Former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman recently went on “Side Jams With Bryan Reesman” for an anime round table with singer/harpist Lindsay Schoolcraft and CROWN LANDS drummer/singer Cody Bowles. During the conversation, which can be viewed in its entirety at this location, Friedman talked about the different challenges of performing on or developing anime songs in Japan. It turns out that it took him close to a year to develop a theme song for a particular Netflix series.
“Each case is completely different,” Friedman said on “Side Jams”. “When I played the ‘Sailor Moon’ theme song, I was just playing guitar and I was working with a songwriter named Revo who has a band called SOUND HORIZON. He does a lot of anime stuff and he’s really quite intelligent, a great songwriter. I just came in and played the guitars on that, so he just wanted my sound on that which is fine. I didn’t have to know anything about ‘Sailor Moon’. I had no idea what the story was. I just came in and played.”
But working on the Netflix “B: The Beginning” anime series was a lot more daunting.
“I did the theme for that, which is called ‘The Perfect World’, and that literally took an entire year of when they were in development for the anime series,” Friedman recalled. He watched new episodes and scenes as they were developed. “By the time I was actually recording the song, I had seen the entire finished series before it had even come out. They were in the loop with me month after month to say, ‘We’re going to change this character. He’s going to become a little bit more of a good guy, and this character is going to be like this.’ I had to keep up with the most minute details, and to be honest with you, I didn’t really care. I got the vibe, and I know what to do to make the song work for this. But I respect them for this — it was so important to them for me to understand the depth of the story in great detail and really get behind the characters and really put that feeling into the song. I was in the loop in the production stages of everything for a year. That’s one extreme, and sometimes the guy creating the anime is a fan of mine. ‘Dude, play anything you want.’ It goes from zero to 100, and either way I’m just honored to be a part of it. It’s always different. Sometimes more challenging than others, but it’s always exciting.”
Back in 2019, Friedman, who moved from America to Tokyo in 2003, spoke to Australia’s Amnplify about what it was like relocating to Japan at the age of 40. “It [was] a crazy decision, but it was really something I just had to do,” he said. “It was all about the music. I found myself listening to Japanese 100 percent, and I had lost interest in what was going on in the American music scene. I was really consumed with what was going on in Japan, and I thought the only way I can really continue to grow as an artist is to make music that I really want to make, and contribute what I can to a music scene that really appealed to me. I thought the only way to do that was to live in Japan. I was really right. Sometimes it takes a really crazy decision like that to get to the next step in your career. I was very lucky that I either had enough balls to do it, or I was stupid enough to do it, one or the other…”
He continued: “After touring all over the place, you kind of don’t really feel you’re a foreigner in so many places, because you’ve been to so many places so many different times. You just feel like a citizen of the world, more or less, and you don’t really feel that out of place whether you might be in Austria or China or Russia or Brazil. About three or four times going anywhere, you sort of feel like you know the place, and after being in Japan so many times, it really wasn’t that big of a leap to actually live here.”
In November 2021, Friedman was asked if he experiences culture shock when he returns to his former home country of America. Marty said: “When I moved to Japan, I completely was encompassed by Japanese culture. No one I worked with spoke English. No one around me spoke English. The only time I spoke English was when I was doing international promotion or international tours or international interviews. So 24/7, it was all Japanese. And when that goes on for years and years, you start to dream in Japanese. My wife’s Japanese, and we speak only Japanese. So, cultural things also become a part of you, because when you live somewhere, you become a part of the culture. And the things that matter in Japan are not the things that matter in America. Or the things that matter in Europe are not the things that matter in South America. So things that matter on a day-to-day basis are different. So culture ‘shock’ is kind of a shocking word, so I don’t really feel shocked. But I feel like I’m very blessed, because when I go to America, I’m an American, so I can feel all the great things about being American. But I’ve lived in Japan for almost 20 years, and before I came here, I’ve been in so many Japanese situations that there’s a definite part of me that is really a part of the Japanese culture so I can really feel both of them.
“You should never think that you’re trying to belong,” he continued. “Because it doesn’t matter how perfect my Japanese is — and it’s not perfect — but I’m never, ever gonna be Japanese. I feel a part of me is definitely influenced by Japan very much, but if your goal is to belong in another society, I think you’re gonna be let down very, very much. Because as hard as you try, Japan is a one-race society and you just look different and you’re born in a different place and you have different things in you. So the goal is not belonging; the goal is to add what you have to Japan. If you’re trying to belong to something like that, I think you’re gonna be let down. But it’s not a letdown. You only really belong to yourself. And belonging to something is overrated. So I think you’ll enjoy your Japan experience a whole lot more if you celebrate your differences while understanding Japan and enjoying the great things that you’re able to enjoy about Japan. And don’t be let down when sometimes people are not necessarily so friendly to foreigners. This happens to every country. You just have to let it be; it’s just the way it is, especially with older generations. They’re, like, ‘Oh, the world is changing. Now there’s English in the taxicabs. Oh my God.’ People fear change. But you can’t let that bother you. It’s never bothered me once. I’m completely fine being a gaijin [a Japanese word for foreigners and non-Japanese citizens in Japan, specifically non-East Asian foreigners such as white and black people]; it hasn’t stopped me from anything. So culture shock, it’s not really as bad as people think it is. I enjoy being in America, and I enjoy being in Japan because both things have given me a lot of great things in my life. So learning English — English is the language of the world, so that’s helped me everywhere. But in Japan, it’s the opposite — in Japan, Japanese is the language, so it’s a must. So culture shock is not really that big of a thing.”
