The intensity of trap music takes over Mahiro’s crazy “Tycoon” however suboptimal vocal direction and lack of clarity in the chorus drag it down.
Hana-Doll* is an idol project created by movic (TSUKIPRO, VAZZROCK, Tsukiuta, etc). 7 idols are part of Anthos, group signed to the fictional talent agency Amagiri Production.
Anthos* is comprised of Kent Ito, Wataru Komada, Toshiki Masuda, Shunichi Toki, Daiki Hamano, Seiichiro Yamashita, and Shun Horie.
Title: Tycoon Label: Movic Release date: 12/02/2021 Genre: Trap/EDM
Tracklist:
1 - Tycoon 2 - Tycoon (Off Vocal)
Track analysis:
1 – Tycoon
Mahiro goes loud and intense with “Tycoon”. The intro brings poly synths, glitchy stabs, fast-paced triplets, and a punchy bassline.
Everything about this song has an underlying eerie vibe, something that the orchestral stabs and hard-hitting trap beat only further enhance. The brief chuckles added those final touches to that twisted, intense vibe of this song.
The chorus is split into 2 different parts, one that is synth-driven and a second in which the beat and orchestral stabs go bonkers.
The first part comes across as slightly cluttered, with several synths on top of each other doing completely different things.
It’s not the easiest section to focus on because… well, there are too many things going on in the background that your only choice is focusing on the vocals – the only constant in the instrumental.
The 2nd part of this chorus changes the dynamic of the song, slowing down the beat and synths at the same time as it serves as a bridge to the following section (verse or ending of the song). The power and confidence in the performance stand out, particularly in this part.
Now, on the vocal end is Seiichiro Yamashita, tackling this song with clean singing and rapping.
I feel like his rapping ended up shining in comparison to his singing and that’s because the parts he had to sing were quite bland, not demanding much emotion from the singer + not having much depth whereas the rap has a fierce intensity.
All in all, Mahiro’s “Tycoon” embraces the intimidating vibe of trap music and counts with an overall solid performance however, a lack of clarity in the chorus and a suboptimal vocal direction end up dragging it a bit down.
“Tycoon” is available for purchase at CDJAPAN.
“Tycoon” is available for streaming on Spotify.
Do not support piracy. Remember to support Anthos* by streaming via official outlets.
It says that Yuki Mahiro, the character wrote the lyrics. Does that mean that the seiyuu of this character wrote the lyrics?
Only the character wrote the lyrics to the song – within the franchise’s lore. The seiyuu didn’t write the lyrics.
As a side note, aside from Subaru Kimura (in the Hypnosis Mic franchise and using a pseudonym, not his real name) who wrote lyrics to his character’s intro song “Ore ga Ichiro”, there are no other seiyuu so far credited as the lyricists or composers for the songs their characters in 2D groups perform. It is not common and I believe it will continue to be a rarity.
All this to say, within the Hana-Doll franchise, no seiyuu wrote lyrics nor composed the songs of the characters they portray. They only sing the songs and perform live as the characters. Hope this helps!
But then, how can a fictional character write a song?
I actually thought that the seiyuu of Mahiro wrote the lyrics because he said on twitter that he once wrote a special rap for tycoon at an event
They don’t. It’s all in-universe.
Imagine this: in a 2D music project you have idols. Those idols may, within the story, write their songs, compose them and so on. For purposes of the story, those characters wrote the songs. But that’s all there is.
At the same time, seiyuu are just hired to voice and sing as their characters. That is all. They don’t write lyrics nor compose songs for the characters they voice – except for really unique situations in which that has happened -as I explained in the previous comment.
In reality, a professional lyricist and composer work on those songs because: the 2D characters do not exist. That’s how it goes. Everything within 2D music is fictional.
When it comes to composing music and writing the lyrics, you have to check the credits on your streaming platform or check the booklet in the physical CDs you may purchase. For example, Anthos* songs are usually composed by professional composers such as Leeep, Kan Takahiro or Zakbee.
When it comes to the lyrics, you will find the songs officially credited to professional lyricists as well although, at times, for purposes of the story in the 2D project, the songs were created by character A or B.
So there is a clear separation between what it is said for purposes of the story and immersion in a 2D music project. In reality, the music and lyrics are crafted by professionals that were hired by the project’s creators to work on the music, not the seiyuu. And seiyuu only perform the songs and voice the characters.
As far as Mahiro’s seiyuu – Seiichiro Yamashita (let’s put a name on him because he is awesome and voices many more characters than Mahiro) – saying that: he may have improvised that part during an event. Officially, he is not credited as the lyricist for that song, that is actually Leeep.
Hope this answers your question, Moyu!
But then, why would a composer or lyricist write only English lyrics for Chise? I thought his seiyuu Wataru Komada wrote them because he is fluent in English. Normally there aren’t only English lyrics
Writing lyrics is usually a lyricist’s job, not a composer’s (although a composer can dabble in lyrics writing and vice-versa).
Because it plays to the seiyuu’s strengths. When you hire a seiyuu, you are thinking about what they can, potentially, bring to the character and project. It’s no coincidence seiyuu known for voicing characters or for having a “sexy” voice end up performing sexy songs, for example. It was not the seiyuu that chose that, it was the producers that had that into account when they casted the seiyuu to voice a specific character.
In this case, if you hire a seiyuu and know that they can sing comfortably in English, why not having them perform in English at times? It doesn’t mean the seiyuu wrote lyrics or chose to perform in English.
It means that the producers potentially had as one of their objectives to reach a wider audience – international fans, for example – and it was really necessary to have someone performing in English.
Also, it’s not rare for 2D music projects to have songs with English parts for seiyuu to perform, regardless if the seiyuu are fluent, on conversational level or completely new to speaking English.
You have songs in fully or with parts in English such as GYROAXIA’s “ALL MY PARTS” (with Jin Ogasawara on vocals), NOISE NOVA’s Senna “Turning Point” (Soma Saito on vocals), Loulou*di with “Butterfly Knife” (Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Shunsuke Takeuchi and Daiki Yamashita on vocals) and BAE (Gakuto Kajiwara performs a lot of English and Ayumu Murase does English and Korean) and AMPRULE in the Paradox Live franchise also have songs with lyrics in English (also Korean).
None of the seiyuu I just mentioned wrote lyrics to the character songs they perform even if some – Soma Saito, Shunsuke Takeuchi and Gakuto Kajiwara – have a solid conversational level of English.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that Wataru Komada has said it before that he understands English to some degree but not that he is fluent (Within Anthos*, only Daiki Hamano can call himself fluent as he’s shown on multiple interviews that he doesn’t need an interpreter for him and can actually have comfortable conversations in English with foreign interviewers – interestingly enough, he also has a solo song as RYOGA with English lyrics it’s called “The Days”).
Hope this helps better understanding all this!