How The Pillows Fits Perfectly to FLCL and Why Soundtracks are Very Important

As you may already know, FLCL is my favorite anime of all time as they have the best soundtrack of all time. FLCL utilized the musics of a pretty obscure band at the time, The Pillows, and managed to steal so many hearts with that. With the sequel, FLCL : Alternative, is coming this weekend, let's talk about how The Pillows' songs fit perfectly to FLCL and why it is important for soundtracks to shine.

Everyone interpret FLCL differently but most of people interpret FLCL as a coming of age anime with the theme of growing up as its major plot point. The original FLCL told us the story of Naota who struggled to grow up and pass his rebellious yet childish phase while one of the sequel that has aired last season, FLCL : Progressive, told us a story about teenage passion and young love story between the two main character. FLCL always revolve around growing up and youth so this is where and how The Pillows fits to the theme.

The Pillows itself is a Japanese alternative rock band formed in 1989. Every The Pillows songs always remind me of my middle school to early high school days that were filled with listening into alternative rock bands and having your own band to hang around and jam. The Pillows have this nostalgic feeling lingering on every of their song. It may caused by how The Pillows simply consisted of vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and drummer and almost never added that electronic sampling which mirroring how high school bands work. High school students are not rich so they may only use the basic of the basic without any tweaks or whatsoever and that's why The Pillows have this young and youth feeling ran through their music. And this feeling is why The Pillows is perfect for FLCL and its theme of youth and growing up.

From here, it is shown that soundtracks is very important to build up a show and make the show live up to its theme. Aside from FLCL, there's one other show that has a great soundtrack that really resonate the theme of that show and has one of the best insert songs of all time despite their very bad second half plot. And that show is Guilty Crown. What makes Guilty Crown special is of course, its insert song performer, EGOIST. The first song that introduced us into the first episode, Eutrepe, fits the theme very well as it resonate the conflict that will eventually revealed in the next events. The conflict in the first half of Guilty Crown always felt very secretive and built underground with not many known about what the hell is going on (especially the students or mob characters) even the main character himself did not know what the hell is going on before he met Inori. And with this song alone, many people attached to this anime and watch till the end while enduring that badly written second half because they have fallen in love with that first episode performance. Now, we know very well that soundtrack is very important for a show to shine. And with equally good writing, it may reach somewhere like FLCL that is both praised from its narrative and soundtracks.

It is very safe to say that soundtracks help us to set the theme to the ground and on point. It is shown too that soundtracks help us to build the setting of the story and of course, the hype of the show. FLCL and Guilty Crown are just two examples of anime with very great soundtracks that could steal your heart to stay still and watch. The recent anime, Kokkoku, proofed that a very good and hyped opening could make you stay for a not so good anime. I could not stand the animation quality of the now airing, Persona 5 The Animation, but stay anyway just to enjoy that musics by Shoji Meguro. In the end, soundtrack is the very first thing that will decide would you stick to the show or left the show for good and it is very important for any anime to have a very high appreciation towards the soundtracks of the anime.

(First published at MAL : https://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=818296)