Showa Anime & Tokusatsu Songs: Their History and How to Enjoy

As a Japanese record curator, Fukuyoshi from KAISHU VINYL walks you through it!

Have you ever listened to an anime theme song on vinyl? Long before streaming and CDs became the norm, the anime songs (anison) and tokusatsu songs of the Showa era spread on physical discs — on sonosheets and EP singles. Below, we'll walk through the history of anison that begins with Astro Boy, the appeal of tokusatsu hero themes, and what you need to know to enjoy this music on vinyl.

What Kind of Music Are Anison and Tokusatsu Songs?

What "anime song" covers

An anime song (anison) is a general term for the theme songs, insert songs, and image songs used in anime. The opening and ending themes are at the centre, and they carry the job of conveying a story's world and its characters in a very short span of time.

The version you hear on television is usually a "TV size" edit of about a minute and a half. The full-length version, with every line of the lyrics, first became available on records and CDs.

The subjects ranged widely — robots, adventure, sports, the everyday life of a young heroine — and the musical styles were just as varied, from marches to kayokyoku-flavoured pop, jazz, and rock. Because each work had its own musical colour, anison has never been a genre you can sum up in a single sentence.

Tokusatsu songs are anison's sibling

Tokusatsu songs are the theme and insert songs from live-action hero and monster shows. A hero transforms, fights evil, and wins — and the job of pushing that story forward with music is almost identical to anison's.

Anison Began on Records: Sonosheets and Astro Boy

The commercial starting point of anison is widely traced to Astro Boy, which began broadcasting on January 1, 1963. It was Japan's first full-length serial television anime. Its theme song, "Tetsuwan Atom," is remembered for lyrics by the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, music by Tatsuo Takai, and a performance by the Kamitakata Children's Choir.

At the time, the way to hear that theme song at home was the "sonosheet." A sonosheet is a thin, flexible vinyl record. Sold as a magazine insert or as a low-priced booklet, it cost less than an ordinary record. It was the first doorway to music that children could buy with their own pocket money.

The format was originally French, first published as a magazine insert in 1958. The name "sonosheet" was a trademark of Asahi Sonopress (later Asahi Sonorama); as a format, it is properly called a phonosheet.

Sonosheets often held more than the theme song — narrated story segments and sound effects, too. Put the disc on the turntable, and the world of the hero you had just watched on TV came back to life in your ears. That experience tied anime, music, and "the record as a physical object" together inseparably in a child's memory.

This is how anison grew up on top of the record as a medium. The picture on the television, and the disc you could keep in your hands — only when the two came together did anison take root in children's daily lives.

Dedicated Anison Singers and Tokusatsu Heroes: The Golden 1970s

The singers known as the "Four Heavenly Kings of Anison"

From the end of the 1960s into the 1970s, singers who specialised in anime and tokusatsu themes came to the fore: Isao Sasaki, Ichiro Mizuki, Mitsuko Horie, and Kumiko Osugi. They are the lineup later called the "Four Heavenly Kings of Anison."

The range of their work shows just how continuous anison and tokusatsu songs were. The same singer would take on the theme for a robot anime and the theme for a live-action hero show alike. In the job of powering a story's hero with a strong voice, there was no wall between anime and tokusatsu.

Most of the theme songs of this era were released as EP singles carrying the full-length version. You would hear a song you liked on TV, buy the record, and play it again and again — learning the singer's name and following their next work. The profession of "anison singer" could exist because there was a market where records sold.

The composers behind the tokusatsu sound

It wasn't only the singers; composers moved freely between anime and tokusatsu, too. The leading examples are Chumei Watanabe and Shunsuke Kikuchi.

Chumei Watanabe wrote the music for the robot anime Mazinger Z, as well as live-action heroes such as Android Kikaider and Himitsu Sentai Gorenger. Shunsuke Kikuchi wrote themes across every genre, from the live-action Kamen Rider to the anime Tiger Mask and Dragon Ball. Both had sharpened their craft in film music, and they brought full-scale orchestration into the music of children's programmes.

Because the same creators handled both anime and tokusatsu, the two genres share a similar sonic texture. If the thickness of the brass or the rhythm of a march sounds familiar to you, it's because on the composer's side, the genres were never really divided.

Yamato, Gundam, and the Anime Boom: How Close Did Anison Get to Kayokyoku?

In the late 1970s, the assumption that anime was only for children began to change. One trigger was Space Battleship Yamato. First broadcast on television in 1974, it sparked a major boom with its 1977 theatrical version, drawing in teenage and adult audiences to the point that the phrase "anime boom" was coined.

What deserves attention here is who wrote the theme song. "Space Battleship Yamato" had lyrics by Yu Aku, with music and arrangement by Yasushi Miyagawa. Both were front-line creators who had written many hit kayokyoku of the day. People working at the top of the kayokyoku world were writing anime themes, and those songs became widely known well beyond the works they came from. From around this point, on the creators' side, the wall between anison and kayokyoku grew thinner.

The boom reached the way records themselves were made. In 1977 came the LP Symphonic Suite Space Battleship Yamato, gathering the music heard in the film. Yasushi Miyagawa composed, arranged, and conducted, and the performance was by the Symphonic Orchestra Yamato, assembled for the project. Anime records had centred on discs carrying the theme song; now albums collecting the score joined them.

In 1979, Mobile Suit Gundam followed, and the age range of anime fans widened further.

That said, anison did not simply come to be treated the same way as kayokyoku. Ichiro Mizuki looked back in later years on how their songs were called "cartoon songs," and how he couldn't stand on the same ground as kayokyoku. There was a period, he said, when records sold in the hundreds of thousands and he still couldn't get onto a music show. In who wrote them and how well they sold, anison came close to kayokyoku; the invitations from television's music programmes rarely came. Anison singers built their place through record sales and their own stages instead. At the centre of those music shows were the idols of the Showa era → What Is a Japanese Idol?

Trace anison back to its roots, and you arrive at Showa kayokyoku. The division-of-labour system of lyricist, composer, and arranger, and the very shape of delivering music on records — anison inherited both from the world of kayokyoku. If you haven't yet met kayokyoku itself, we explain it here: → What Is Kayokyoku?

Why Do Showa Anime Songs Still Sound Cool to Adult Ears?

Tokusatsu, Anime songs that once played on children's programmes sound surprisingly cool when you go back to them as an adult. Plenty of people feel this way. The reason lies in how the recordings were made at the time.

Showa tokusatsu songs tend to share these musical features:

• Live brass sections: trumpets and trombones carry the main melody, creating a powerful, brilliant sound
• Male choruses: thick, layered voices lift up the hero's courage
• Studio musicians playing live: first-rate players who could read any score, actually sounding their instruments in the room as the recording was made
• Direct lyrics: singing of justice and courage without hesitation, which leaves a stronger impression precisely because it is so unguarded

Even for a theme on a children's programme, composers with film-music experience wrote in earnest, and professional players actually sounded their instruments for the recording. That is why the density of the sound and the force of the playing don't stay within the frame of "for kids."

The plainness of the lyrics is part of the appeal today, too. The unadorned honesty of singing a hero's conviction in straightforward words is what carries the strength that reaches across generations.

The Basics of Listening to Anison and Tokusatsu Songs on Vinyl

In an age when you can play anything easily by streaming, where is the meaning in choosing vinyl? To enjoy anison and tokusatsu songs on record, it helps to first know the types of discs.

Know the formats: Sonosheet（flexi discs） EP, LP

Showa anison and tokusatsu songs were mainly released in three forms.

Format	Size / spec	Typical contents	Role at the time
Sonosheet（flexi discs）	Around 17 cm, thin flexible vinyl	Theme song, narration, sound effects	Magazine inserts and low-priced discs; a child's entry point
EP (7-inch single)	17 cm, 45 rpm	Two tracks as a rule: the theme plus an insert song	The standard format for buying a theme song
LP (album)	30 cm, 33 rpm	Soundtracks, song collections, drama versions	A disc for enjoying a work's whole world

If you want to keep just one theme song at hand, the EP; if you want to savour a work's whole musical world, the LP — that was the basic way people used them. The sonosheet spread as an inexpensive doorway, while the EP and LP became the heart of serious collecting.

Enjoying the jacket and obi as physical objects

The pleasure of a record isn't only the sound. On the jacket, a show's hero or mecha is drawn large, and the sleeve decorates a room like a poster in its own right. Being able to enjoy artwork bigger than the palm of your hand is a pleasure only a record offers.

Japanese pressings usually came with an "obi." The obi is a long strip of paper wrapped down one side of the jacket, printed with the song and work titles and the price. Rarely found on overseas pressings, the obi is now treasured by collectors as a symbol of the Japanese edition. The types of obi, and why collectors overseas hunt for a copy with one, are covered in "What Is an Obi Strip?"

Hold the record, look at the jacket, read the text on the obi. You can step into the world of a work before you've even heard a note. That depth of experience is what listening on vinyl means.

The Growing Overseas Demand for Japanese Anime Vinyl

In recent years, records themselves are being reappraised around the world. In Japan, too, analogue record production has been on a recovering trend, and it is no longer unusual to see younger listeners buying records as new items.

Within that current, interest from overseas in the discs of Japanese anime music is rising as well. Anime soundtracks are being reissued on vinyl, and limited pressings increasingly sell out at once. The more Japanese anime is loved around the world, the more demand there is to keep its music close at hand as a physical object.

The EPs and LPs of Showa anison and tokusatsu songs still circulate widely in Japan's secondhand record market. For fans overseas, Japan is a natural starting point when hunting for them. The sound pressed into those period discs, the art on the jacket, the text on the obi — all of it delivers an experience streaming can't.

If anison or tokusatsu songs became your doorway into the sound of Showa-era Japan, a wide world waits beyond them. At KAISHU VINYL, we curate Japanese records released from the Showa into the early Heisei era — kayokyoku at the centre — from our base in Tokyo. For people just beginning to listen to Japanese music, we choose our discs with an eye to a good balance of genres and moods, and each one is visually inspected, cleaned, and checked for noise before it is dispatched.

Our set, the "OBENTO BOX," pairs records with items that let you feel the atmosphere of the Showa era. We include incense because scent is tied to memory and emotion — the Proust effect. We want you to taste Showa-era Japan with all five senses, not the ears alone. That is the thinking behind how we put each one together.

→ See the OBENTO BOX

FAQ About Showa Anison and Tokusatsu Songs

What is the difference between anison and tokusatsu songs?

The difference is whether the picture on screen is animated or a live-action hero show. As music, they share singers, composers, and record labels, so as Showa-era music they are best thought of as a continuous, sibling pair of genres.

Why do Showa anison and tokusatsu songs still sound so powerful today?

Even for a theme on a children's programme, composers with film-music experience wrote the music and studio musicians recorded it as a live performance. The thickness of the brass and the male choruses comes from that full-scale recording.

Where can I learn about kayokyoku, the genre at the root of anison?

Anison's production system and its sound owe a great deal to Showa kayokyoku. For the history of kayokyoku itself and how to listen to it, see "What Is Kayokyoku?"