OK, I’ll admit it. I was a huge T.M.Revolution fan back in the day when he released progress. This was around the time when I first started getting interested in Japanese music in general and to me, his sound and look were both new and exciting. Now, almost four years later, the man has decided to release some new music, a follow up to his newfound fame at Tofu Records and the American anime scene. And honestly, what the fuck?
It’s sad that T.M.R’s fame has been put to such shame as to be relentlessly tied into anime promotions just to have his music heard and sold. However, with a quick listen to his latest album SEVENTH HEAVEN it’s pretty obvious why: there’s nothing new. The album has the same sound and feel of progress, released four years prior. I guess it’s not such a shame to recycle such redundant music for new fans who haven’t his work before but what about his older fans? Shouldn’t his sound revolve around the idea that his fans are also four years older and looking for something a bit new and different?
It’s also questionable why they chose T.M.R in particular to represent the Jpop scene by playing so many lives at anime cons here. If we’re going down the Jpop route, it’s misleading to attach someone with his unique sound as a staple of Jpop to newfound listeners who might mistake his eccentricity as a write-off for the rest of the Japanese artists. Let’s face it, T.M.R does not come close to the “pop” that’s being put out there. And while we’re on the subject of propaganda, Nami Tamaki (another anime con performer in the US) isn’t either.
I guess what I’m trying to get across here is that this whole anime-con thing is one big silly promotional method to try and get “Jpop” popular here in the U.S. Unfortunately, by attaching these artists to anime-cons, they’re just making the whole thing seem geeky and inaccessible with T.M.R getting stuck in the crossfire. It’s too early to tell how this is affecting his popularity in Japan (wait, what popularity?), but it’s pretty obvious this has given his career a boost (prior, he hadn’t released anything for ages), but just how long can he keep releasing the same sounding tunes before both American and Japanese fans get annoyed enough to finally stop buying his albums?
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