10 Songs I Wish Were Anime Themes - part 2

As I said before, this series of blogs contains songs I think would make for good Opening Themes AND Ending Themes. Last time we had an obvious candidate for an OP, and with “IF” we have my first offering for an ED. We also have a song here that I have a LOT for personal nostalgia for. Back when The Internet was still young and YouTube was only just starting out, streaming 240p fan recordings of music videos was about the only way I ever found out about Japanese bands. “IF” by Triceratops was one of the first songs I stumbled onto that I really liked, or at least one of the few from those days I continued to like after “being from Japan” ceased to be reason enough for me to like something. Apparently this song was fairly well known in Japan around the turn of the millennium, but Triceratops never did an anime theme (and had no spiky hair & make up), so most people on our side of the planet have never heard of them. And honestly, they seem to have maintained a low enough profile even in Japan that nobody’s bothered to post a higher quality version of the video for “IF” since back in the day.

That’s both a real shame and totally understandable, since Triceratops are fairly straight laced by “wacky Japan” standards. I would describe them as “the pillows without the weirdness streak,” a very straightforward example of Foo Fighters/Lenny Kravitz/Goo Goo Dolls-style mainstream early aughts rock. They’re probably a bit boring to anybody who goes to Japan specifically in search of the “weird foreign stuff’ vibe, but if you want some nice, mellow, drving-around-on-a-summer-afternoon music, Triceratops’ first few albums will absolutely serve you well. I’m not sure if I can call “IF” their most laid-back song of all, but it’s right up there, with its relaxing mid-tempo rhythm and slightly Jazz-y chords. It’s very Alternative Rock in the latter sense, when “Alternative” meant “playing in Starbucks.” I think that makes “IF” a great pick for a calming, cool-down sort of closing theme.

That’s the thing about doing both types of themes for these blogs. A good OP is all about building hype, grabbing attention, and setting the tone for the show that’s to come. A good ED still has to fit the tone of the show, obviously, but even the most high octane show is usually going to have a calmer song to close things out than it had opening. What’s more, the animation behind the credits is very rarely anywhere near as elaborate as the opening, which further necessitates a more calming song to balance things out. (and before one of you smart-alecky brings up FLCL, everything about that anime breaks convention on purpose).

If I had to imagine an anime that “IF” would be a closing song for, it’d have to be a reeeaaally mellow slice-of-life show. Ya know, some highschool dramedy based on a romance manga or light novel, the kind where the entire plot is built around some misunderstanding that would totally resolved if the cast all sat down and communicated with each other for five minutes but instead they spend the whole series dancing around it. Also, the title would have to be a whole paragraph long.

Have I properly shown my snobbish disdain for anime I don’t like yet? Hey, at least I’m not going off on a whole fantasy rundown of the non-existent show’s plot, like I did with the Finish Baseball thing. That said, the thought does occur just now that, horrifyingly, we have reached the point where a song that came out in 1999 actually counts as “nostalgic.” So maybe “IF” would work well in a period piece, a show set at the turn of the millennium, full of twenty year old songs and dated cultural references and the like. Ya know, stuff to make us all feel old. The point is, “IF” would be a great conclusion to a more low-stakes, slower-paced show, especially one with a nice simple credits sequence. You know, the kind with just a single drawing in the corner of the screen, or a simple looping animation of a character walking, or a bit of conspicuous CG showing some plot-relevant item constantly rotating throughout the whole thing. Something the TV station could speed up or do a Picture In Picture to and not feel bad about it. And, really, I just want to see “IF” be connected to an anime so that more people in the world will have some kind of idea who Triceratops are. It’s a great song, guys! Come on!