THE Masayuki Paradise

 Another month, another time for an anniversary week, and it's the first one of 2024! Alright, this one isn't that big compared to the last two anniversary weeks that I covered. That's because, while I double checked Yamamoto sensei's discography, it seems that there's only two days where we see some original albums and some anime singles turn a year older. January isn't a pretty big month of album releases. January 24, this Wednesday, sees the 28th anniversary of Masayuki Tengoku , which is where I got the fan site name from! With Yamamoto's signature simplistic art style in the front cover, some catchy tracks will always have fans suffer from earworm as soon as Nippon Jindaman no Uta, Ikeike Ikebukuro, and Sora no Tantei start playing. One day later, on January 25, will see tons of album anniversaries! First off are the three Yatterman vinyl EPs that were released during its series run; two from 1977 and another from 1978. The first opening theme song, Yat...

 December is a big month for Masayukists when it comes to album releases, whether it be original albums or singles. Now that I am free from all those college stuff and it's about time I forget about it for a while, we got another whole week of anniversaries. Starting with.... Megami no Jiyuu  on December 18! In case you haven't checked the album yet, it was released under Yamamoto's own record label at that time, which was unfortunately discontinued shortly after. Yamamoto had once again blended a variety of music genres in time for the new millennium. You can hear two baseball related tracks, a peppy pop song for the title track, a 50s style love ballad, and an anime melody style on the final track to finish the 55-minute runtime. I saw some misinformation that Akemi Takada made the cover illustration. It's clearly Yamamoto's, just by looking at his art style. Takada, known as the character designer for Creamy Mami, actually did cover art for '88. December 19 ...

 On this day in 1975, Tatsunoko Production premiered an anime series that not only saved the company from falling in grace, but began a somewhat successful anime franchise. Time Bokan  started broadcasting on Fuji Television on Saturday 6:30PM and the rest is history! This was also the debut of Masayuki Yamamoto as an anime composer and anison singer-songwriter. If not for this series, he wouldn't become popular in the first place. His prominence in this franchise made him a  Tatsunoko Legend , which could explain why he was part of the 60th anniversary concert. May they continue to save and preserve history!

 While it's a shame Masayuki Yamamoto's songs outside anime music doesn't get much attention (same thing with other anison singers or seiyuus with their own music careers), going into his own career doesn't stop him from being recognized as the guy who makes anime BGM. In this article, I'm going to dig in Time Bokan references and related songs during his singer-songwriter days. First and foremost, we stumble into one of his themed songs: the  Nantokaman Series . These are series of songs set to Time Bokan-esque music dealing with the events that happened recently at that time, mostly based on Yamamoto's experience. For example, Fukkyuu Okaeriman no Uta deals with the January 1995 earthquake, infamously known as the The Great Hanshin Earthquake; it was the reason a planned concert based on his then upcoming album was cancelled. Another has Zensen Tabidachi! Otazuneman no Uta as its theme song to the Masayuki Zensen biannual tour. A couple of those songs are no...

 Here is the third part of Masayuki Yamamoto's biography. The section where he got a career that stuck him for 35 years (as of this writing). Yamamoto's anime music work went well until the time Itadakiman  was about to air. As mentioned in the previous part of the biography , the show went through changes with one of them being some musician scheduling conflict or something similar. Yamamoto was also given no character choice for him to voice. He was very disappointed with so little task to make music on that he eventually left production. Itadakiman also went through a timeslot change and failed to impress the audience -- both from the concept and the late evening schedule -- that Tatsunoko cut the episodes from the planned 26 to just 20, and ceased the Time Bokan franchise for a while. Meanwhile in MIC, after Galactic Whirlwind   Sasuraiger concluded, their shows didn't perform well through both quality and its toy sponsors. Chou Kosoku Galvion  suffered the simi...

 This is the second part of the biography, where this will focus on his anison career before finding himself into the popular music side. Masayuki Yamamoto found some moderate success with credits as a songwriter and composer for various kayokyoku and comic song artists, as well as his take on contemporary folk music with the release of his Sayonara La-la-la  single. However, there was something missing from his path that he still has yet to take part in: creating theme songs for the entertainment. In 1975, the then-president of Warner-Pioneer sought for a new theme song for a then-upcoming Tatsunoko Production anime work. At that time, Tatsunoko struggled hard to keep its profits going as some recent works were underperforming with TV ratings, like Shinzou Ningen Casshan ,  Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman and Hurricane Polymar  (Tentoumushi no Uta went well and lasted over 100 episodes). Yamamoto was very interested in making theme songs for an anime, as it was on his bucke...