Don’t Touch Shinichirō Watanabe’s Playlist

On the morning I meet Shinichirō Watanabe to talk about music at a dimly lit hotel in Manhattan, he’s wearing shades to hide a hangover from a visit to the Blue Note the night before, where he listened to jazz into the wee hours of the morning. The anime auteur responsible for Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo has been rewriting the rules of anime music since the ’90s, subverting tropes, reimagining genres, and weaving together disparate signifiers from the past and future to tell deeply affecting stories that speak to our present. No mere window dressing, music is an integral part of the worlds he builds and the characters he populates them with. “Before I became an anime director, I was a huge music fan, a connoisseur,” Watanabe says. “But as I came into the industry, I noticed that the use of music wasn’t satisfying.”

Watanabe has spent much of his career changing that. His distinct musical voice is present in all of his works, regardless of where (or when) the narrative is set. Cowboy Bebop was famously informed by 1940s American jazz; Samurai Champloo ports a hip-hop aesthetic to the Edo period; Space Dandy was a New Wave space-cowboy saga. Watanabe’s latest show, Lazarus — set to premiere on Adult Swim on April 5 — draws from various innovations he’s made throughout his career, using the music of Floating Points, Bonobo, and Kamasi Washington to help tell a story about a futuristic society facing a doom of its own creation.

In Japanese anime, there is typically one director for the visuals and another for the sound, with the latter choosing the music. After a poor experience sharing those duties on his 1994 debut, Macross Plus, Watanabe decided he needed to choose the music himself. He’s been in charge ever since. With the impending release of Lazarus, we presented the longtime director with a selection of needle drops from his career for insights into his selection and editing process. His answers offer a peek behind the curtain of some of the most memorable scenes in anime history, a glimpse of the magic that happens when music and visuals elevate each other to create unforgettable scenes that we’re still talking about decades later. As Watanabe tells me, “I always thought the relationship between the music and the visuals should be 50-50.”

“Rush,” Seatbelts

Cowboy Bebop, “Asteroid Blues”

In Japanese anime, the music cues are created before the visuals. For this first project, we decided that it was going to be a space-adventure show. But if you give that information to the composers, you will get a song that sounds like Star Wars. The instruction I gave to composer Yoko Kanno was, “This is not a space opera, this is more like space jazz — no symphonic music needed.” I forbade any space opera. I had to consciously break through the stereotypical music for science fiction.

So we made a lot of jazz, blues, and other types of music. There was a kind of cross-fertilization; from the tracks Yoko created, I’d pick and choose which to use in which scene, and that music would, in turn, inspire us to create new scenes. And because she could see the first few episodes, that would inspire her to make other kinds of music.

This scene is the climatic action scene of the first episode, so we wanted the music to be a signature for the show. But I didn’t want to make it a set rule that an action scene would use a certain kind of music — that would get stale — it’s just meant to convey the first image of Cowboy Bebop to the audience. Each week we tried to do things differently. I’ve been trying to do that for all my shows ever since, including Lazarus.

“Moanin,’” Art Blakey

Kids on the Slope, “Summertime”

When I was asked to do this project, I had read the manga, and I liked the fact that young people were learning and getting into jazz. The jazz standards in the manga were all pieces I knew and loved. Rather than let someone else who didn’t have that kind of direct knowledge of jazz make the series, I decided I would do it. I didn’t want anyone else to ruin it.

This scene exists in the original manga. In making it into an anime scene, we stretched it to maybe three times longer. I also have this experience, listening to records and then trying to replicate it on keyboard. That happened here. But I wasn’t quite able to do it myself. It’s why I gave up trying to be a pianist and musician. Yoko Kanno is a different kind of person. In her case, if she listens to a piece of music she can replicate it perfectly from start to finish, after one listen. The student in the scene is somewhere in between myself — who couldn’t reproduce it — and Yoko Kanno, who could do it perfectly.

“Obokuri-Eeumi,” Ikue Asazaki

Samurai Champloo, “Misguided Miscreants (Part 2)”

I just rewatched this scene, so I remember it well. This genre is called Shima-uta. It’s an Amami Shoto song, from the islands in the south of Japan. The masked character is called Pantoo, a traditional character from Okinawa.

This was an existing song, it wasn’t made for the show. It gave me a lot of inspiration for starting Samurai Champloo. I wanted to use this music in a scene where the main character almost dies, or is on a journey to the netherworld. The scene was inspired by this song, and planned before the first episode was even created.

It was a more complex piece of music. Samurai Champloo has various influences, more than  just a mixture of samurai and hip-hop. It includes these Okinawan musical influences, and from episode 16 onwards there’s the Ainu culture, the indigenous people in Northern Japan, which was later famously used in the series Golden Kamuy. Both Okinawans and the Ainu are, in Japan, minority cultures. I really wanted to introduce more than just the main majority’s culture.

“Black Out 2022,” Flying Lotus

Blade Runner: Blackout

I only do these sorts of spinoffs for things I have a real affinity for. There are many offers coming in that I refuse. If you think about who is the most suitable person to make the music of the future of Los Angeles, it’s Flying Lotus. When I offered him the project, I discovered he was also a fan of my work. For Blade Runner, there is obviously the famous score by Vangelis, and I didn’t want to imitate it. I have heard lots of Vangelis music, not just Blade Runner. I asked Flying Lotus to make music that respects his legacy but advances it further, adding elements to create something that can go beyond it, to reflect the age, and something new.

This was a different experience from what we’ve done before. With this short, the visuals were completed first, then the music was commissioned for the scene. I sent him the scene with reference music, but he’s not the kind of person who does what people say. So he changed the style a little bit and made something different. It’s a memory the character doesn’t want to remember, or  go back to.

“Dexion,” Floating Points

Lazarus, “Goodbye Cruel World”

Lazarus is made up of elements I have created in the past. But I am not reviving them, I’m doing something new. It’s hard to explain since it’s not released yet, but there is a certain flavor to this work that is not just action — it’s a story about the end of the world. It is futuristic, but there’s something profoundly sad and melancholic. So with those moods and themes, I picked musicians I thought would fit. I first decided on Bonobo and Floating Points, and the producer Jason Demarco asked me what I thought of Kamasi Washington. I was of course a big fan, and he offered to introduce us. The series goes into a lot of big questions, and Kamasi’s music is suited to that.

“Masters of the Universe,” Juno Reactor

The Animatrix, “Kid’s Story”

For this project, the Wachowskis had total control. Of course, I’m a big fan of The Matrix; they were shooting the second and third films when this was in production, and while I did watch those eventually, the first was enough to get me onboard. It’s still my favorite.

The producer, Mike Arias,  initially just slapped on some music for the concept animation. It was meant to be temporary. But by the time we were finished, that track was stuck in their minds, and they wanted to go back to that when it was finalized. And since they were financing everything, we weren’t able to go against their choice. But it was important to match the sound effects to the track, and the people who did those effects for the live action film also worked on this. We worked closely together with the sound directors on the direction of the effects.

“seele,” Yoko Kanno

Terror in Resonance, “VON”

This is basically the climax scene. The suspense is getting more intense, the tension is building, and then the explosion happens. But I didn’t want it to look like a Hollywood-style movie. While the bomb did go off, it went off very high in the atmosphere, so none of the radiation made it to the surface. But it acted like an EMP, where it basically destroyed all electronics. So that kind of setting, where they’re living in a situation where the electronics are completely gone, is kind of like a fantasy, right? I wanted to create a surreal mood, and that’s why I chose this track. The anime was very rooted in reality, it was very realistic up until this point. But it’s at this moment where the realism becomes fantastic. I try to put one of these kinds of transitions into every one of my series.

This scene is the one I wanted to do most in Terror in Resonance. The scene after the explosion, the surreal feeling from depicting a lot of places where there used to be a ton of people, but now they’re empty. This is why I wanted to work on the show.

“Criminals Usually Head South,” Yoko Kanno

Genius Party, “Baby Blue”

Since this was a short film, not a series, I couldn’t make too many tracks because I wouldn’t be able to use them all. Yoko Kanno recorded this in a band setting, it’s not really orchestration. The reference I gave her was the Kings of Convenience.

This scene is about sneaking out of school and going somewhere. So there’s a kind of calm, but it also embodies the excitement of them going on an adventure. The song is titled “Criminals Always Head South,” from a line a character says in this scene. It comes from the trope of criminals in America escaping south to the Mexican border; these kids see themselves as criminals for skipping class and heading south to the beach.

“Battlecry,” Nujabes featuring Shingo

Samurai Champloo

So for this, Nujabes sent me two sets of demo tapes and asked me to choose. This is a bit of a secret, but I ended up choosing a song that was not among those two. So Shingo rapped over the track I chose and that was supposed to be the opening. But Nujabes didn’t like the finished version. He said it was too light, too airy. So he didn’t let me listen to the final version of the track. I was eagerly waiting to hear the final version, but he never sent it. When we asked him for it, he sent us something completely different. Fortunately, I liked the new track he made. I’m not sure exactly what became of the track I originally chose, because it never came out.

The music suits the themes of the show, but that’s something that comes later. Usually I don’t have a specific theme when I start. It will emerge later on. It usually starts with the characters. In Samurai Champloo, it was Mugen who arrived first. That image of him persists even after the show has finished.

“Space Lion,” Seatbelts

Cowboy Bebop, “Jupiter Jazz (Part 2)”

This song is seven minutes long. Usually in anime, you don’t put in the whole seven minutes. I used it for the last scene of episode 13, and we added the music after edits were done. I still remember it — no edits were done to make it fit the scene, but when we placed the whole seven minutes over it, it fit perfectly. It was quite an experience. Usually I work hard to edit the scene, but in this case, it was perfect.