It’s been five years after the first iDOLM@STER game took over arcades, which led to two highly successful Xbox 360 games, 4 portable versions, and a whole ton of concerts and CD releases. Last weekend, Namco Bandai announced the newest installment of the famous music-producing simulation: The iDOLM@STER 2.

Interestingly, the sequel is going straight to console this time, skipping the coin-op business entirely and jumping straight into the world of console sales and super-profitable DLC. The character designs and rendering engine have been updated and characters from the PSP version have replaced old favorites; most notably, though, the trailer includes the all-new song “The World is All One,” which has successfully wormed itself into my brain.

Oh, and extra love for the Namco 30th anniversary bumper. I could watch that all day.

Today’s target for Tuesday Tunes is the talented Kuribayashi Minami, who was recently announced as yet another guest at Anime Expo by MangaGamer. She rose to fame as the voice of Haruka in the (in)famous visual novel Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (also known as Rumbling Hearts in the States), and purely through the power of her voice she’s become  a star in the anisong world. More on her career, and more great songs from her, after the jump.

Her career path is fascinating to me, because she’s one of only two singer/seiyuu I know of who doesn’t change names between adult roles and regular roles (the other is Sakakibara Yui, in case you’re curious). She’s been the face and voice of famed adult game maker Age Soft for over a decade; over time, she’s also performed in all sorts of all-ages projects, from Super Robot Wars OG and Mai-HiME to Kurokami and Katanagatari. Her image doesn’t suffer at all from half of her roles involving moaning, and that’s fine by me, because that means more opportunities to hear her voice.

The song above is the mournful “Haruka Naru Chikyuu no Uta” (“Songs of Distant Earth,” based on the Arthur C. Clarke story). It is the amazing and melancholy finale to Muv-Luv Alternative, and was one of the two songs that cemented her as one of my favorite singers in the anime world. The other? The nostalgic and wistful “Hoshizora no Waltz” (“Waltz of the Starry Sky”), which was infinitely better than the KimiNozo series that it capped.

Kuribayashi Minami has a pure quality to her voice that I definitely appreciate in her many ballads and occasional candy pop offerings, but she can belt too, as proven in the Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars ending, one of her many crossovers into JAM Project territory:

She’s also great live, with a playful yet forceful stage presence and a strong voice that translates well from studio to stage. I’ve seen her once already at Animelo 2008, and I’m psyched that I get to see her again in 2008. I mean, check her out at last year’s Animelo Summer Live with Taniyama Kishou, her KimiNozo co-star. Sadly, the audio isn’t great, but that’s more the fault of the Animelo DVD than her.

And, because I want to squeeze in one more:

Man, I can’t wait for AX now. So many concerts to go to, and it costs less than the $800 or so I spent to get out to Animelo last time!

The theme song for the Japanese 25th anniversary of Disney on Ice is Korean pop star BoA’s funk-heavy dance tune “Woo Weekend.” The above video really reminds me of the pop videos that you see during the commercial breaks on the Disney channel, which is kind of a career throwback for BoA after her more mature, club-oriented American album. I heard a lot of that last album around here – it made it big in the San Francisco club circuit, and because of that, BoA performed at last year’s Pride parade.

That’s not really why I find this song notable, though. I find it notable because it’s a Japanese Disney song written by a good friend of mine, Yoko. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Disney fan or a BoA fan or Avex fan or whatever – I strongly believe that you should pick up this single because Yoko’s awesome. Click past the jump for proof.

That's us at Fanime.

How can you resist that smile? She’ll be so happy when you buy copies of the single! You can always buy it as a present for a Disney-loving friend of yours, since the majority of the population loves Disney.

Above is the main reason I’m excited for a new season of Code Geass. I’ve always had an obsession with Spanish guitar, and between composer Nakagawa Koutarou and singer/songwriter Sakai Mikio, they’ve delivered the goods on guitar since 2001′s s-CRY-ed.

Sure, the second season of Code Geass was an exercise in shark-jumping until there were no sharks left to jump. But let me tell you: if Code Geass: Boukoku no Akito has songs like Mikio’s “Callin’,” “Picaresque,” and “Tabidachi no Kane ga Naru,” I don’t care if the story has rocket emperors, God flying around in a spaceship, or Lelouch’s ghost flying around and killing of all the younglings.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4E0LhNM37A]

Sadly, sine the Black Knights have zero reason to show up in the new series, I don’t think we’ll be hearing their guitary goodness anymore. That’s okay, though, because hot damn, is “Black Knights” a good track. Sunrise better deliver!

Hell, I’ll even accept Sakai’s randomly happy stuff, like the Planetes ending:

But oh man, if they don’t bring back Nakagawa and by extension Sakai, I’m going to scream bloody murder…

It’s a slow news cycle in Japan thanks to the Golden Week holiday, which means it’s time to take a good hard look at some of the music that’s been released for this season, both good and bad. Above is our first topic: the guitar-heavy opening for Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao, “Realove: Realife” by seiyuu idol group Sphere. It’s a decent tune with the kind of heavy action tempo that I wish the show would demonstrate too, but the TV size hides the group’s shortcomings with this song – if you listen to the full version, I highly recommend listening closely for Toyosaki Aki’s solo, where she proves that while she can carry a tune alright, she can’t sing at the same volume as the other 3 in her group. She sounds like a 5-year-old in a punk band, and it’s hilarious.

I have a soft spot for the Heroman ending by FLOW, “Calling.” This shouldn’t be any surprise to people who have ridden in my car, since I own all of their albums and can’t wait for Fanime to confirm them as guests (oops, did I say that out loud?). The band specializes in light, catchy rock that just makes your day better, and this one is no different. Even the horrendously egregious Engrish in the background can’t bring me down when I listen to this one.

And then we have the surprise star of this season, Sawashiro Miyuki’s whimsically dancy “Title Nante Jibun de Kangaenasai na” (“Think of  a title yourself”). It’s a string of vicious insults sung in Miyukichi’s smoothest tones and set to something resembling ragtime, and I can’t help but love it. The animation that goes with it is just as crazy and weird as the show itself, and I wonder when I’ll be able to buy the single, because this is too fun not to own.

Go after the jump if you’re brave, because that’s where I’ll be posting some of the most execrable “music” from this season (hint: it’s sung by seiyuu who did it on the cheap, and these seiyuu don’t have any business singing for themselves. There’s a reason some characters have a speaking voice and a singing voice).

The Mayoi-Neko Overrun! opening showcases all that is bad in anime music, by throwing a bunch of young, inexpensive girls at a sound wall and hoping that they stick. They don’t, so they try and cover that up by randomly cutesy noises, but when it comes down to it, the song is arranged horribly and there’s just nothing to like about “Happy New Year.”

I’ll probably catch some flak for this, but I really, really hate the K-On!! opening for this season. The first season’s opening wasn’t legendary by any means, but it was pleasant enough and had a fun indy vibe to it. “Go! Go! Maniac” sounds hideously overproduced, and reminds you “Oh yeah, this girl can’t really sing.”

What songs from the current season do you like, or which ones do you skip as soon as you can?

Last weekend, as my friends and I belted out our favorite otaku hits, I read all of the lyrics to current favorite “Only My Railgun” for the first time. While I usually try to ignore the lyrics to anime songs (trust me, you’re better off not knowing the lyrics to 90% of all Japanese songs, the lyrics are unbelievably inane), I couldn’t help but do a double take at the random English lines in the song.

I thought I was hardened to that kind of thing, but this one was just too heinous to ignore: “Looking! The blitz loop this planet to search way. Only my railgun can shoot it.” I mean, really? That doesn’t even mean anything when you translate it back to Japanese. What is a blitz loop? Is it a verb? Do you have to be 18 or over to blitz loop a planet? It brought up all kinds of questions that had no answers.

Anyway, that got me to compile a list of some of the most hilariously bad Engrish in anime music that I could think of, and over two decades of fandom dredged a few hits out of my brain, like “I believe in drastic my soul.” See my all-time top five after the jump. Feel free to chime in with your own favorites, too!

These five were chosen based on how little sense they make, not based on pronunciation – there are so many examples of badly mangled English that it wouldn’t be very much fun. They’re in no particular order – here we go!

Drastic My Soul

I love Mikio Sakai’s music, since I’m a sucker for a well-played classical guitar. But every time I sing the ending song to s-CRY-ed, I try not to snigger when the last line comes up. It’s just so jarringly out of place, but he sings it with such conviction that I can feel that he really does “believe in drastic my soul.”

My theory on what it means: “I believe in my dramatic soul” doesn’t make much sense either, but it’s the closest thing I have. The only other option is that “drastic my soul” is some kind of new religion that he’s singing about. I’m not ruling that out.

Anata Dake Mitsumeteru

Here’s another one that comes up a lot during my singing sessions – the classic Slam Dunk theme inserts a random “Spicy your mama” into an otherwise normal pop song about trying to catch a guy by learning more about his hobbies. It’s random, it’s hilarious, it’s enough to make my favorites list!

My theory on what it means: Ooguro Maki got tired of changing her hobbies and her looks to please this guy, and just ate his mother instead. With fava beans and a nice chianti!

Blue Water

While a lot of people still mock the infamously mispronounced “Fly Me to the Moon” from Evangelion, that at least makes sense once you get past the horrible pronunciation. However, if someone can tell me what “Don’t forget to try in mind” means and can prove their hypothesis, then that person will be the first.

My theory on what it means: I… I honestly don’t know.

You Get to Burning

I was initially going to put this in as an honorable mention, but some lobbying by my contemporaries, many of whom spent endless hours in high school wondering what would happen when you get to burning, and how much it hurt.

My theory on what it means: Combined with the last line, “Going your days grow up,” I am inclined to think that this song is one long, oblique reference to the dangers of venereal disease to young and reckless people. The other option is that she’s singing about self-immolation.

Hybrid Rainbow

Honestly, I could have chosen any of FLCL‘s music here, as The Pillows are fond of inserting English where English doesn’t belong. It’s good music, and I still listen to it from time to time, but I don’t like thinking very hard about trying to feel the hybrid rainbow. It sounds like the kind of slang I don’t want to see demonstrated in person, and I’d like to shut down my imagination before I think about what it means.

My theory on what it means: “Hybrid rainbow” is probably some kind of dirty euphemism, and that’s as far as I want to let my mind wander.

Honorable mentions:

“Far away place where two futures become a lights up dream” – “Nocturne,” Memories Off 2nd
“Just wild beat communication” – “Just Communication,” Gundam Wing
“Astro energy filling up power to space” – “Galactic Warriors Gingaman”

I leaned a bit toward older titles with this list, and I’m hoping that those of you who comment will add in a few more modern hits.

What happens when you take JAM Project and their old-school anime sensibilities away from the vaunted Super Robot Wars series? A whole lot of fan service rushes in to fill the vacuum. You get Mizuki Nana playing a busty fairy princess, and watch an opening sequence that’s so shamelessly fan service-oriented that one of the girls fondles herself and looks enviously at the other girls. Why, back in my day of playing Super Robot Wars, the opening song was called “Rocks” and consisted of a lot of shouting the words “SUPER ROBOT” over and over again. And we were happy with these things! Check after the jump for what I’m used to out of the Super Robot Wars series, and not this seiyuu idol stuff!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play my newly arrived copy of Mugen no Frontier Exceed in a corner where no one can see me, so as to hide my shame.

The aforementioned Rocks was the opening for the first Super Robot Wars game I played, OGs for the PS2. It has a great guitar intro, and goes down quickly from there, but it still gets stuck in the head quite easily:

However, my friends shoved Super Robot Wars music down my throat years before, and the defining song of Super Robot Wars history is definitely the epic Skill, which is a concert favorite and a karaoke staple. It’s hard not to love the song with the incredible live performances they keep putting on at Animelo:

Man. That song makes me want to punch a robot in the face. With my MANLINESS.

For lovers of anime music, the Animelo concert series led by JAM Project is like watching the Dream Team year after year, as all of the best . But having been there once for the 2008 concert, let me tell you that I have no urge to stand out in the August heat in Tokyo for one more minute in my life. It was a great concert, but unless it decides to move to a less humid time of year or a cooler climate, I’m not going back.

So, while their announcement of a November concert in Shanghai doesn’t affect me directly, it gives me hope that within a couple of years, we can see something like it in the US. It’d be a pretty tough sell to try and fly that many acts over the Pacific unless they’re 100% sure they’re going to sell out, but its very existence means that JAM Project’s international tour, which touched American shores at Otakon in 2008, was successful enough to make international ventures viable to Japanese promoters. So, I’m hoping that the Shanghai concert sells out overwhelmingly, and that in 2011 or 2012, the Animelo concerts will come to my neck of the woods. Hit the break to see some of the great performances and anime all-stars that have graced this concert series over the last six years.

This post wouldn’t be complete without me drooling all over Mizuki Nana, so let me take care of that first. This is the kind of performance you can only get at Animelo: it’s Ali Project and Mizuki Nana joining forces to sing one of the Rozen Maiden openings.

Wouldn’t you want to see that live? I wish I could have. I was a year too late, though. Instead, I had to content myself with awesome performances like my favorite Macross song and a duet/medley of two of my favorite Gundam songs:

If that wasn’t epic enough for you anisong fans out there, how about the big ending number from 2009, which had 25 singers belting out in harmony?

Man, I hope this concert comes to the States.

Is it anime? Nope. Is it awesome? Hell yeah. The Muppets Studio has always been great at producing amusing musical vignettes, and in this day and age they haven’t let up. Check out some of the other musical endeavors they’ve put on YouTube after the jump, including an amazing rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody and a Swedish take on French opera.

Bohemian Rhapsody as performed by the Muppets made huge waves on the Internet a few months ago, and for good reason: it’s amazing.

But as an eternal fan of Beaker and the Swedish Chef (my license plate is BORK*3), I love their version of the Habanera the most.

Anime song mega-label Lantis has posted the full 344-second “Yasashii Boukyaku” (“Gentle Oblivion”) as its latest promotional video on YouTube, and I’m surprised at the fan reaction to it being so divided. It’s a melancholy and mournful tune, very fitting for the upcoming Vanishment of Haruhi Suzumiya movie and its sad-girl-in-snow pace. The movie is a mere week away, and hopefully the American arm of Bandai will be survive long enough to release the movie for us – it’s a good novel, and should be more than enough to make up for that train wreck that tried to pass for a second season.

What do you think?