Takanori Arisawa
Bishoujo senshi Sailor Moon SuperS -Ongaku shuu-

I hate the expression "classical music." I would love to know why over time this expression has become consolidated in popular and colloquial language, bringing together ALL music that is at least fifty or a hundred years old, and whose only reason for being grouped together is this age-related discrimination, when in fact the expression "classical music" does have a precise meaning and corresponds to the period 1750~1815. Even the semantic meaning of "classic," that is "model," does not justify such a massive and indiscriminate grouping, as even the greatest composers of the past have left us pages that are not particularly memorable and thus not classifiable as models. Not to mention those musicians who, while not shining due to genius and having left no work that could serve as an inspiring model, are nonetheless included in the category for merely historical reasons. But to put two artists together based solely on a chronological criterion means Nick Cave and Britney Spears play the same genre, as both operate in the same period: it is madness; yet in the future, say in two hundred years, Nick Cave and Britney Spears will also be identified as classical music. However, for purely philological reasons, those that could genuinely be interpreted as classical music today (in the wrong but more widespread sense of the term) are soundtracks. Artists like Burt Bacharach, Ennio Morricone, John Williams, and many others offer entertainment music of another level, only for a much broader audience than the high-level entertainment music that once was the preserve of only the wealthiest classes (not to mention the fact that many things that seem incredibly high today were written for the lowest audiences at the time, a typical example being The Magic Flute). Soundtracks are the most glaring example of "contemporary classical music" (an expression WITHOUT any real sense, but it gives the idea), also because they are the type of music that most and most easily draws inspiration from past models, which, just as at the time used to describe a feeling in a theater scene or abstractly, now does so in a film scenario, and this inspiration from the past is also found in those soundtracks you would least expect to draw from the past models, namely those for animated films; a master in this art of reminiscing is Takanori Arisawa, who is famous worldwide for having written the five + three + one OST for the five series + three movies + one special of Sailor Moon (in addition to many others, all of high quality). Of these nine soundtracks, his absolute masterpiece is certainly the one for the fourth series of the sailor-suited heroine, Sailor Moon SuperS (in Italy Sailor Moon and the Mystery of Dreams).

In this new adventure, with a clearly fairy-tale inspiration, the Earth is this time threatened by the Dead Moon Circus, a group of villains searching for the unicorn Pegasus to seize its magic horn; to hide, Pegasus has transformed into the wondrous dreams of a person, so the circus henchmen (first the Amazon Trio, then the Amazon Quartet) will kidnap poor souls to look in their dreams for the winged horse until they find the person offering it refuge. When in 1995 he was asked to score this work, Takanori Arisawa had already worked over the previous three years on three series and two films of the Sailor Moon saga and already knew very well the tone the OST should have, but this time the commitment was different and much more ambitious than in the past: the series director Kunihiko Ikuhara (who surrounds himself only with great talents) asked for a grand imaginative effort from the various character designers, graphics, and creatives to design a colorful and original world where everything was quirky and extravagant, and every aspect of the cartoon (from music to editing) had to be strongly recognizable and characterized. Therefore, Arisawa's work was not simply to refresh the themes already known to the public but to create something completely new, and to do so he built himself a solid foundation of past models for inspiration. The indispensable reference for the circus theme is the great art of Nino Rota: from the Milanese composer, Arisawa captured the quick and syncopated melodies and the festive arrangements for winds, which are the typical instruments of a band. Then the Japanese musician turned to another typical circus standard, namely Eastern European and Gypsy sounds: Béla Bartók's symphonies are based on real examples of Gypsy and Romani folk music personally collected by the composer, and his fast violin fantasies well fit the stage and tent. Again, perfect for the theme are the grand romantic string harmonizations developed by Johannes Brahms, towards whom Arisawa showed interest already from the third series with thematic pieces for Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. An emblematic alien element is offered by the strong jazz inspiration from cotton clubs with the very precise use of clarinet and soprano sax inspired by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. Finally, everything is held together by the choice to give thematic meaning to the instruments, just as Sergei Prokofiev did for Peter and the Wolf (where each character has its instrument that represents it), the same Prokofiev who wrote memorable ballet music, which can be considered the first true "soundtracks" in a contemporary sense (instrumental music accompanying a scene's action). By combining these four melodic-harmonic-allegorical elements (three homogeneous and one entirely foreign) and holding them together with the glue of thematic consistency, Arisawa created for himself a rich starting environment from which he managed to achieve an absolutely extraordinary result.

The soundtrack Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon SuperS -Ongaku Shuu- ("The beautiful warrior Sailor Moon SuperS -Music Collection-") opens with the opening theme Moonlight Densetsu by the Moon Lips, which is a banal-but-cute example of j-pop (but it has now become a cult), and then one by one the OST pieces parade, which are not edited one by one but strangely gathered in long tracks containing all the music related to a certain theme. Right after the theme song, a complete change of direction: a sort of new age atmosphere introduces us to Yume de Mita Hyoishou no Mori ("Dreaming of the Crystal Forest"), which gathers Pegasus' thematic pieces, animated by moving and broad string melodies. Another track, another register: Sailor Senshi no Yuuga na Houkago ("The Sailor warriors after school") gathers the various lighthearted backgrounds accompanying the daily lives of our heroines, expressed with soft and joyful melodies played by a great variety of instruments (the first sequence is beautiful with a playful Gershwinesque game of clarinet and piano). It turns dramatic with Otonatachi no Yuutsu ("The adults' melancholy"), and then, finally, here they are, the villainous music, the Dead Moon Circus: they are undoubtedly the most interesting, varied, and articulated part of the album. Kijintachi no Circus dan ("The mysterious circus troupe") is a short suite of three absolutely exceptional pieces: in the first, Arisawa establishes the recurring theme of the bad guys' band with a Gypsy solo violin rich in trills, mordents, and other embellishments accompanied by a small orchestra, then the theme is reworked gloomily with a solo clarinet and strings, and finally, a third chromatic variation is performed by a string quartet with a sustained and slightly country sound. Likewise, Utsukushii Yume no Kagami ("The beautiful mirror of dreams") gathers extraordinary pieces: in the cartoon, they accompany the clashes between the Amazon Trio and Quartet and the Sailor warriors, but listening to them out of context, these pieces showcase excellent ideation, with horror, then thrilling, and then burlesque moments; this latter aspect is represented by two tracks where -given the circus theme- the arrangement plays on a dialectic and dialogued contrast between violins/xylophone and oboe/electric guitar, reaching truly fantastic levels. Another highlight of the OST is Amazon Trio no Wana ("The trap of the Amazon Trio"), which gathers the music with which the villains capture their victims: the first part is a wonderful free-jazz piece where firstly a circus organ in 3/4 time is joined by a soprano sax then a piano in a perfect blend, followed by a seductive little waltz and finally a piece somewhat heartbreaking for piano and solo violin. Ending the series of pieces for the Dead Moon Circus is Amazon BAR, which has nothing to do with everything heard so far: in the cartoon, the Amazon Trio gathers in a sort of night club to choose their victims, and these meetings in front of a glass of whiskey on the rocks are accompanied by the seductive notes of sax & piano, followed (incoherence upon incoherence) by a sort of tango for castanets and clarinet completely out of context. A couple more collections of romantic pieces dedicated to the various positive protagonists (performed with traditional melodic ensembles, but also in one case with a bizarre trio of sticks, triangle, and music box), and finally, the CD ends with the "service" music for the transformations of the various Sailor warriors, which are super triumphant pieces made of grand arches and wind circles, yes, but realized with taste (exemplary Double henshin! Moon & Chibimoon). The last track is the forgettable ending theme "Rashiku" Ikimasho by some Meu.

Despite the writer having strong doubts still on whether the best Sailor Moon series is the III or the IV, as for the music, there is no doubt: the fourth series is decidedly superior to all the others. The extraordinary quality of this OST's pieces goes beyond mere musical craftsmanship, beyond the stereotype of a series for young girls, beyond the average even of quality productions among anime soundtracks: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon SuperS -Ongaku Shuu- is a true and great soundtrack that elevates the product for which it was conceived. The confirmation comes from listening to these pieces outside the context for which they were created: the great intelligence in the arrangements cloaks pieces already endowed with a solid melodic structure in genuine models to follow. In this regard, it is surprising the overview of the used instruments (remember, we're talking about an anime OST, often even today composed with GarageBand, fake violins, and whatnot): besides the romantic orchestra in full regalia particularly in standard tracks (transformations, defeat of the enemy, episode's moral... all the stuff already heard but done with care indeed), here Arisawa adds more refined sounds such as balalaika, sitar, kazoo, glockenspiel, cabasa, and other clearly perceptible instruments that give an even wider breath to the pieces. And indeed, the only two poor tracks of the album are the two themes, not Arisawa's work. Having left us excellent soundtracks like this and others, the composer passed away in 2005 due to cancer: an enormous loss in the world of what, in the future, will be called classical music.