Today’s topic will resonate much with those who are familiar with music created in the Anime Industry, as they are pretty big players in creating the soundtracks of some of the most prominent modern animes, and their music is an iconic part of the Anime Culture.



Yoasobi is an iconic musical duo that debuted back in 2019 , featuring songwriter-producer Ayase and songwriter-vocalist Lilas Ikuta. Due to their Affiliation under Sony Music Entertainment, they had gained substantial attention from the Japanese music community since their formation, with the tracks they released having decent production value, and often featured in notable Animes.



As an Indie Music Duo, Yoasobi’s music is always related to a certain story they want to express in musical form. Aside from all the catchy, upbeat and easily recognizable melodies, along with vocals amazingly performed by Ikura, I think it is also important to highlight the underlying meaning behind the lyrics and word choice. In fact, they actually base their tracks of short stories written by other people! According to sources, they often source their inspiration from short stories written and posted on the website Monogatary.com, which I find peculiar as their tracks could be telling the story of anyone anywhere in the world! And it astounds me they manage to compose tracks that not only reflect their sources, but also amplifies them through the use of instrumentation, whilst being able to maintain a more conventional pop formula for their music.


If you're all for Zutomayo, then you'd definitely like the tracks the duo can produce.


I’m not the one to often enjoy Pop-Music as I’ve often exclaimed, but I must give credit where due, and I admittedly enjoy Yoasobi’s Music every now and then.

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From what I know and can see, almost all of Yoasobi’s releases are haunted if not filled with a pessimistic undertone, be it in their lyrics or composition style. This however is usually under shadowed by the ones outside of Japan or those who don’t speak japanese, as Yoasobi’s songs, most of them have the instrumental of what you would hear in pop or other genres you wouldn’t expect topics such as self harm, suicide, mental issues to be discussed in.



Their fans are ones of the most diverse ones if I’m being honest, you have their diehard fans that knows all and listens to all of their stuff, furries that got into them thanks to the Beastars op Kaibutsu, mainstream audience is there for Yoru ni Kakeru and the shitposters there due to Yoru ni Kakeru memes or the scream from Gunjou.



Now, on to their music, Gunjou is one of my favorite songs from Yoasobi, the music video revolves around how you should get out of your comfort zone to try new things till you find the ones that resonates with you the most or to do the things that you have always wanted to, but didn’t because not finding the time to, or lacking the confidence to get the first feet forward. This point is hammered strongly not only by the lyrics but the visuals as well, the choir part is one of the best part to showcase this,

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This to me is the most beautiful part of the song, it sings about letting your true-self out, not having any restraint on it or trying to hide it behind something, as in the end, the only way that you can become whole is that you acknowledge the voice from within and let it flourish. The delivery of this part is what completed the seal for me, having it be vocals and snapping only with 1 or 2 piano keys thrown in really sets the mood for me; it symbolises the pureness of that true voice within everyone, not being overshadowed by anything or accompanied by unnecessary stuff, and the fact that they are wearing masks can be interpret as the the ones that can really push us into doing something are usually not the ones who are already around you that have already known you for years on end, but the random people, total strangers even that might happen to be there to give you that one tiny push you needed, but this interpretation might be completely off as the main factor that forced the change in the music video is the catastrophic event that is the incoming meteor.



The visuals of Gunjou are also beautiful, the whole thing has a eastern paper-puppet cinema thing going for it, from foreground to background. Having that aesthetic to tell the story of a girl who finally found courage to try out stage play thanks to the impending meteor impact is beautifully fitting in a grim but not bleak way.



Then we have Halkion, which is the sole reason why I stated Gunjou is one of my favorites Yoasobi songs, as Halkion although lacking in its lyrics, it’s visual que and instruments carried it to the top of the list alongside Gunjou in my opinion.



Halkion’s story is about a girl trying to move on from her previous relationship, the concept looks simple but the execution is superb, especially with its visuals and how it concluded. How it portrayed her trying to move forward but falls back to square 1 no matter what she tried, trying to shut herself off by making boundaries, which is illustrated by rendering her in a 3d environment with chonky yet well defined hit boxes. Then there’s the background that also goes along side the story in which the music video is trying to tell, glitched out text boxes with ineligible texts with images that are also filtered through the same glitch lens, showing that when she tries to move on by erasing her past will only lead to her feeling emptiness and her past not really being resolved, which she then comes to the realization the only way to truly move on is not to buried it deep somewhere and ignore it, but to acknowledge it and accept it for how it was and how it ended, then she moved on, this part which was once again portrayed beautifully with the glitch effect removed from the images that shows her past with her man, then her throwing away a picture of them hugging to symbolise her truly able to move on in her life.



Yoasobi’s songs are all beautiful, I highly recommend checking them out if you haven’t. By the way did you realise that Yoru ni Kakeru is actually part of a bigger series that they are trying to make, the chapter 1 on the top of the music video shows that, and they have multiple songs releases that are titled with chapter 2 3 and so on, all with a similar tone to Yoru ni Kakeru, another thing for you to sink time in.