Rokushin Gattai God Mars - Liner Notes from BGM Collection Vol. 1, by Sei Toujoubeppu & Kei Wakakusa (Part 1)

 

The liner notes inside the gatefold pages of God Mars' first BGM collection release (K22G-7068) contain some comments left behind by Sei Toujoubeppu, the show's music selector, and Kei Wakakusa, the show's music composer. I decided to scan said comments back when I used to own a copy of this release and passed it off to someone else for translating.

An English translation of these comments (courtesy of "Yume") can be found below :)
This post will cover the comments written by Mr. Toujoubeppu.

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"The challenges we faced while producing BGM for "Rokushin Gattai God Mars"

Music Editor: Sei Toujoubeppu

Kei Wakakusa was in charge of the music production for "Rokushin Gattai God Mars", and this is how we got to know each other. This was the first time Mr. Wakakusa had to work on an anime, which forced us to hold staff meetings over and over again.

For example, we wanted a soundtrack piece titled "Planet Gishin" to convey the idea of evil spreading through the universe, and it was really difficult for us to get such a vague idea across. We'd like you listen to the results of our hard work, and to compare the images evoked by both parts of this song. Another point of concern was the need to properly convey the image of Zel, the villain who lives on said planet. In a sense, Mr. Wakakusa could have been opposed to the very idea of such a villain residing somewhere in space. The melody he composed to be used as the villain's theme was so beautiful, it wasn't easy to properly incorporate it into the series. I believe each and every of the songs composed by Mr. Wakakusa reflects his own personality, the kindness and warmth of his heart.

The show's theme song is called "The King of Space! God Mars". When we listened to its demo tape for the first time, we thought it was impressive far beyond our wildest expectations. We also thought it has been arranged in a wonderfully professional manner. Before I met Mr. Wakakusa, somebody told me he is a real workaholic. I didn't realize the sheer extent of that until we started to work together.

Now, let me shed some light on the way we picked specific tunes to use. First, the dialogue was recorded and synchronized with the footage in a process called "timing". That's how a rush print was made. Then we watched said rush print and decided where to insert the music, aiming to achieve the most dramatic effect. Afterwards we took the footage with the voices we have previously recorded, and selected one from over a hundred BGM pieces to be added to each given scene. Naturally, we kept each of the BGM pieces in mind while doing so. The hardest part here was matching the BGM to the timing of each scene, so we felt truly indescribable joy when we got the timing just right.

Our field of work may seem really fun from a layman's point of view, but in fact it is really complicated. I believe only those who call editing their passion would be able to get things done. I could go as far as to say even the most ardent music appreciators may find this line of work too hard for them. So to say, on many occasions outstanding music painstakingly created by the composers becomes nothing more than background music after it passes through my hands…