love most in the world in order of most loved to least loved.

1. My family
2. Gundam Zeta
3. My friends
4. Music
5. The Gundam franchise it-self

If you couldn't already tell by the headline I am going to be talking about thing number 2, more specifically it's remaster. So let me get started with some background on what I'll be talking about and the single highest grossing anime and sci-fi series in Japan, which continues to make billions of dollars in model kit sales annually. 

edit from 2024: This was a poorly researched article I wrote to meet a deadline while sleep deprived. This article is not very accurate. Take everything here with a grain of salt, as most of this is a rant piece.

                                               

Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta was written as the sequel to the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. The original series aired in 1979 and was a flop on release because it was the first mecha anime to really be driven by it's strong characters and the gripping stories surrounding them, so it was cancelled after only a few episodes, only getting put back on air when the toys became a huge hit. Gundam Zeta was made 6 years after the original series in 1985. Tomino was pressured to make it by production company Sunrise. Tomino wanted to write the show with a cast of mostly teenage characters with hopes of attracting younger viewers, but while writing he came down with crippling depression, which would plague him for the next several years. Tomino grew to dread writing the series, as he thought everything should have ended with the original series and he started loathing the series and blaming it for so many of the hardships and mental issues he faced at the time. He started taking his frustration out on the show itself, and more specifically it's characters. He refused to grant any of it's characters happiness and intentionally wrote the show to make them squirm, suffer and face trauma because it was the only way he felt like he could exercise his depression. (and this was all a decade before Evangellion) The show became an immense hit, with the show being nominated by the Animage Grand Prix awards for favorite series by fan votes. The character of Four Murasame won best female character by fan votes, and her final episode in the series "Forever Four" won best episode of the year by fan votes. However the viewers started calling Tomino "Kill em All Tomino" because of how high the body count in the show was and how dark it was. Tomino continued writing new Gundam media, but started getting more restrictions from sunrise. He had written an entire series planned to be the fourth Gundam series at that point, but he was forced to make it a movie, so he had to cram the entire first quarter of the show into a movie and scrap the rest. (which he later turned into a series of manga and novels) He would later leave Sunrise after making an actual 4th Gundam series due to mental health issues becoming too serious and he was tired of working under restrictions. Toy company Ban-Dai would then buy Sunrise so they could have control over the Gundam series. Their series Gundam Seed would come out in the early 2000s and repopularize Gundam to a peak in popularity it hadn't seen since Zeta and it's sequel show ZZ. So for it's 25th anniversary and the then soon coming 20th anniversary of Zeta, Sunrise and Tomino collaborated on a trilogy of compilation films compiling Zeta's episodes, with roughly 10-20 percent of the stuff in these being newly animated, adding new scenes as well as completely changing existing scenes. This was because Tomino wanted to change things to fix what he thought were issues with the show or things he regretted doing because he was in a very negative headspace when writing it. In addition to this SOME (I need to clarify that it was only some) of the footage used for the movie was digitally touched up and remastered to look cleaner, more modern and more vibrant. The films came out and were met with a mixed reception and for good reason.

So first I'm going to talk about the good of the remaster and then talk about the bad after. I will not spoil anything of importance in Gundam Zeta, but I will spoil many of the changes made in A New Translation because I don't think you should ever watch this overall the original. 

So let's start with the good. The remastered and touched up stuff looks great, Zeta has never looked better. The newly animated stuff is gorgeous, and fits in really well while also looking great. The rights to the show's theme music (the specific recordings used in the opening and credits) are out of Ban-Dai's copyright control beyond their inclusion in the original version of the series, meaning they couldn't be used here. So in exchange the theme music for each film features a new composition by Japan's biggest selling male solo artist and sex symbol: Gackt, who himself is a lifelong Gundam fan and has opened concerts with a chant uttered by the fascist regime from the original series. All of Gackt's soundtrack contributions are absolute bangers, with "Metamorphoze" and "Love Letter" beyond their soundtrack inclusion being some of his most recognizable and beloved songs, while "Metamorphoze" is also remembered as one of the most iconic Gundam themes to have been made since Ban-Dai took over the series. The new scenes added to in to the films are mostly great, and nice inclusions.

I do not want to be negative, but it is a very bad sign when half of the paragraph of all the things I could think of praising this trilogy was all about Gackt and his banger soundtrack he put together for this project. That's because there is a lot of oopsies here, and too many for me to actually talk about. Gundam Zeta is a 50 episode series, with each film compiling about 15 episodes of the series each, meaning there is a total of 5 episodes worth of stuff with zero representation, but it gets worse. I'll start small. Only some of the animation was remastered, so whenever you see unremastered animation it just looks out of place and bad in comparison. The editing is also a downgrade compared to the editing in the original series. The definitive way to watch the very first original Gundam series is the compilation films, despite them cutting out plot points and characters like M'Quve. It is a very proper and well done shortening of the entire series. These films do the same thing in cutting characters, plot points, arcs, etc, all in the name of making a more concise story for film. However this doesn't work the same way becaus Zeta is a faster paced show than the original series. Unlike that show nearly every episode of Zeta served a greator purpose towards the narrative, building the world or developing it's characters, even the rare few episodes that seemed like filler. The original series had episodes like this, my favorite being the one where the main character Amuro needs to manually find and defuse a series of sticky bombs planted on the Gundam by enemy grunts in under an hour and he earns the enemy's respect by the end, wich is an example of a good filler episode. However there are many episodes there that just pad out the series like the one where they go looking for salt. There is more much more fat to trim with that series than in Zeta. They also chose to leave in some things that make no sense to leave in because they serve no purpose without some of the things they cut. Let me list some examples.


One example is the character Rosamia Badam. She appeared in a dogfight with the main characters when they reached earth, but she ejected her seat when she lost. She is later seen in a hanger docking bay showing us she was saved. We see her later in the series where she is given a character arc that is left seemingly unfinished until she shows up near the end of the series. In A New Translation we see her eject after losing the dogfight, and then we never see her again. What was the point in wasting time including this part if you are going to cut all of the scenes that establish her as an actual character and where she does stuff of importance? The ending of Zeta is very powerful as we see all the characters who's lives were positively changed by the main character Kamille Bidan assist in one final moment during the final battle. Lila Milla Rira was a Lieutenant in the Federation who's entire outlook was changed by Kamille and her beliefs changed by him in her final moments. She was a mentor to Kamille's rival Jerrid Messa and her death early on in the series was a primary motivation for Jerrid. It left Jerrid hating Kamille and began this cycle of blaming him for all of his comrades dying. Jerrid throws away his dream of leading the military branch he is in, and instead to kill Kamille, all the while ignorant of the fact that he killed people close to Kamille first. His burning hatred for him which defined his character in the second half of the series and motivated him, all started with Lila's death. In a new translation Lila dies quite a bit later timeline wise and without ever having interacted in person with Kamille, making her appear in spirit to help Kamille in the end stupid when they never interacted face to face or anything like that. On top of that it messes up Jerrid's arc and progression, making him seem like a violent man baby with no real character or personality beyond his inability to take accountability for his actions. One of the main characters feels neglected by the other characters, and throughout the series we see this happen more and more as it progresses until eventually they join the series main antagonist, a seducer named Paptimus Cirroco, and then during the final battle they are forced to face the main characters in a very powerful moment where they are faced with the consequences of their actions. This whole thing feels underdone and stupid in A New Translation because we barely see this development much. The character of Katz Koboyahsi (previously a minor character in the original Gundam series from 1979) is given an arc throughout the series and we see him progress and grow as a character, and this growth is even what allows him to redeem one of the antagonists. However his arc and interactions with said antagonist he redeems are focused on much less, removing the impact of his redeeming them. Yazan Gabel is a legendary pilot and one of the most dangerous villains seen in Zeta, even going on to being one of the two primary antagonists in the first several episodes of the sequel series ZZ, making him even more important. However his role in A New Translation is much smaller so we don't see him do much. However he is the one to betray and kill another main antagonist instead of a different character who did it in the original series, and they didn't really give him much reason or motive to do so, making it just a questionable thing to do at best. Zeta introduced what many consider the best Gundam villain behind the obvious best Char Aznable, that being Haman Karn. She is a secondary villain given a good bit of focus in the series who manipulates and does anything to try and do what she thinks will be the best outcome. One of the most cunning, smart and cutthroat of all the villains in the entire franchise. She serves as the main villain of the sequel series Gundam ZZ where she is developed into a very awesome character and proves herself as a villain and compelling antagonist. However A New Translation was given a happy ending that wraps things up nicely. Zeta ended with our heroes having all suffered immeasurable losses and at their lowest point yet, which we follow up on in the sequel series ZZ. A New Translation was given a happier ending with Kamille's story finshed and wrapped up in a nice little bow, which basically removes the possibility of the events of Gundam ZZ happening, which is cool but one teensy little problem. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO HAMAN. FOR ALL WE KNOW SHE IS ACTIVELY GATHERING HER RESERVE FORCES AT AXIS TO KILL EVERYONE IN A SECOND WAVE BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T TAKE ANYTHING CLOSE TO HER FULL FORCES WITH HER TO THE FINAL BATTLE. Gundam ZZ just straight up doesn't happen and the ending is treated as happy despite the very real and likely possibility that they are fucked and that Haman is going to kill them with superior numbers by the next day.

I wanted to get that all of my chest in one paragraph because my next one is going to be very passionate, and that is how they changed Four's arc.

Anybody who knows me knows that I have a pretty intense obsession with Four (she is my profile photo on literally everything including Blogspot and I dye my hair the same color as her's) and she is doubtlessly my favorite character in all of fiction. Four is a character I love because her story and how she got to where she is resemble mine in many ways, only if I had gone down a bit of a different path. The novel explaining her story leading up to the events of Zeta only show this further. Four is an antagonist who has nobody. No family, no friends, nobody to love her, and she doesn't even have any memories, let alone a name. The villainous organization Titans broke her mind to give her an immense power, that being those of a powerful newtype. They want to exploit the power of newtypes for their own gain in the Gryps war, and because they are funded by the government and Four has nobody to care about her it's just seen as okay by the military personal who are around her. Four is so dehumanized that they named her Four because she forgot her own name among all her other memories in the horrific experiments done to her and nobody could be bothered to keep a record of any of this, more so just focusing on how they can turn this orphaned girl into a weapon. The point of Four is that she is not only a character for Kamille to care about who is on the other side of the war, but an example of how horrible the Titans are that they did this to a poor child and raised her as nothing more than a weapon, not even seeing her as a human being, but an investment. Kamille and Four meet without knowing they are enemies, and Kamille is the first person Four met who treated her like a person. She betrays orders to save him and then she is shot by her commanding officer for disobeying orders, and we don't see her again until we get the conclusion to her arc upon Kamille's return to earth. There Jerrid's own hatred for Kamille leads to the reckless loss of life on all sides and even Kamille starts hating Jerrid too. All the while Kamille and Four accept their love for each-other and Kamille promises to set her free from the hell she is living. Four and Kamille are the first newtypes to share an understanding with each-other on a cosmic level, which is a big thing because that would become a big part of the series for the next couple instalments after Zeta including Lalah Sune doing connecting Char and Amuro in a later piece of media in the franchise. We also learn other things like the damage to Four's brain from the experiments is so severe she needs medicine to hold back crippling seizures she regularly faces. Four's arc was one of the strongest parts of the series as indicated by the fact that her final episode was an award winning episode. So how did they go about adapting Four's critically acclaimed story arc? Well for starters Kamille's return to earth to take part in the raid on a major Titans base was cut completely, so all the events there where he reunites with Four don't happen. She tells Kamille to go where he needs to and to leave her (not too different from the show) but is instead shot in the head and killed by her commanding officer, and we never see her again. Basically they condensed her arc heavily, but to compensate they expanded upon her original meeting and interactions with Kamille in Hongkong. They handled condensing it better than every other arc here, but it's impact on the greater story and it's significance and meaning are severely weakened compared to before. It hurts me a bit to see so much of it missing and chopped up, but at least it wasn't completely ruined. However doing this dampens the impact and legacy of one of Gundam's strongest and most compelling female characters, and it seriously removes a major moment of Kamille's growth, including the very things that lead him to his own happy ending later in the original Gundam timeline. While it's not totally ruined, changing this drastically still hurts other aspects of the larger story in many ways and it's just bad for doing so.

A New Translation is a great companion piece to Zeta and expands on things in new and interesting ways we didn't see in the original, as well as offering new perspectives and takes on things, but overall it's a mess that does a disservice to the original series and it's story. It leaves more questions than it answers and removes so many emotional moments and stories from the original series in an attempt to make it more light hearted and accessible. They cut too much of importance and the trilogy is paced poorly, with the many sections where you see unremastered animation being really jarring and distracting at points. If you like Zeta than check this out, but do not watch this over the original, whatever you do or you will probably end up hating the objective peak of the Gundam series.

The history of my frustrations with Tetsuya "TK" Komuro and my admiration towards him and his projects, or me rambling about TM Network and more while getting progressively more frustrated as I type this out

Tetsuya Komuro, known by some as the stage name he adopted at the turn of the century "TK". (drinking game, take a drink of your beverage of choice every time I say "TK".) This man is one of the biggest trail blazers in all of Japanese music, his influence is everywhere in Japan and unescapable. Kanye West wishes he sold as many records as TK. TK has sold a total of 213 million records combining singles he wrote, produced and/or played on, and albums he produced and/or played on. This is all as of 2016, which was the most recent record I could find, for all I know in the six years between me writing this and that information's publishing he may have sold a few million more. It's absurd to talk about a man as just casually moving a million albums, especially in the era of streaming, but you have to remember Japan is one of the biggest markets for physical media, streaming isn't the huge deal over there that it is in America, and TK is an icon. TK was important in helping evolve the then popular Japanese home grown popular music scene of Kayōkyoku and evolving it into what we now know as J-pop. I adore his music and production with all my heart, but I am so sick of this man's BS.

                                                     

Some background on TK I suppose is needed before I explain my points, the aforementioned BS, albums I love, things I love about his music, and more. TK started out as a keyboard and piano player, with his first documented song ever being an unfinished piece he wrote entirely with keyboards called "You Can Find". He would later join a Japanese power pop band called "Speedway" as a keyboardist. After making a few singles with the band in the span of a few months. he would leave to pursue other work. He created a demo tape of 3 songs and he played it for some friends. They all agreed it was really good and he should find some people to play them as a full band. TK knew of some talented musicians, those being the ones in "Speedway" and so he approached Speedway vocalist Takashi Utsunomiya and Speedway guitarist Naoto Kine about forming a new band together, reasoning that the drums and bass could be recreated digitally or with session musicians. After taking part in the Coca Cola Fresh Sounds competition they would win and their band TM Network would get signed to the Japanese branch of Epic Records. (Epic is one of the world's biggest record labels) They would soon release their first album "Rainbow Rainbow" in 1984. Now where TK and the other members of Speedway differed greatly was musical influences. They were all inspired by western acts like The Cars and TK was inspired heavily by Kayōkyoku and its offshoots that emerged early into the eighties. Speedway is a mix of Naoto Kine's western Power Pop influences (he did write 3 songs, two of which are really good) and TK's interest in Techno Kayō and other electronic music subgenres newly emerging in Japan at the time. Kine and Utsunomiya were close friends since Elementary school, and so they have a close nit musical connection that shines on some of Kine's compositions like Christopher. TK's songs have this slick electronic sound that is just super retro and nostalgic sounding, even on the aforementioned "Christopher" his synths carry this sound. It's a very great album, where just about every song is fun and catchy. A very fun and enjoyable debut, and I love some of these songs dearly. "Christopher", "Caribbeana High", "1974" and "Take it to the Lucky". It's a great mix of power pop and Techno Kayō, giving it a western sound with a distinctly Japanese and cheerful sensibility and attitude that was common in Japan's music during the eighties. Seriously eighties Japanese pop sub genres comprise some of the happiest music to ever exist.

This album would be followed up by the even better "Childhood's End". It starts with the title track, an atmospheric percussion instrumental that fades into the upbeat keyboard driven "Accident". The cheerful and Japanese sensibilities and attitude of the last album with the usual western influences are still present, but it sounds more mature and the use of session musicians gives the music a more organic and full sound that "Rainbow Rainbow" lacked. However these session musicians is where some of my frustrations start. Kine's songs on the album prove to be some of the best, his co-write with Tetsuya Komuro "Eien no Passport" is one of my favorite TM Network songs, but that is the only new song Kine wrote for this album. TK has this idea of perfection he strives for in all of his works. His perfectionist mindset is part of what makes TM Network so great, but it means doing anything to do what he feels best benefit his vision for whatever project he is working on. Because of this Kine's mostly doing backing vocals on the album and acoustic guitar, he does no electric guitar, with session musicians filling that role instead, and some of the acoustic guitar isn't even played by him. Kine has a preference for the acoustic guitar over the electric guitar, but still it's annoying that he is much less involved. You can't totally fault TK though, the album is great. "Accident" is one of the band's most iconic songs and guest writer Goro Matsui killed it on the songwriting front when he wrote this with TK, I love it. Kine's other two songwriting contributions are old Speedway songs completely reworked by TK with new lyrics and arrangements giving them little in common with the originals, the first one: "Sayonara no Junbi" is good, but the second one: "Fantastic Vison" is great and became very well known when it was released as the B-side to "Accident". Nice to know Kine contributed two of the best songs here. "Faire La Vise" is great, especially the piano sections and vocals, surely some of TK's best production on this album. While uncredited, Kine came up with the outro of the song and suggested it to TK. The aforementioned "Eien no Passport" is one of my favorite TM Network songs and serves as a beautiful low energy song with several nice touches like the lovely synth melodies underlying the song and the little percussive fills during the pre chorus. Utsunomiya really shines, "8 Gatsu No Nagai Yoru" is a fun upbeat song with lots of guitar adding a rock edge to an otherwise low energy yet catchy pop song. "Time" is a wonderful ballad that goes super underappreciated now that TK has written dozens of more famous ballads. I quite like it since it feels nice and quaint compared to a lot of his other ballads he would writer later after getting more famous. It and "8 Gatsu no Nagai Yoru" feature contributions from legendary Japanese lyricist Noriko Miura, adding a unique flavor to both songs that I love. "Dragon the Festival" is considered by most to be the best song here, and that's probably correct. It's a beautiful piece of proggressive pop with lots of influences from Italo-disco and the HI-NRG music scene in Europe, with Komuro's influences from Techno Kayō and city pop showing themselves very clearly here. While long, it being endlessly catchy makes up for that as it makes good use of its runtime. Utusunomiya made his songwriting debut contributing lyrics to the group lyric writing effort on "Innocent Boy", which is a very good song. Album closer "Ai wo Sonomama Ni" is a good song that closes eveyrthing out very nicely. With the album like this TK clearly made the great album he set out to do. It was actually doing TM Network where TK was cutting his teeth as a producer before going on to be a big name producer. The album was a decent success, reaching 40 on the Oricon charts and moving the band further towards success

Left to right Naoto Kine, Takashi Utsunomiya and Tetsuya "TK" Komuro

Next was the Twinkle Night EP, two new songs and the songs TK did for the Vampire Hunter D soundtrack. The EP has a much more muffled and loud production compared to the previous two albums. This obvious from the moment it opens with the EP's single: "Your Song", a song written by Kine and TK. "Your Song" is still an outstanding song regardless of the rougher production. The EP version is actually shorter and omits the part where an orchestra and choir would play Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The song is endlessly catchy and I love the melodies of it. This is perhaps one of the most Japanese sounding early TM Network songs and it is wonderful. Then it has the "Vampire Hunter D suite", which is a suit of TK's Vampire Hunter D soundtrack songs compiled to flow together as one longform composition. "Twinkle Night" is a fun lower energy song with a very cool sound with lovely melodies. Lastly is another Kine and TK cowrite "Electric Prophet" which was a staple of the band's concerts early in their cqreer and has become a fan favorite since with the nickname "Elepro". It is a very pleasant and slow song that is nearly 9 minutes. It doesn't make the best use of its runtime, but builds excellently as it continues, sounding very triumphant by the end. This EP was also the first appearance of regular TM Network session guitarist Kenji Kitajima. Here TK started experimenting more, and would continue this with TM Network's third album "Gorilla".

The album's most famous song (aside from hit single "Come On Let's Dance") "Passenger" is most remembered not only for being an absolute banger, but also because most of the backing vocals utilize rapping, and there is an entire rap verse near the end of the song sung entirely in English and performed by British DJ collective The Wild Bunch. It is a very catchy song, with the female backing vocals in the chorus contrasting the rapping in the backing vocals between verses.  It is compositionally simple, but has the many layers found in TK's works that give them the distinct and complex sound that make up these simple compositions.  The album further expanded the sound and Kine and Komuro collaborated more and gave us another classic that wasn't a single "Saint Rain". It's repetitive, but the vocals and lyrics really add a depth to it. The way the song's arrangement gets busier and more full with each verse, and that chorus too. This is all without mentioning the saxophone solo. The album opener is a keyboard and vocal based intro track written by Kine and TK that leads into "Nervous". Nervous is a fun and energetic composition to really get the album going. Though the energetic and fun opening and chorus are in contrast to these fun and more low key verses. The chorus, the horns and synths just make this song so fun like I could dance to it effortlessly if prompted to. TK said this song was an attempt to copy Led Zeppelin's style of heavy riffs and sounds and replicate it on keyboard. Utsunomiya said this song was also important in defining his vocal style, incorporating elements of dance music and R&B with a rhythmic approach to singing while carrying on many of his classic Japanese vocal influences. "Confession" is a very Japanese sounding and of its time ballad written by Kine. Still I have a soft spot for it. The vocals and synths are what do it for me, but Kine's acoustic guitar on here is that extra something that completes it. I love "You Can Dance" and wish it was more popular. The wild and loud synths and the very catchy and fast verses with Utsunomiya's vocals all build up to very fun chorus. You thought "Nervous" was danceable, this song gives compulsive feeling to move. "I Want TV" was written to be the lead single off the album, but never ended up being released as such. That is a shame because it is catchy and has a strong hook and wonderful synth melodies. "Come On Let's Dance" was a big hit for the band and was credited with being one of the first songs to bring electronic and dance sounds to the Japanese mainstream. I've been overexposed to it and I'm not the biggest fan of the chorus and melodies, but it's a great song none the less. "Girl" was the other single and I love it. So simple, but with a great chorus. Then it ends with the Kine's ballad "Sad Emotion", where he was instructed to write a song without the distinctly Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic, so on the last day of recording Kine submitted this very simple ballad. TK and producer Yoji Kosaka snapped their fingers together to make the beat, and Utsunomiya in one shot did his vocals. It's a beautiful yet simple ballad to close out the album. The album was a make or break moment for them, as the lable saught to terminate their contract once the album was completed, but decided not to when it sold 700 thousand copies and reached 15 on the Oricon charts. 

Following this they made "Self Control", which TK envisioned as a greatest hits album made up entirely of new songs combining the sounds of "Gorilla" and "Rainbow Rainbow", leading to "Self Control", which has a huge leap for not just the band, but Techno Kayō as a whole. This kind of music was unheard of at the time in Japan yet was still distinctly Japanese in sound and development, so TK coined the term "Fanks" as a way of describing this new musical evolution and it's sound, and kind of hoped it would help TM Network gain a reputation as more than a Kayōkyoku band and into something all their own. The album has so many songs that became classics like "Don't Let Me Cry", a catchy dance music type song with deceptively sad lyrics and further showing the incorporation of more dance music elements in their music. TK wanted to challenge himself and write a song where the bass line was the most prominent sound, and Utsunomiya loved the song so much he advocated for it to be the lead single, and while he failed at that, the song's fame and legacy is proof he was right about the song's greatness. "Self Control" is one of the band's most iconic songs and is endlessly catchy and lovely. Kine's vocals are the real X factor here, as he brings the song to life with his voice and delivery while Kine has a prominent spot singing in the chorus. Strangely the album uses a different vocal take than the single version. You can feel the more dance oriented sound and arrangement from the brief yet awesome intro track that opens the album "Bang the Gong". The recording of the album was actually finished ahead which lead to TK decided to use the extra days in the studio to bang out this track in an improvisation synths and all three members adding random samples. Then it  leads into a joint writing effort between Kine and TK, that being "Maria Club", named for a recently opened disco TK played at. TK was asked to write a disco song. Kine wrote the melody and TK wrote the rest of the song, trying again to write his own Led Zeppelin type guitar riffs but for his keyboards, which can be heard in the verses wonderfully. Another one of my favorite TM Network songs. "All Right All Night (No Tears No Blood)" is just wonderful. the synth horns on this song are amazing and the vocals are great. The melody here is just infectious and the synths are outstanding. "Fighting" was originally envisioned as an AOR song until the lyrics came in with a more anti war message and Utsunomiya tried singing differently, which lead to a change in atmosphere when they were very impressed with his performance, leading to the song being slower and lower energy. While people thought it should be a single, it only became a B-side. "Time Passed Me By" is a neat ballad written by Kine. TK told Kine to write a song like "Yesterday" by the Beatles. Kine repeated the melody and thought about the chord progression. Kine suggested making his acoustic be the driving force in the song, then TK came up with the idea to add synths strings similar to how the Beatles used orchestration. Utsunomiya found it simpler than the other songs and had a hard time figuring out how he should sing it compared to the others, but I'm glad he figured it out. The harmonies on this song make it beautiful and simple compared to the others, but just as wonderful. Kine and TK's cowrite "Spanish Blue" is my favorite song here behind "Don't Let Me Cry" and "Maria Club". TK wrote the song during the Gorilla sessions, and Kine wrote the vocal melodies for it. When TK rearranged the song for this album Kine added an outro to it and that's how we got the infectiously catchy chorus. It was considered as a single, but lost out, so it lives here in obscurity "Fool on the Planet" traces it's origins back to "Rainbow Rainbow" when Kine kept trying to write a song in 6/8, but TK kept telling him it was too early. Kine was finally given the go ahead, and he gave us one of his most famous ballads. The neat team signature combined with the slow and lovely instrumentation is nice. The lyrics and vocals are beautiful, and the sax solo is sexy and the icing on the cake. Then it ends with one of TK's funkiest pieces "Here, There & Everywhere". TK wrote it in the early seventies while in middle school and had originally given it to a girl he knew. He kept holding it back from TM Network albums for being too pleasant, sweet and bubblegummy. So Utusnomiya suggested they do it on this album and layer multiple vocal tracks on top of each other to make a more layered and complex sound. This coupled with a sexy sax gave the song a neat vibe while still keeping that pleasant atmosphere that made Utsunomiya swear by the song in the first place. Perfect closer. 

TK would later work on the soundtrack to the City Hunter anime, and from there would make the ending theme with TM Network. The song "Get Wild" was written to be a quick paced song capturing the sound and feel of urban Japan. City Hunter was described to the band as an urban drama, and the song must reflect that. So TK and TM Network's lyricist Mitsuko Komuro (no relation to TK) wrote the song together quickly and put it together. The song was seen as something special by everyone involved and it was showered in praise. They quieted down the intro a bit to focus more on the rest of the song, and when it was released it was a huge hit. A big part of it was the explosive popularity of City Hunter, but the song itself ended up becoming one of the biggest hit songs in the history of Japanese music and the song TM Network is most associated with.

With this explosion of popularity even more expectations were put on the band and TK went to America to help record the new album with some great guest musicians. The resulting album Humansystem is my second favorite of their classic era. I normally love Kine's compositions and they are usually favorites of mine, but here TK's songwriting is at it's best with album opener "Children of the New Century". TK said this song was inspired by Michael Jackson's album "Bad", but that he still wanted it to be distinctly TM Network. This like the rest of the album uses actual drummers and bass players over digital stuff like a sequencer and drum machine. Tetsuo Sakurai from Japanese Jazz fusion band Casiopea played bass here and his ass is just so good here. It also features drums from Steve Fellone from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers on drums. Only song here I am not huge on is "Kiss You (More Rock)", which TK envisioned as a Power Station (British pop rock supergroup) type song. It's good, but I have been over exposed to this song and I'm tired of seeing it in the band's live setlists and compilations when I am not huge on it, especially when it's the single version. The album version features more guitar and a more rock oriented arrangement hence the name. While I like it better, I'm still not huge on the song. Totally redeemed because after that is "Be Together", a criminally catchy and fun song that shows all the strengths of this band in spades. The melodies here are great, and the song is just fun. Utsunomiya's vocals complimented beautifully by the synths just make this song what it is. The guitar solo in the middle played by B'z guitarist Tak Matusomoto is short and sweet, but wonderful. It then leads into a cool part where TK plays this wonderful melody on the keyboards that is just great. TK said this song was in response to "B Blue" by BOØWY, who had at the time become the biggest rock band in Japan, he wanted to write a song like that with the energy of The Police and the vibe of Rebecca which was another Japanese band from the same scene as TM Network. The end result was the album's third single and one of my favorite TM Network songs. The band argued about the title track, saying it should be a flashy dance song like Gorilla and Self Control, but TK argued that the band needed to show they had matured and had more depth to them now, leading to the beautiful song we got in it's place. A Beautiful lowkey yet wonderful pop song full of depth and skilled playing and songwriting. This and the next feature Duran Duran and Missing Persons guitarist Warren Cuccurullo. "Telephone Line" was inspired by the Electric Light Orchestra song of the same name. Kine added a Beatles type melody to his demo and included Beatles like backing vocals and harmonies, giving it the lush feel it has. It's a very nice albeit sappy ballad, one that Warren struggled with the bars and chord progression for when trying to figure out what to do for the song and his guitar solo. "Leprechaun Christmas" was inspired by the band recording most of the album in LA. LA being a coastal American city it doesn't snow there, and he longed for the feeling of a Christmas in Japan, hence the weird name. TL asked Kine to write the song, so Kine did so and TK wrote a chorus for it and had their lyricist Mitsuko Komuro write lyrics to fit. The song is very much a Christmas in July type song, but it's great. The chorus is catchy and the song is fun and groovy. This was the last song to feature Warren, but he kills it here. "Fallin' Angel" is very unique for a Kine composition. He had wanted to write a fast paced composition and TK instructed him to just worry about the instrumental. When he finished TK made the backing track and Kine come back to write the vocal melody, leading to a weird vocal melody that Kine wouldn't have come up with otherwise, no longer worrying about writing it and the song at the same time. It's just a fun and energetic track I can't not love. Utsunomiya knocked it out of the park in his delivery as always. "Resistance" is one of the band's biggest songs and like the title track from "Self Control" they are synonymous with this song. TK had written it as a ballad, but felt the album had too many of those, so he added drums to the song and quickened up the tempo of the song while recording it. This lead to the song having a beautifully gentle and optimistic tone with the lyrics and verses, but the song itself being energetic and distinct. The interesting structure of the song too also makes it distinct and interesting. I am plain in love with this song. "Come Back to Asia" was written when Kine longed to return to Japan while recording the album in America over a two month period. He wanted to write a song that sounded distinctly Japanese, but he wanted the song to be from the perspective of being in America, leading to it's weird and unique sound. TK's synthesizer is on fire here in the best way possible. I love this song as a sort of weird ballad about longing for home. "Dawn Valley" is a neat instrumental TK made as a live piano improvisation. He wanted to spread this kind of sound to the youth of Japan since TM Network was popular among teens and young adults and he wanted to share this kind of sound with them. Fames Jazz session musician Jerry Hay played flugelhorn on this song without having played on or heard the rest of the album, choosing to imagine what the album would sound like from the name and the piano piece he heard. He had never worked with a big Japanese artist before but said that he wondered about Japanese music and had high high hopes for the song. It's a beautiful instrumental, I just love it. "This Night" is another Christmas song, this one being more wintery themed. I love this song and think it is great. A wonderful ballad to close out the album after "Dawn Valley" while also giving TK a chance to showcase different synthesizer sounds not used on the album without disrupting the song's gentle flow. Humansystem is an almost perfect album to me, I was looking for something to gripe about with this album while writing this and I couldn't find any, barring what I said about "Kiss You". Where TM Network originally won me over was their next album and the first of theirs I've heard.

I'm a huge Gundam fan, having got into it in middle school after catching "0083: Stardust Memory" on Toonami as my introduction to the series, and the movie "Mobile Suit Gundam Char's Counterattack" has a song by TM Network that was written to not only show a more thoughtful and serious side of the band, but also represent the message of Gundam perfectly. That song was "Beyond the Time", which was a song that totally blew me away when I heard it. I went out on Ebay to buy the album it was on: "Carol 1991 - A Day in the Girl's Life" which is the band's peak.

                                          

"Beyond the Time" has a longer version on the album which has real drums instead of a machine, and a proper ending instead of a fade out after the chorus. In my mind Carol is a perfect album, having originated by TK wanting to try and evolve TM Network further free of much of any outside influence, and his idea to really showcase the band. He abandoned his dense and layered production style in favor of as he put it; one or two layers that sound very full and complete. The result lead to less manipulation and more natural songs built off of the in studio performance. Kine wrote the "Carol a Day in the Girl's Life Story" as an idea, which TK liked and worked into musical form with him, resulting in the four part Carol suite written by TK, two songs written by Kine and an additional written by TK all telling the story, plus all their soundtrack singles released in the past year as insurance incase this move to a more progressive sound was too much for audiences and none of the songs caught on, and a few other songs written during the same sessions as the Carol songs. However in the end we got a truly perfect album, showcasing the band at their best. The album opens with the first part of the Carol suite: "A Day in the Girl's Life". It opens with a monologue and Belva Haney singing the light motif before getting into the full song. Utsunomiya sings this excellently and the song itself is just amazing, a great opener to set the tone. It transitions to part two of the suite "Carol's Theme part I", which is a beautiful ballad carrying over aspects of the previous piece. The vocals, lyrics, piano and everything is just amazing. The song is much more stripped down than the beginning of the suit to give great emotional emphasis on the lyrics and tone of this piece. Then Kine's song "Chase in Labyrinth" comes in as this super fun and catchy song breaking up the sweet to carry on the story wonderfully. It's fun and has this quick pace and energy to it that brings the listener right back in the mood. After that is another Kine song called "Gia Corm Fillippo Dia (Devil's Carnival)" which aside from carrying on the story is a unique song. Kine tried to combine samba with the band's electronic sound, leading to one of the most interesting TM Network songs ever, I just love it to pieces. Then the story stops. When it does we get "Come On Everybody" which was the album's lead single and it is a fun song carrying TM Network's dancepop roots with a very catchy chorus and strong hook. "Beyond the Time" is a beautiful song carrying the message of Humnity repeating it's mistakes, the hope for life beyond the stars and a reaching a true understanding. All of which are themes very common in Gundam's Universal Century, which makes sense considering this was the theme to "Mobile Suit Gundam Char's Counterattack". This song presents those themes beautifully in the song with wonderful lyrics and being one of the best songs by this band. The build up in this song is incredible and the performance from everyone is on point. It builds to this beautiful chorus almost three minutes in and you think the song will end and it does, only come back to a bridge section leading into another chorus. This bridge section is just gorgeous, while then leading us to a chorus with a fade out. Following this is "Seven Days War" the theme to the movie of the same name. The version here cuts a lot of the big production of the original and some of these backing vocals all in favor of making this album version a more intimate version with a 4 piece band set up of just guitar, drums, bass and keyboards. The song sounds better like this and is nice, much better. "Your the Best" is a fun upbeat song where TK delegated each part of the arrangement to one of the band members, giving an otherwise alright song a very interesting and ecelctic sound, especially with the percussion. "Winter Comes Around" is a beloved ballad, even if it remains a deep cut the band doesn't play live. It's everything good about Kine's ballads and then some, the vocals and instrumentation are just beautiful. The story of Caol starts back up again with the third part of the Carol suite "In the Forest", which is a fun and upbeat track with a quick pace. The song is lush and beautiful, but keeping with the same theme as the rest of the suite. It's adventurous and great. Belva Haney opens up the final part of the suit "Carol's Theme II", where she sings a part in the opening with the same vocal melody as the chorus of "Carol's Theme I". Then Utsunomiya comes in and continues leading into a direction reminiscent of that part, but different. Then the song suddenly goes to a fast and energetic bridge section with a completely different mood, Then it moves to this beautiful and slow part recalling "In the Forest" with the same melody. Once it ends we get to the final part of the suite, the Kine and TK composition "Just One Victory". This song was the other single it was a huge hit for the band The song ends the Carol story nicely and even has part of "Chase in Labyrinth" incorporated into it in the middle of the song. This is a very pleasant song with a nice atmosphere and it's a great track to hear live. The album ends with "Still Love Her", which was the B-side to the last song and the ending theme to "City Hunter 2". I love this song and find it a very sweet closer, with a wonderful atmosphere. I love the melody of this song.

Kine's story captivated audiences and lead to a straight to video anime OVA which proved to be the best selling and most rented anime tape of that year, it's manga sold really well, and Naoto Kine's novelization he wrote himself was a best selling book. Seriously go listen to Carol, language barrier or not it is so good, and Takashi Utsunomiya tried singing all the songs in a way that would allow listeners to feel the emotion and atmosphere with his performance alone incase the story was lost on people, leading to his best performance of his career and one that for me when I first heard it, surpassed the language barrier. Tak Matsumoto from one of the best selling bands of all time: B'z plays most of the electric guitar on the album too, which is awesome. Which version of the album I'd recommend is tough. The original version of the album has a very great track order with my only complaint being that they probably shouldn't have put "Beyond the Time" and "Seven Days War" back to back, the deluxe edition (which is available for streaming alongside the original) has three discs, one being instrumentals, one being the other songs, and the other being all seven songs telling the Carol story in their proper order uninterrupted. I suppose it's all down to if you value listening to the concept part of the album proper and uninterrupted or listening to the entire album proper as TK intended. Seriously though, The Carol Suite is the band's peak at least listen to that. This album was considered a very important step in the development of J-pop, and was when TK dropped the term Fanks as a genre and used it describe the band's fans. This album is just great and is still seen as an important album in Japan's pop culture. The story itself  on the album is pretty cool too.

promotional art for the "Carol a Day in the Girl's Life" anime adaptation. left to right: TK, Carol, Takashi Utsunomoiya, Naoto Kine

Things would get weird for the band though when TK went to heavy metal concerts in America and saw the crowd excited in a way he had never seen before. While Japanese audiences are known for being more quiet and respectful than western audiences, he assumed it was because TM Network was a band that did a lot of electronic stuff and were flag bearers in the emerging J-pop genre, he figured that kind of music didn't get huge reactions from audiences, so the key was to make heavy metal. However TK doesn't take an idea and run with it, he has to make it his own, and this was no different. For the resulting album "Rhythm Red" he changed the band's name to TMN to represent a new era of artistry for the band because TM Network peaked with the Carol album and now as TMN they would try new things, but changing the band's name to TMN was weird. but if changing your band name to abbreviated initials worked for Bachmann Turner Overdrive, it could work for TMN. The album's peak is opening track "Time to Countdown", which TK aimed to make a combination of their new developments in J-pop with thrash metal of bands like Metallica, and it is a truly unique and interesting song with double bass drums and crunchy guitar but the same pop melodies we love TMN for. The rest of the album is basically just TM Network as you know, but with cleaner production and heavy metal influence all over the album, and I use the term loosely because TK's idea of metal was what he heard at the few concerts he attended, he didn't actually listen to any metal albums for research, which is for the best, because this album as a mix "metal" in the loosest quotes possible and the band's new developments in J-pop is great. This does sound like metal as described by someone who doesn't like it or even listen to it. Even the songs with very little electric guitar or "metal" influence like "Rhythm Red" are outstanding groovy songs showing his developing interests in new dance music of the time. Naoto Kine proves a great vocalist on his first of very few lead vocals on a TM Network song with the beautiful acoustic ballad "Looking At You". He wrote another amazing balled in "Tender is the Night" However the hard rocking songs with all the guitar and stuff are amazing, I already mentioned "Time to Countdown" which has earned its status as bonified classic revived constantly for live concerts, but the earworm that is "World's End" is great as heavy yet groovy song with amazing vocals, "Burnin' Street" is so cool and made with the concept of uniting the musical aspects of the 70s, 80s and early 90s into one song, "Reasonless" should have been a single with its focus in cool guitar riffs and its very catchy chorus proving to make it one of Kine's best rock oriented compositions, "Secret Rhythm" sounds like it could have been a song in a Genesis Sonic game with it's combination of disroted electric guitar and synth horns, "Good Morning Yesterday" is a wonderful acoustic ballad which turns into X Japan inspired speed metal in the second half and 69/99 is just an awesome rocker. Also ending on one of the band's best songs "The Point of Lover's Night" is great, an absolutely amazing song. The album version features live drums and live vocals giving it a more raw feel in line with the heavier rock oriented songs, but still giving it the anthemic lush sound of a typical TMN pop song. This is precisely how you should follow-up a monumental peak of your career album, you take its blueprint and put everything into making an out of left field follow-up that doesn't betray the spirit or sound of your past work.

Things get worse from here on out. Back in 1989 Naoto Kine injured himself at the end of the tour for Carol and the band was unable to work. TK wrote 5 songs and was encouraged by Epic records to make a solo album. TK approached Utsunomiya about it and he encouraged him to do the solo album, and to show his appreciation for the support he allowed Utsunomiya to pick one song from this bunch to be turned into a TM Network song, which ended up being "Dive Into Your Body", which would be the last TM Network song before the name change and leading to it not going on a studio album. TK wrote more songs and in 1989 released his first proper solo album "Digitialian is Eating Breakfast", and it's really good aside from one big issue and that is that TK sings the entire album himself, and his vocals are decent at their best, but at their worst they represent everything I hate about a lot of Japanese vocalists. If he did get a proper vocalist the album would be better than a lot of TM Network albums, but instead it's an album I need to be in the right mood for to listen to, which is a damn shame because his production here is solid, and the songwriting is great. He rewrote the TM Network song "Open Your Heart" from Rainbow Rainbow into a new song called "Opera Night", which is an objective upgrade barring his vocals. "Shout", "Hurray for Working Lovers" and "Gravity of Love" are all outstanding songs, especially the latter of the two. "I Want You Back" and "Christmas Chorus" are also great. "Running to the Horizon" (the other song Utsunomiya considered to turn into a TM Network song when offered before choosing "Dive into Your Body") is also great and I feel would have made for an amazing TM Network song. In fact I kind of wish Utusunomiya picked this one instead, but none the less I do love "Dive Into Your Body". I hope TK releases a deluxe edition of this album with an instrumental version of the album, (wouldn't be the first time he's done that) because I would love to use a Vocaloid or Utauloid to redo the vocals here. It's telling that the album's lone instrumental "Winter Dance" (a showcase for TK's awesome synclavier playing) is the best song here. Still if you like TM Network and you aren't as apprehensive about poor vocals as I am, than you would probably really like this album. Like I said, if he hired a real vocalist this could have been an album better than most TM Network albums

                                                

The next TM Network album Expo was made with the idea of being an album focused around the trio and to just have fun rather than make anything great. "Expo" saw Kine playing almost all the guitar, and the band having a super lax and laid back attitude in making an album, leading to a very unique listen among the TM Network discography. The album's renewed focus on the trio just making music together and having fun helps this album stand out, as TK's perfectionist attitude is gone and the band members just focus on making music they want. "We Love the Earth" is a very fun and catchy dance song and a great mood setter and opener. "Love Train" is the album's big single and despite also being a dance song it carries this sense of momentum and epicness in the chorus, and it's downright infections. Who couldn't love "Just Like Paradise" with it's insanely catchy vocal melodies and that beat. "Jean was Lonely" despite also being another solid dance song stands out with some of the effects used and some added drum fills to go with the drum machine beat. The instrumental here stands apart from the others in a great way. "Crazy for You" is a real highlight despite being basically rhythm loops and samples with Takashi Utsunomiya talking to a female fan on the phone dubbed over it, yet it's still great and was a song frequently played live on the tour for this album. They never tried making another sample and loop based song again, but it just makes this song all the better and all the more unique. Takashi Utsunomiya contributes his first sole writing credit with a metal song called "I Hate Folk" which is put in a medley with a folk song written and sung by Naoto Kine called "Tsuki no Kawa" in a weird yet fun experiment. The album picks back up with it's laid back dance music with "Ano Natsu Wo Wasureani" which is a great song. Utsunomiya sings one of Kine's best ballads "Daichi no Monogatari". Kine writes and sings another amazing ballad with "Tsuki wa Piano, ni Sasoswarete" with Utsunomiya doing vocal direction and in charge of vocal melodies and backing vocals. It's followed up with a Rhythm Red outtake (you can tell by the prominent and riff heavy electric guitar) called "Tomorrow Made New", which is also great and fits well with the trio focused sound, so they adapted it for this album well. Then the entire experience is SOURED BY TK. We end on a great and proggressive sounding ballad, which has great build up and is an excellent atmospheric closer. Until around 3:50 when you hear TK singing instead of Utsunomiya and his singing is just passable at best. I want to punch him in the soul for ruining what could have been the perfect way to end one of TM Network's best albums. Like every song on Digitialian is Eating Breakfast it's a good song mired by his voice, but Utsunomiya and Kine's backing vocals do make his voice more tolerable here. The other reason I have this animosity towards the song is because it was the last song on what ended up being for awhile the last TM Network album.


After a chance meeting with the drummer, pianist and bandleader from Japan's then biggest band "X Japan" that being Yoshiki, TK and him talked about collaborating since they were probably the two biggest names in Japanese music at the time. They made a double A side single with Yoshiki and him writing both songs together, Yoshiki handling drums, and TK handling the keyboards with no outside help or musicians, just the two of them. Meaning... TK sings lead vocals.

                                                  

To be fair when they did their one live concert together he sounded passable, but on the studio version he sounds like he is singing through his nose and it hurts both songs, meaning the live versions are absolute replacements. This project took up so much time that TK hardly had any time for TMN in that time frame, releasing the single "Ichizu Na Koi" after, and the band touring and beginning sessions for a new album after. New songs were supposedly written as well. (It's also rumored the non album single "Wild Heaven" as well as "Ichizu Na Koi" were both planned to be on this album) Then Utsunomiya damaged his voice at the end of the tour while recording new material. So TK abandoned plans to record more songs songs. He just released the only great sounding song (according to him it was the only great sounding one, we haven't heard the rest) from these sessions "Nights of the Knife" as a single before calling it quits. A demo recording was released on a compilation for one song from these sessions actually written by Utsunomiya (marking his only lone songwriting credit outside of "I Hate Folk") a balled called "Another Meeting", which he never recorded a final vocal for because of his damaged voice. TK basically moved on to do production and songwriting exclusively while the other members pursued solo work.


TK worked with "Hitomi" and "TRF" right after the break of TMN and under him they sold a combined 8 million. (that I could confirm, he might have sold more with TRF than I know of) TK was later tasked with producing the second album by rising teen idol "Namie Amuro" who had recently become an adult and split from her band Super Monkey's. The album he wrote and produced with her not only reprsented a step forward in Namie's maturity and sound, but a big rise in success for her and TK, with it becoming one of the fastest selling albums in Japanese music history with sales of over 3 million in one year alone, but TK had an even greater success that year earlier. TK had met French Japanese rapper and fashion model Marc Panther, who was fluent in Japanese, French and English. TK had talked to him about producing some music for him and helping him write for a debut solo album. He later the year TMN broke-up held auditions to find a new vocalist for a potential project. One girl named Keiko Yamada fell over on stage, yet still sang having been encouraged to go to the audition by her friends. TK ended up loving her voice and that she gave the audition her best despite falling over on stage. TK would decide to put the two together to form a new band, the idea being that it would be a group managed by him that he would produce and write for. However as the album came to completion they realized they would be unable to find a keyboard player who could learn the material in time to tour, do music videos and promote the album so he decided he would be that third member himself, basically handling all instrumentation himself, settling on the name globe.

                                            

When their debut album came out it was considered a defining album for the still developing J-pop scene, combining the pop sound TK developed with Namie Amuro, Hitomi, TRF and even TM Network, all with Keiko's voice taking lead on the music, with Marc supplying backing vocals, and doing rap verses and handling a lot of the lyrics. globe is most famous not for having a debut album that was a massive landmark moment for J-pop that was for a brief time the best selling studio album in the history of Japan and contained 5 majorly huge J-pop hits that art still blasted on Japanese radio to this day, but for the song "Departures" which is not only a staple of the J-pop genre, but one of the most famous J-pop songs period. globe's debut and "Departures" held more impact in all of Japanese music than anything TM Network ever did maybe with the exception of "Get Wild". Globe's debut is a weird thing for me because I love their albums, yet I don't like a lot of real J-pop, I love Marc's rap verses or any part where he gets to take the lead in a song especially when he uses that softer voice of his, yet I don't like rap, I'm not huge on a lot of music where live instrumentation isn't important or big part of it, yet TK's perfectionist mindset using synths and everything to complete the sound without need for other musicians makes for some interesting music. "Sweet Pain" is one of my favorite songs ever. I adore globe's music and I love how the new type of trio line-up of female vocalist, rapper and instrumentalist became popular after their success.

TK and Marc would work together in collaboration in making Namie Amuro's second album, which didn't sell as much her debut, but it was a bold new step after her debut, and Marc's added influence helped give a feel not unlike globe, but it stood apart well and provided her even more success cementing her as the premier female J-pop artist (until she was surpassed by Ayumi Hasmasaki), and the biggest name in the TK Family stable of artists. The TK Family is what people called the stable of artists TK frequently produced and collaborated with. The second globe album came out in 1997 and provided 5 more smash hits and sold 3 million, with the band having their own record label Avex globe, a sublabel of the biggest label in Japan Avex. TK would at Namie Amuro's request take less charge over producing her stuff in favor of letting TLC producer Dallas Austin produce stuff too, as she was a fan of his production style and hoped he cold get her closer to an urban hip hop sound. TK spent more focus on Globe until Namie broke association with him almost completely in 2001 so she could move on and work with other producers. One of the songs he gave Namie was actually a cover of a globe song called "You Are the One", which is a fun detail. globe's second album Face was a multi million seller, a big deal in Japan. Their third album Love Again and fourth album Relation sold a million and a half copies each and continued their string of hit singles, with "Wanna Be a Dreammaker" winning the Japanese Grand Prix record award, the highest honor any Japanese musician can receive. All of Globe's first four albums come highly recommended Following this they would begin work on their fifth album, however, with globe being an unstoppable hit making machine, just constantly churning out hit songs at unprecedented rate, and no greatest hits album, a decision was made.

So in 1999 a sort of compilation album came out called "First Reproducts", which is an album of complete ground up remixes of prior globe hits and one new song called "Miss Your Body". There was no true greatest hits album existed, so the decision was made to combine the work in progress fifth album with a lot of their hits to make a greatest hits album called "Cruise Record". The album has an intro track and then a remix of "Miss Your Body" (which had not been on a studio release yet) followed by three new songs.: "Biting Her Nails" and "Still Growin' Up" (both of which are Keiko compositions, which is rare). Disc 1 also has new song "Time Without Tears". Disc 2 starts with an intro track, and among the new songs we have a beautiful ballad written by Marc and sung by Keiko called "Runaway From the Night", a gorgeous piano instrumental by TK, an instrumental very indicative of the future direction of globe called "Millennium Waves", a Marc oriented rap song called "Shock Inside My Brain", and an instrumental piano outro song. So not counting interludes, intros and outros, we have 9 total new songs and some of their greatest hits. It's in a weird position of some solid new stuff that make it fit the spot of a good 5th globe album, but not enough to avoid being considered a compilation or greatest hits CD. Around the time of the album's release they released "Winter Comes Around Again", a sequel to the TM Network song "Winter Comes Around", and a good song not featured on a studio album. It would be perfect here, but oh well. It's recommended alongside their first 4 albums, but with an asterisk. I love the first four globe albums and even Cruise Record so much, and I wish he continued that type of music, but he didn't. Two things happened that changed things.

In 1996 TK produced a pretty good exploration based game for the PS1 called Gabal Screen, and he wanted to collaborate with a multitude of different pop artists for the soundtrack, and he did, leading to the game having an awesome soundtrack. However one of said artists was former TMN vocalist Takashi Utsunomiya, who was knee deep into his solo career at the time. The two did a session together where TK wrote three songs and Utsunomiya sang all of them, however one song called "Detour" was set aside from being used. Thanks to an offer, it was passed down to Naoto Kine for him to add to it. Kine added acoustic guitar and blues harp to the song. They put it on a TMN compilation and credited it to the three members rather than TMN because they were still broken up, however the three did appear together to shoot a music video for it despite Kine not meeting them at all during the process of adding his parts to the song. In 1997 on the famed radio show All Night Nippon they announced they were getting back together and would work when TK had a break in globe's activities.

                                    

Signed once again to Epic/Sony the band released their first new song as TM Network in a decade "10 Years After" on the tenth anniversary of their change in name to TMN. TK was growing tired of J-pop and wrote the song with a hip hop beat and bass and a more laid back tone. This new sound was a bit weird, but it made for a song I like quite a bit. The beat is repetitive like a lot of hip hop beats, but I like it overall. It has this optimistic message of where will be ten years from now? Will the future be kind to us? Will we still be together? It's nice message for their comeback song, both nostalgic and forward looking. Soon after they did a new version of their biggest hit "Get Wild" called "Get Wild Decade Run" now with more acoustic guitar and a dance oriented sound. If you like "Get Wild" and you like dance music it should be an easy sell, though it may come off as strange for others. The B-side "It's Gonna Be Alright" is also really good, carrying the same kind of pop rock with a hip hop beat kind of feel "10 Years After" had. The band did a collaboration with Sheila E. Julio Iglesias Jr and Leehom Wang to make "Happiness x3 Loneliness x3". It's a very unique sounding song, having a verses in Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish and a chorus in English, and an instrumental with Kine on guitar, TK on keys and basically everything else, and Sheila E. on drums. Though the main version found on compilations is a version without Wang or Iglesias jr. and rather just feature TM Network and Sheila E. It was a neat song made at the request of the Prime Minister at the time to give a positive message for Japanese youth who were feeling down, and also to discourage the abuse of drugs. The B-side "80s" was written with an 80s kind of sound, and it is a fun callback to old TM Network, mixed with this newer sound they established.

At the end of 1999 TK terminated their contract with Sony and he signed them to his own newly opened independent label Rojam. Next he got to work with the next TM Network album Major Turn-Round. The album was a complete change in style because TK was still tired of J-pop. (Ironic because he is known as the father of J-pop.) The album was recorded in Hawaii because TK liked it there and it was remote. The album opens with a track this is just TK pulling a wireless microphone out of the water before starting with the seven minute "Ignition, Sequence Start.", a pop rock song with heavy guitar. Famed session drummer Simon Phillips (formally of Toto and The Michael Schenker Group) was flown in to rerecord the drums on the album, as TK wanted the album to have a real live music kind of feel on some of these songs and thought natural drumming in place of a drum machine would make the songs sound better and boy is he right it rocks. It's the start of a concept on the album about going to a store and hearing one song from multiple albums of different genres to see which albums you want to purchase. This song clearly represents hard rock, but the song has a theme of exploration and an adventurous feel, sure a lot of it has to do with space, something explored further in the title track, but it's also meant to signify the start of your musical journey with the album. It is just wonderful, my favorite song here. The 32 minute title track was a prog rock epic he wrote completely through improvisation, putting his bits and pieces together in pro tools in a way he felt best and letting Utsunomiya add on his vocals and Kine add guitar. He let Simon Phillips improvise all the drum parts and do as he felt best without guidance of a drum machine or click track, and Simon nailed it his drumming is on another level here. The guitar playing too, I'm unsure if Kine is doing everything or a session musician is doing a lot of the really intense parts in the middle, but it is still great sounding. The big ambient keyboard and piano section near the 16 minute mark is a sign of things to come years later. The last movement is a cool ending with a satisfying conclusion. Kine was unsure of how to contribute to the concept and sound and wrote "Pale Shelter", which he never completely finished, leading to it sounding kind of weird and just a so/so pop rock song. "We Are Starting Over" is the third single and Kine's attempt at writing a John Lennon song, it's pretty good, not much else. However "Message" is the real important song. It's the lead single and made to be the proper continuation from the direction they were going for on "Nights of the Knife" and "Time Machine", while also carrying elements from "10 Years After" in its tone. It's a great song in the vein of classic TM Network while sounding a bit new and interesting too. The message of the song is great, and it is a clear standout, just great. Then it ends with "Cube", a song Kine wrote and had a performance improvised by Komuro because Kine's poor English skills lead to a miscommunication and the engineers started recording before they were ready. For an improvised song with overdubbed vocals it's pretty cool, I love the little ending synths. Major Turn-Round was a great comeback for the band and showed them in top form and evolving in a great way. 

After touring for the album it was time for him to return to his band that had sold more than ten million records: globe. TK was still tired of J-pop and decided to pursue a new sound with globe too, choosing trance music because it had interested him at the time. The idea is that this is globe reaching out to a network of new ideas and sounds all connected through trance. It was experimental with Marc rapping French on some songs and TK using repetitive loops and melodies repeated over to create a new sound unlike the band's previous stuff. Outernet was to capitalize on the experimental nature they were taking on in multiple ways including releasing three singles at once each listed as globe feat (insert band member most prominent on the song here) which was very stupid because it sabotaged the singles. Keiko's "On the Way to You" (great song by the way) was the most traditional song on the album and so obviously it did the best. The song managed to become a hit, and was the album's only major success. I love the contrast of synth strings with the electronic elements such as Marc's low in the mix lo-fi rapping the lyrics alongside Keiko. Marc's industrial rocker "The Main Lord" showcased a new side to his rapping and singing, and Keiko doing backing vocals to him is always a nice change of pace, but being a cool industrial rock experiment it naturally failed, and TK's sample and rhythm loop based instrumental "Throwin' Down in the 00" was naturally an even bigger flop. They released two of the album's best songs "Like a Prayer" and "Don't Look Back" as a double A side single as well as "Garden", and "Anyway Asexually" but they only did modestly. "Garden" is a solid execution of the trance concept, but it does little to justify being almost 9 minutes, and Keiko is carrying the song. "Like a Prayer" has a strange and offputting sound that is somehow strangely captivating. The sitar sample on "Anyway Asexually" is weird but helps add to the strange charm of the song. Keiko even tries a less traditional singing style in some parts and going deeper than normal, it is all weird but great. "Don't Look Back" is another weird but great song. The ambient opening with Keiko and the synths followed by the instruments building up to a big and powerful first verse with Keiko singing over boom bap sounding drums and the build in intensity when Marc comes in. All this contrasted by a calm trance chorus and a weird organ and choir sample and a sample of Marc saying the song name. Then it moves to an acoustic sounding section with the same drums and Marc doing a whispery rap, and Keiko doing a new verse with the same beat as the first now with added synths. It builds beautifully to a new chorus that sounds powerful and earned, and then a beautiful outro. Excuse me!? How do you make one of the biggest most nothing songs of your entire career with "Garden" which is a waste of 9 minutes, and then you simultaneously make one of the boldest and most interesting songs of your career and it makes perfect use of 9 minutes? This shows the album has some great songs that show new sides to the band like "Paradise Lies" the second best song on the album and one of my favorite globe songs. Keiko's voice is beautiful here, and I love the progression and sound of it. Ultimately the change in style, poor marketing decisions and more killed the album and the band's success, with it stalling out and only reaching gold and selling 9 percent as many units as their previous album.  Don't worry the "TK ruins things with his obsession with trance music" phase of his career has only begun and thankfully it doesn't get much worse.

So in 2002 Komuro would make the third biggest mistake of his entire career, and that was marrying Keiko.

                                     

This was highly publicized and highly criticized. TK claimed he had felt feelings for her ever since that day she auditioned and fell on stage and that these feelings only developed further after 6 years of working together. However let me break down why his point is moot and if it is true the potential negative connotations. The two had no known romantic relationship prior to this, the two had simply seen each-other a lot because Keiko was an active member of a band he spent a lot of focus on throughout the 90s, and she was naturally supportive and caring considering she is a naturally nice person attested to by everyone, and because she was obviously in a band with him and wanted to support her bandmate and friend. If TK did have romantic feelings for her from the start for all we know he could have passed up potentially better vocalists for Keiko because of this attraction instead of any real talent. Sure it makes for a cute how they met story and like a good set up for a rom-com but to me this stinks of publicity stunt, especially after globe was already drastically dropping off from the public conscious with people largely ignoring their new album because of the abrupt change in style, rougher production and the conscious decision to put his pop music past behind him and not try and keep it at all like those first four albums. Marc seemed supportive, but of course he would be. This event would lead to TK's public image starting to falter over time, and it all can be traced back to this one event. 

TK was actively asked by fans and record execs alike to please return to the original style, and his response was that it would be an admission of defeat and that the father of J-pop doesn't admit defeat. He was determined to do what he wanted to with his band free of what the public was going to say. He got to work in 2002 making a duology of albums known as Lights. The original plan was to make it a double album before instead deciding to make it two albums. The albums were both evolutions of the trance style and this time much better. Seriously the big repetitive long trance stuff is very neat sounding and progressive here. It all has that dense and layered production he did back in the 80s, but works so well with this busy and active soundscapes. Keiko said they listened to the first album to compare to how they sound now and reassess how they changed and what made that album tick, and you can tell they are focused here. "Genesis of Next" and "Try This Shoot" are perfect example of this album at it's best, with Marc's rapping on the former of the two being outstanding. "Genesis of Next" has so many layers and this busy sound, yet it builds up so well and Keiko's vocals compliment it wonderfully. "Try This Shoot" lets your guard down with this repetitive opening and it seemingly continued during Marc's rap, then Keiko sings her part and suddenly we burst right into a chorus where Keiko's voice is complimented by this interesting synthesizer melody. TK has mastered writing great trance songs. "Many Classic Moments" is a great mix of the new trance globe and a more commercial sensibility as well as it's less busy and energetic backing track. The band even has some slow ballads here which really work like "Merry Go Round" and "Megami", and it has one of the most interesting covers of the classic "Stop! In the Name of Love" I've ever heard. Marc takes the lead with "Come Into Existence" which is another good song. Now here's how TK ruined it.. He released Lights2 two months after the first, and L'arc~en~Ciel did the same thing a couple years prior and had it work very well for them, but they had major hit singles backing them up when they did it, globe didn't. Lights sold almost twice as many units as Outernet, and it's singles "Try This Shoot", "Stop in the Name of Love", "Genesis of Next" and "Many Classic Moments" each did alright too, but Lights2 cannibalized the sales of Lights because that album was still having chart success and support before Lights 2 came out. Despite having some great songs and would be singles Lights2's longevity and chances at chart success were killed by Lights, which is a shame because "Over the Rainbow" is an amazing song. The way it builds is wonderful, and the vocals are amazing. The other single "Inspired by Red and Blue" is an amazing lower energy song where the vocals get to shine, and "Transcontinental Way" is a contender for the band's best instrumental. "Knockin' at the Door of My Heart" would have made a great single. The vocals are amazing and I love the vocal melodies here and the instrumental too. "Starting From Here" is great, giving Keiko plenty of great chances to shine while adding acoustic guitar to a mostly electronic song to give it this distinct sound. "Edge of Darkness" could have also been a great single, with Marc really shining on this song.  "Us" is a great ballad and Marc's "Liquid Paranoia" is a great showcase for him. This could have workd, but TK's stupid decision to release both one after the other killed both and he seriously had to reassess the situation.


in 2003 TK made an announcement that globe was adding a second keyboard and synth player, that being Yoshiki from X Japan, this would leave TK open to play guitar now in the band.

  

Left to right Marc Panther, Keiko Yamada, Yoshiki, Tetsuya "TK" Komuro

This was a huge deal at the time because Yoshiki was working only sparsely with his solo project Violet UK at the time, and there was no release date in sight for their new album, to suddenly join a new band, let alone one as massive as globe, it was huge. An A lister joining a formally A list band. Yoshiki wrote and demoed multiple songs with the group, one of which can be found online, but his lone album with the band had very little writing involvement from him and was mostly just him performing synths on the album while TK focused on other aspects of the band's sound like guitar. Yoshiki only got to write the lead single "Seize the Light", which was a song he had written a while ago and played on piano when he went to TK and Keiko's wedding reception. The album they did with him "Level 4" is globe's trance era brought to its natural conclusion and in a great way. Yoshiki's presence doesn't make the music sound any different than Lights, and it's probably for the best. Marc does neat things on his main song "Inside" where he takes the lead while Keiko does backing vocals in a neat way. They sampled her voice and synthesized it to make backing vocals that sound unnatural and weird in a cool way, especially when they distort them later in the song. They would use Keiko's voice the same way in "Blow". Some interesting things are done instrumentally as well. "Weather Report" is another outstanding deep cut where Keiko does an outstanding job. I miss the more layered and busy sound of Lights, which is missed on the awesome opening song "Out of © Control". "Get It On Now" makes for a great single and I think "The Box" would have been a great single, being a slower R&B like song where Keiko gets to shine, "This Is the Last Night" would have also made for a great single, a random acoustic song here is a weird decision but it works well. "Compass" is one of the strongest closing tracks of any globe album. Overall it was really good, but it barely sold 50,000 units, the worst selling globe album ever at that time.

After Level 4 had it's promotional run Yoshiki announced he had too many other things going to stay a member of globe and that he was no longer going to be a full time member. The other band members announced a sub unit called "Globe Extreme" which would be the name used when they would do something with Yoshiki. Afterwards TK would go on a tour with TM Network after spending a few years with globe. Now on this tour they would play the hit single from the Carol album: "Just One Victory" in a trance style newly arranged by TK. The audiences seemed intrigued by this. He would then write an all new song in the trance style for TM Network to play on live on called "Green Days", and he would sell its CD single exclusively at concerts on that tour where they would play it live. In reality this wasn't the first time TM Network would do trance, as TK was secretly booking sessions with the band in between activities with globe in hopes of completing a new album. In 2002 They had released a single called "Castle in the Clouds", a pop rock song on the single version, and it was neat. When they were finished touring  they got the album done and it's name was "Easy Listening". The concept to combine their classic synth pop type stuff with trance music and easy listening music to make a weird in-between. The album's lead single "Castle in the Clouds" is a great mix of classic TM Network and trance music, it represents what this album is going for beautifully. The vocals are great and the instrumentation is neat. The album version drops all the pop rock stuff in favor of a more trance inspired backing track.  the second single "Screen of Life" is the opener, and TK tries to write lyrics addressing the baby boomer generation in a lyrical style he never tried before, which makes it interesting, but ultimately the song is too long and doesn't make good use of the run time, which is a shame because lots of cool ideas are in this song. "Presence" is probably the least trance song here, making frequent use of electric guitar. It's good, but a bit weak compared to some of the other originals here. Kine's song "Windless Crossroads" is an homage to the Carol suite and is the best song on the album by a mile, it's great. It lacks a lot of the trance flare, but keeps the electronic aesthetic the rest of the album has while still being written a similar vein to songs from the Carol era of the band. This is exactly what I was talking about in combining the TM Network of old and the trance style, when done well it really works. Kine writes a more trance style song with "Morning With You", but it's very relaxed and laid back with some great vocal melodies, and a neat vibe. It is the other best song here for sure. "Nuworld" is a neat instrumental, but it's a bit boring and too long, it doesn't make good use of it's runtime. Closing track "Come Closer" is a mostly instrumental track with some very interesting things going for it, and Takashi's Utsunomiya's sparse vocals add to the atmosphere. I like it. Where the album really falls off is the 3 songs I didn't mention, trance versions of classic TM Network songs. The first is "Love Train", which loses all sense of momentum and epicness the original had in favor of being this easy listening trance hybrid style. This version is boring and unnecessary. The new version of the band's debut single "Take It to the Lucky" actually gets better as it goes on and is okay, but all the charm of the original is lost, and no new charm is gained. Lastly is a new version of "Time to Countdown". The song is now almost entirely instrumental with some vocal samples spread here and then, but it's largely boring and uninteresting, which is a shame because it could have made the transition to trance really well. TK had some good ideas here, but the album has a lot going against it, good thing Kine remembered how to write TM Network songs. It's not bad, and is actually pretty good, but another example of TK's trance obsession ruining a good thing. 

After touring in support of the album TM Network was broken up again, with TK citing it was because he desired to focus on globe. So the band members all reconvened and got back together, with the goal of looking back on TK's self indulgent music and developing from that a sound to serve as a more proper continuation of their classic era. The band admitted that they wanted to make what would basically serve as a follow-up to their debut album if their debut album was released in the early to mid 2000s. The resulting "Globe 2 Pop/Rock" was a weird album that did nothing to improve their standing with the Japanese public at large. The name "Globe 2" was because the band felt this was the true follow up from the debut and would lead to it's own chain of musical evolution free from the trance albums and their three other classic albums, as globe Extreme could build off those like Level 4 did, while the regular globe would build off the debut and this album. The lead single "Here I Am" certainly makes it look like their mission to make a follow up to their debut album as if it was released in the early 2000s was a success, because it sounds like a modernized version of the sound from their debut, the guitar is also clearly heard in the song, as rock elements were to be a heavy part of the album. The opening song "Love Goes On" is a great guitar driven pop rock song, and represents the new albums style well, it's a very pleasant track too where Keiko sounds nice, Marc's little rap parts are nice too. "Expectation"  has some awesome rocking guitar parts and Keiko trying harder edged rock vocals with Marc in the chorus. Marc even gets the second verse to himself to rap, and it's pretty great. The juxtaposition between happy J-pop and hard rock is great. TK handled every aspect of the instrumentation here himself, and unlike the last couple albums wrote everything himself with the exception of Marc's rap parts, which as always were written by Marc. "Back 2 Be" has some dense percussion and synths with them making the guitar here feel weak, it's kind of interesting, it certainly gets better from Marc's rap verse and onward. "Lost" represents the fusion of J-pop and hard rock wonderfully with these pop melodies in the verses alongside Marc's rapping, and then the heavy guitar and percussion giving the song this harder edged feeling to it, all with these pop vocal melodies. Keiko's voice has this feeling of desperation to it too, I love it. "Asian Night" is a cool subtle feeling song where Marc's rapping feels like it's at some of it's best, Keiko even tries something like it, all of this juxtaposed with the guitar in the chorus. "Good Bye Now" has some cool elements that make it sound like it could have been a song on "Level 4" the guitar coming in adds this sense of power to the chorus that I really like. "Feel Like the Wind" has some cool stuff with the guitar and keyboards with some of Keiko's best vocals on the album, truly great. "Judgement" is one of the real fan favorites from this album, and for good reason. The sitar on it is a very cool addition and some of TK's best guitar playing is on this song. The chorus is very nice and Marc has some of his best rap parts of the entire album on this song. The keyboards and melodies in the chorus are just really great. It's an overall incredible song. "Shift" is a groovy song that is short and sweet, being a great three minutes that builds up to it's ending wonderfully, and we close on the brief instrumental "See the Next Page", which is a nice closer.

                                 

The album placed number 5, but was just shy of reaching 50,000. This was a decent blow to the band, they were unable to even reach the level of success of Level 4, which itself showed a decline in sales, However the band was determined to carry on. They got to work making their next album Maniac, which was a more pop centric modern sounding sequel to "Gobe 2 Pop/Rock", toning down the harder rock elements. This gave us the album: Maniac. Opening song "Soldier" is a great song and one of the band's best modern songs. "Please Don't Give Up" is great lower energy Marc focused song, with Keiko just there to deliver a slow and dreary chorus with some cool atmosphere. Keiko makes her globe songwriting debut having written everything except Marc's rap verses in "Why Tell Me Why", which is a very nice pop rock song with some nice vocal melodies from Keiko. "From the Beginning" is a nice song with the piano at the forefront and some amazing vocal from Keiko, her delivery of these and how she sells the lyrics here is just great. "Appreciate" is a weird electronic focused song that is mostly instrumental with rhythmic spoken word from Keiko, and it's a nice change of pace. "Orbit" is a great instrumental. "Tokyo Toiu Riyu" is a great song as well the use of strings here (even if they are fake strings) really makes this stand out and with keiko's performance here combined with the strings and acoustic guitar, it all leads to one of the best songs on the album. "Shine On You" is a great pop rock song, my only real issue with the last few songs is not enough Marc. That's taken care of on a song he wrote himself "Simplove" which naturally features Marc on lead and surprisingly no Keiko. Marc tries a more melodic and traditional singing style with rapping being something he does at different parts of the song and it really works. He can handle traditional vocals surprisingly well and we already established his rapping is fire. We end on the ballad "About Me", which I just love and is a beautiful closing track. So you think after all this it would be a banger album that would surely do more for the band than "Globe 2 Pop/Rock" right? Or you are smarter than I thought and are asking how TK messed up this could be comeback album. For starters "Soldier" was planned to be a single and they filmed a music video, but for no apparent reason they decided not to make it a single and used its footage for commercials advertising the album, Surely then it would still be available for their fans to buy if they wanted right? Well what about paying twice as much for a globe album? TK made it a double album with the second disk being two new versions of songs from the previous album now with session musicians filling out the line-up making it a full band sound with real bass and drums, two exclusive new instrumentals he wrote, two songs from Marc's rap project: 245, two songs from Keiko's solo EP remixed by him, a single she did for Avex's trance project and a new remix of a song Keiko did for a movie. The rougher styled production and hard rock energy of the original versions of the two songs from "Globe 2 Pop/Rock" is totally gone because some of the synths are gone, especially from "Lost". However the drumming and bass playing is actually really good and adds a new dimension to them, making them the definitive versions, especially "Lost", the band version has made it one of the best late career globe songs. Both TK instrumentals are good, but unnecessary. Both the 245 songs are great, "Cosmic Dream" especially shows Marc at his best. As for the Keiko songs, Humanrace was already on her EP and didn't need to be here It's nice to have "Reason" on an album but it's a weak song, her collaboration with Avex's trance band Cyber X is great and nice to have, and it's great having a finished version of "Umi to no yujo". Disc 2 has some great stuff on it, but it's just kind of pointless especially when I get to my next release I will discus. TK making this a double album was just plain stupid and was a contributing factor in this album selling just shy of 30000 units.

The band would go on to book some time in LA to record some new songs for an EP called "New Deal", which makes me even more upset because TK could have put the band versions of the songs from "Globe 2 Pop/Rock" on this EP. Same with his instrumentals, and then we could have a nine track album on our hands. The title track has some Latin influence, but it's a bit weird, and not one of Keiko's stronger performances. The song has some cool guitar and stuff though. Keiko writes her second and as of now final globe song "Please Please" and it's great, a total earworm, I love it. Then we have some pop rock songs with TK on guitar and keyboards, bassist Chris Chaney from Jane's Addiction and drummer Matt Sorum from Guns n Roses to make up the rest of the album. The first of these "Hey Say Hey Yeah" is a very fun pop rock song with some cool synths near the end, "All Hope" is the best song here, being a fun pop rock song with nice prominent synths and Keiko giving an incredible vocal performance, so I would very much recommend this song. Lastly a full band version of "Soldier", which is great and a total replacement of the original even if it is a bit slower than the original. TK would then put globe on a break for a little while, being burnt out from all the work he was putting into globe.

While this was going on Takashi Utsunomiya and Naoto Kine were touring together, figuring that since they were great friends since childhood why not continue working together even outside of TM Network. During their tour they played not only TM Network songs, but Speedway songs too, and this inspired TK. He would assemble Kine and Utsunomiya to his home studio to work. TK said he was burnt out from globe and didn't feel like putting forth a great effort for another project, but he had the idea for an album paying tribute to the pasts of all the members, particularly their days in Speedway. So the goal was to create a very nostalgic album paying tribute to their roots, all the while maintaining a futuristic aesthetic and sound. The result was my favorite TM Network album: "Speedway"

     

Aside from having a very pretty cover hand painted by Hiroshi Sasaki (they also painted the album art for "Carol A Day in the Girl's Life"), the art director for Angel Cop and a story board artist for the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime. The album was the only TM Network album to be recorded as just a trio. TK let Kine write half the album and they'd handle all the instrumentation together with Utsunomiya handling acoustic guitar in songs where Kine would be playing an electric guitar or blues harp. The only song featuring guest musicians, only features heavy metal drummer Soul Toul playing drums, and it's the lone exception. It has a beautiful nostalgic feel and vibe while also sounding futuristic and forward look in some areas. It's an all time favorite of mine. The album opener "Action" is a live staple of the band's now and is played in concert quite often. It has this nice vibe and catchiness to some of the melodies being a good example of the mix of the music of their roots and a futuristic forward looking sound. TK and Kine's backing vocals in the chorus are very prominent and help show the trio format of this album. Kine's first song "Diving" is a very catchy song that evolved from Naoto Kine playing the T-Rex song 20th Century Boy on acoustic guitar during warm ups, and the inspiration is felt, but the song stands very well on it's own. "Pride in the Wind" is another Kine composition and it is an example of the beautiful acoustic guitar driven pop rock that the band is going for here. The melodies of this song and the subtle use of synths just really make it one of my favorite TM Network songs and one of my favorite songs ever. TK comes in next with a keyboard driven piece of power pop "Red Carpet". This song has some spoken word (not sure if it's TK or Kine) in the verses along side Utsunomiya before building to a very catchy chorus. The chorus is great and the song builds to it nicely. Kine wrote the next song "Teenage", which is a song that captures a painfully nostalgic atmosphere. The lyrics coupled with the tone and atmosphere of the song capture this feeling in me and make it my absolute favorite TM Network song. "Welcome Back 2" is the only single from the album, and the only to feature a guest musician, with Soul Toul playing drums on this song. The track has this neat kind of power pop feel to it and a very upbeat and energetic atmosphere. My only real issue is that the mentioning of all these TM Network classics feels like blatant nostalgia pandering and references for the sake of references and getting a reaction out of fans. It comes off as a lazy way to get this kind of reaction, especially because "Teenage" and another song I'll get to later do the same thing easily without this pandering. Still a catchy song I just love. Kine's song "End of Summer" is another very nostalgic song, with this atmosphere created by the contrasting acoustic guitar and synthesizer working nicely hand in hand in giving the song this somber yet nostalgic atmosphere, like you're reminiscing about a good period of time that is now over, like the end of an era. "N43" is TM Network's best Christmas song, being a very catchy and great song written by Kine. It's a very catchy song with a great chorus and uses the synths nicely, and uses the acoustic guitar to close out the song very well. "Electronic Music" is an instrumental loop that occasionally transitions to another melody before repeating the original again. "You Can Find" is TK's first song he ever wrote, this time he opted just to adapt it as a piano piece and not record the lyrics he wrote for it back then, making it a nice and beautiful instrumental. I don't like ending the album on three consecutive instrumentals, but damn is "Malibu" a cool closing song. TK wanted to a write a cool concert opener that sounds like it's from the future. The song is a cool electronic instrumental with Kine flexing some of his electric guitar skills too, a great closer. If I put this album along side other favorite albums of mine, it would be in the top ten for sure. However the band never did get to tour for this album proper, because while promoting it the band broke up suddenly due to... issues.

while promoting Speedway in 2008 TK was working with globe on two TM Network covers "Get Wild" and "Self Control". which he planned to release later 2008. During this time he once again broke up TM Network with no reason given, but it was assumed to be due to a renewed focus on globe, but this "renewed focus" was cut short when allegations against TK came out about fraud. TK was finally arrested in November of 2008 over the second biggest mistake he made in his entire career. The case was that he had sold the copyright to his songs to Avex holdings, Avex is the biggest Japanese record label and a label TK had at the time a 13 year association with having worked as producer and songwriter for artists under the label including His Excellency Demon from Seikima-II and Ami Suzuki. This is all fine and dandy, but he promised an investor the copyright to his songs for the price of 500 million yen. which would have been close to 5 million US. (I know, the exchange rate is not as high as you'd think.) TK pleaded guilty no argument during his trial and admitted to his crime. The president of Avex paid back the victim his money and an extra hundred mill in compensation and an estimated 50 million in delay damages. (HOW COULD THE GUY WHO WROTE "Caribbeana High" DO SUCH A THING? that's probably what you're thinking...) The judge gave Komuro a 3 year suspended prison sentence with him on probation, saying that TK's acceptance of the situation and responsibility, as well as the plaintiff being paid in full plus compensation and damage influenced the light punishment and said that the world would be done no good from TK being jailed. (He's completely right, but Komuro still got off mostly scot free) The president of Avex said that in return TK for the time being would work directly under his control in Avex exclusively for the time being. TK shuddered a lot of the blame onto his desire to give his wife a life of luxury and give her the best, which already seems suspicious, but knowing what we know now is total BS. It would however serve as the inspiration for a pretty rad Saber Tiger song called "The Forever Throne". TK announced his return to music 2009 at an event held by Avex and he did a show with globe for the audiences. That's when Tragedy would strike though. TK's blacklisting from the entertainment industry was undone, but in 2011 while beginning sessions for a new album Keiko suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage and was unable to sing, leading to a pause in globe's activities indefinitely while she recovered. Songs from these sessions "They Fight Now" and "Single Walking" have since been released by Avex on streaming platforms as a 3 song EP with the previously recorded cover of "Self Control". globe never officially broke up, but the band would just be TK and Marc and working together on remix albums and compilations.

TK's fraud situation didn't seem to damage his standing with his bandmates in globe or TM Network, with Kine and Utsunomiya saying that nothing about their friendship or musicianship with TK has changed. TK's first big project after his returning to music from the fraud allegations was writing almost every track on Ayumi Hamaki's album Love Songs. Ayumi Hamasaki was the last huge selling Japanese pop solo artist he was yet to work with. Ayumi Hamasaki has sold over 60 million albums (20 million more than queen of J-pop Namie Amuro) and was the best selling solo artist in Japanese history. It was an interesting collaboration, and one that yielded results. The album was a big seller and Komuro's songs on the album all became hits, proving he was still a talented writer. With Keiko in recovery in 2011, TK reactivated TM Network starting with a charity concert in 2012 to support earth quake relief. He was met with criticism for focusing on another band instead of caring for Keiko during her recovery, but TM Network's revival was met with positive fanfare.
                                       

   

They released the single "I Am" that year, with Kine playing acoustic guitar and backing vocals while electric guitar was handled by former limp Bizkit guitar player Mike Smith. They did a reunion seeing the commercial potential in it, with TM Network's last two albums both placing as high on the charts as Maniac did, showing that while globe was more popular and did better, TM Network held more staying power. Under TK's deal with the president of Avex TM Network would sign to Avex when releasing "I Am". The band toured and made a trance inspired remix album and then reconvened in 2013 to work on a new album. The idea behind this album was to make something to reach young J-pop listeners who knew of TM Network's hits in the late eighties and early nineties that still got radio play such as "Get Wild", but appeal to the more modern sensibilities of J-pop at the time. All this while also appealing to the Fanks whom had followed this band all these years and were obsessed with them and embracing all eras of the band in a way that they would appreciate, while still maintaining a modern sound. If that sounds ambitious for a J-pop album, that's because it is. They released new single "Loud" ahead of the album and a few months later in October 2014 released "Quit30" to celebrate their 30th anniversary. The album opens with Alive, which is a really solid opening track, but not one of the album's strongest songs. It's a bit too long and repetitive, but it's pretty catchy and works well at setting the tone of the album. "I Am" is a very great pop rock song with a laid back comfortable pop rock sound, yet an anthemic chorus that could easily get crowds chanting at a concert. The song has this cool message about embracing what makes you Human, and it makes for a nice song. This version has more emphasis on the instrumentation, Utsunomiya is much louder than the backing vocals in the chorus too, which is in contrast to the single version. Then we get Quit30, a 22 minute prog epic in a similar vein to "Major Turn-Round", even being made through pieced together improvisations like that song was. Unlike that song it is segmented into 8 individual tracks and like the Carol suit is split across the beginning of the album and the end. The song has notable Japanese session musicians playing drums and bass, but former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman (a major celebrity in Japan) plays electric guitar on it and famed African Japanese session vocalist Olivia Burrell on backing vocals. First part "Birth" builds up nicely and sets up the theme of the piece well. Part 2 "Beginning of the End" continues with even more build up nicely and has some cool stuff with the synths. Part 3 "Mist" is short and features vocals that sound like they are from a poor radio at first before becoming normal. This mostly sets up the rest of the piece. However instead of part 4 we get "Story", one of my favorite TM Network ballads. The atmosphere of this song is great and I love it, but couples with an incredible vocal performance from Utsunomiya, he really sells this song with his delivery in the chorus."Aruhi Arutoki Itsuka Dokokade" is a fine song and was the B-side to "Loud". It's good, but is one of the weaker tracks here, it's a solid lower energy synthpop song, but not much more. Kine's playing with the acoustic is very nice though. "Loud" is the second single and I love it. It has solid verses that transition seamlessly to an infectiously catchy chorus that has seldom left my head since I first heard it. "Kimigaite Yokatta" is the B-side to "I Am", only now with added electric guitar for the album version. It's a fun catchy synthpop song, not much else to it. Quit30 part 4 "Glow" has this cool synth sound going in the beginning, but the song itself is just building up to the next part. Part 5 "Loop of the Life" sounds straight out of Easy Listening, short but very cool. Part 6 "Entrance of the Earth" is  a synth focused instrumental that is very good. Part 7 "The Beginning of the End 2" doesn't have much in common musically with part 1, but they both tackle similar stuff lyrically. Part 8 "Beginning of the End 3" is where it really starts reaching it's climax, it feels epic while still winding things down from part 7. Olivia Burrell gets to do some stuff here as Utsunomiya remains silent. A solid and satisfying end to the piece, though I don't know if splitting it up was the best idea. "Mission to Go" is an amazing synth pop song and deserved to be released as a single, the fact that it wasn't baffles me. It's a very nice song with a solid hook and a very catchy chorus. "If You Can" ends disc 1 alright, it's a decent pop rock song. Disc 2 starts with "Always Be There" with backing vocals from eurovision contestant Imani. This is TM Network covering a song TK wrote at the request of the United Nations. (yes the UN knowingly commissioned a piece of music from a convicted fraudster) The song is a pretty solid pop rock song, but kind of forgettable. Then of all things we have "Carol 2014" a modern adaption of the Carol suite (just the suite none of the other songs telling the Carol story) performed by the same set of people who performed with the band on the title track, meaning Olivia Burrell is now the voice of Carol here. Her voice is a bit too deep and doesn't quite work too well in "Carol's Theme II". Though it's just a faithful rendition of the suite performed with modern production and sound. Not much you could ask for, it's really good and Maty Friedman's guitar playing here is superb, and it's higher in the mix than Tak Matsumoto's electric guitar was in the original version. Hearing the two back to back just now it's incredible to me how good Takashi Utsunomiya's voice sounded 25 years after recording the original, he's lost very little of his voice over the years. So this was a banger album with only one song I haven't talked about yet. You know full well by now this means TK ruined it, and yes he did. We end on "Alive (TK mix)", a remix of Alive that drags the song on even further and adds nothing of value. It's just there to make disc 2 longer and justify making this a double album when they could have just ended disc 1 with part 8 of "Quit30" and put "Mission to Go" and "If You Can" on Disc 2. Still the album is really good and if it is their last than they went out on a strong note.

So the band toured in support of the album with the Quit30 Huge Data tour and then made an EP of remixes of their big hit "Get Wild". Afterwards they broke up while TK continued working on globe related projects with Marc including a tribute album, an acid jazz remix album, two different EDM remix albums and more, but most notably were a set of two albums known as "Remode" and "Remode2" both albums saw TK go back and give 30 globe songs completely new simpler electronic backing tracks, in some cases using alternate vocal takes than what was used in the original and in more cases having Marc record new rap parts and and replace his old ones on a few songs. The Outernet songs on these two albums are basically given new life and made better, the alternate vocal takes used make the tracks that have them feel familiar yet new in a nice way, the new rap parts are great, but don't change much of anything about the song aside from the lyrics of his rap parts, the tracks from Lights and Lights2 sound good, but are kind of neutered with the simpler sound with the exception of "Try This Shoot", some of these new versions of songs like "Perfume of Love" and "Illusion" sound incredible, though I also have to ask why a new version of "Anytime Smokin' Cigarette" on Remode, and then on Remode 2 another new version different from that one and using an alternate vocal take? Why not just use the alternate vocal take on the original new version and give the other new version's spot to a different song not featured like "Seize the Light" or "Get it on Now"? The main reason I brought up globe again was to talk about what happened next.

In 2017 TK and Marc appeared as globe on a TV show and performed some of their songs, and TK later posted a video to his Instagram of Keiko singing a song he wrote for her to sing to try and practice while she recovered. The band was in serious talks of a reunion until Keiko's family came out and said TK wasn't really there for her like he should have been and has been very neglectful during her recovery process. However in January 2018 it came out that he had cheated on his wife by sleeping with the nurse who came to their home to care for her. Keiko said there was no chance of her and TK reconciling their relationship and TK after this came out he held a conference announcing his retirement. This whole thing was clearly just him trying to lay low and stay out of the public conscious during this drama either on his own terms or at the behest of the president of Avex. Marc said the situation was ugly but they were both his friends and the revelation and their separation changes nothing. His TM Network bandmates vouched for him, and Yoshiki even said that not only did the cheating allegations not change his opinion of Komuro as an artist, but that he also wished to collaborate with Komuro again. However he returned in 2020 writing more songs for Ayumi Hamasaki and other artists signed to Avex. Despite everyone believing his return to be financially motivated, people were just happy to him writing and producing music again.

In 2021 after TK's divorce was finalized, TM Network announced they were reforming. They opened a Youtube channel and broadcast a series of three live no audience concerts performed at a filming set.
                        
The concerts known as "How Do You Crash It?" marked a well received return for the band and the live debut of their new song "How Crash?". The deluxe boxsets for the live show came with a studio version of the new song on CD single, but it was a weirdly unfinished version that despite sounding good had no verses. So let me get this straight, He locks the studio version of the band's brand new huge song behind the pay wall of a limited deluxe boxset, and he edits out Takashi Utsunomiya's vocals during the verses? Why? for what reason? It just makes the studio version sound unfinished despite being a well produced and good song. You can even hear traces of where Utsunomiya's vocals were in the verses because they tried to weirdly edit it out rather than properly make a version without the vocal track. I love "How Crash?", but the studio version having the vocals edited out for no reason makes me upset because Takashi Utsunomiya is one of my favorite vocalists and "How Crash?" is a could be modern classic intentionally handicapped for no clear reason at all, but it gets worse. TK loves making songs about saving the environment and earth, I.E. "We Love the Earth". He aimed to do it again with his next song "Please Heal the World", which he wrote to be the opening song for the band's 2022 Fanks Intelligence Days tour. However he released it as an NFT with each variation having a different monologue by a different band member at the end. Why an NFT? For what reason? I keep seeing Fanks asking if it will get an alternate release or if they can hear it without buying an NFT. These NFTs are 3000 yen each, with a large portion of the money going to charities that help the environment, which is nice, but what is basically 23 dollars US for one song is way too much. To make it worse you are getting ripped off. "How Crash?" at the very least was a full 5 minute studio recording in it's CD single even with the things I complained about. Please Heal the World is a miserable 2:14 that like the studio version of "How Crash?", has the vocals in the verses edited out, the song sounds like it may have been cut or edited down to be shorter, which if so makes it even more scummy. What makes it even worse? "Please Heal the World" is okay at best and not as good as "How Crash?" or anything from the two most recent TM Network albums. Maybe if they gave us a fully finished studio recording that was full length, had Takashi Utsunomiya's full vocals in the verses and everything, as well as being released in a not scummy money grubby format I would get to properly judge the song and maybe change my opinion on it, but oh wait, we don't have one so I can't say. It pisses me off that I went through so much trouble to steal a song/NFT only to find out it was this and people were paying so much for just this one song that was like this, it's not even produced that well and just sounds like a demo. I pray TK actually fixes this, but who knows from this man.

At the end of 2022 TK released a box set exactly 10,000 days after globe debuted and put all of their studio albums there as well as some compilations and other stuff. I don't know if there is any previously unreleased songs on it, but it sparked debate over a globe reunion, Marc said he wants it to happen, Keiko never ruled it out but she is still on hiatus from music, while TK has expressed interest. It's not impossible, but don't hold your breath.

If TK was American he would have a hard time finding work after the fraud thing and then get cancelled and never find good work again when news of the cheating would come out. However cancel culture isn't a thing over there, and TK is still writing hit songs. People love him that much that as long as he keeps giving people what they want they look past his misdeeds, because in all honesty people like TK are easy to separate art from artist. His music is never deeply personal, but usually messages and concepts he finds interesting or wants to use because it fits the mood of whatever song. It can be emotional and powerful, but never anything deeply personal with the exception of some stuff like "You Can Find" and a big part of it is that he is a man who's quality of music also depends on who he is working with. He works with talented people who make his compositions even better, that's just it. His new songs he wrote for Ayumi Hamasaki are bangers, so he still knows how to write good songs, but we can only hope that whatever he does with TM Network he doesn't do anything worse than the "Please Heal the World" NFT situation.