We Love DiGiMONMUSiC Memorial Booklet comments (N-S)

A translation of the “100 Comments” left by voice actors and staff members for animation and music production from Digimon Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, and Frontier, which were included in a booklet from the DiGiMONMUSiC 100 Title Commemoration Release: We Love DiGiMONMUSiC (デジモンミュージック100タイトル記念作品 We Love DiGiMONMUSIC) album collection, originally released December 25, 2002. This also includes the addendum comment left by music producer Shintarou Matsui in the December 25, 2013 rerelease.

With the exception of Producer Matsui’s comments, the original booklets organized all of the commenters by name in gojuuon order. For the sake of easier reading for English speakers, I’ve reorganized the comments in English alphabetical order by surname (or, in the case of pseudonyms without surnames, by pseudonym), and have split the list into portions.

Note that some names have never had official readings provided, so in such cases I made my best guess at how their names are read.

(A-I | K-M | N-S | T-W | Shintarou Matsui’s comments)

Table of Contents

Ai Nagano (voice of Shaochung Lee; Tokyo Drama House)

“Hello! It’s me, Shaochung Lee.
You write it as ‘small’ and ‘spring’, and you read it ‘shiu-chon‘¹.
I really love singing, so I love aaaaaaall of the songs!
But the one I love the most is my duet with Lopmon.
I looooove Lopmon ♡”
…So that’s all from Shaochung.
I also played the operator, Reika Ohtori-san, who sang the backing chorus vocals for Chief Yamaki’s song “Black X’mas ~Yamaki’s Theme~” with Megumi Onodera-san.
The request was for us to be like the Kanou sisters²…so Reika would be the older sister, while Megumi would be the younger, we’ve all agreed on that (no we didn’t~ haha)?
Anyway, each recording session was always really fun.
And in closing, congratulations on the 100th release!!

Tetsuharu Nakamura (theatrical movie director; Toei Animation)

Personally, my number one Digimon song is AiM’s “My Tomorrow”. When I was doing direction for the ending sequence, her voice was so clear and fascinating to me that it immediately gave me inspiration for what kind of visuals I should pair with it.
We used “Sunflower” as an insert song, and the ending song (for Digimon Tamers: Runaway Digimon Express) was definitively done on a request made to AiM-san.
Also, when I heard the song “3 Primary Colors” on the Tamers CD, that led to me having Ruki herself sing “Sunset Promise” in the theatrical movie.
Fumiko Orikasa-san (Ruki)’s singing ended up being a huge blessing for my directing work that I’m truly thankful for.

Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru (character designer; Toei Animation)

Congratulations on 100 CD releases.
I think we were able to reach this sort of Guinness-esque record entirely thanks to the fruits of the talents, efforts, and determination of the vocal and sound staff.

Rio Natsuki (voice of Miyako Inoue; Actor’s Cooperative)

I love “Butter-Fly”.
I sing it to myself quite often, and it immediately gets me in a positive mood.
As for Miyako’s songs, my strongest impression is of her duet with Hawkmon, “Fly High” (laughs).
I thought this even back when we were doing post-recording for the TV series, but Hawkmon’s voice actor, Tohchika-kun, really has an amazing ability to make people laugh, so I kept having a hard time trying not to crack up.
Our spoken lines in “Crash and a Bingo!” and “Fly High” are all ad-libs (laughs).

Kousuke Nishikawa (scoring editor)

Congratulations to on 100 Digimon CD releases.
I served as scoring editor for everything Digimon from the spring 1999 theatrical Digimon Adventure movie to the Sanrio 3D short³
My job as scoring editor involves, as you might expect, editing the music scoring.⁴
The director gives me instructions on what kind of direction they want, and I go through all of Digimon’s music and pick what song would be most appropriate for that place.
Among all of the Digimon staff members, I’m the one whose job is most reliant on Digimon’s music.
For instance, my job would involve picking a sad song for a sad moment, or an amusing song for an amusing moment, or the appropriate vocal song for the evolution scenes, but I also have another important job.
It’s to edit down the length of the songs to fit where they need to go.
To put it in extreme terms, I have to make a one-minute song into two minutes, or a three-minute song into thirty seconds.
I’m sure there’s people who listened to the songs on the CD, and then heard it on air and were bothered — “hey, wait, something’s weird about this!” — but that’s because I’ve been doing all the work of lengthening and cutting the original music (and cutting and stitching it back together on the computer).
So let’s say a fighting action scene is one minute but the song is two minutes; if the action ended while the action song was still playing, it’d feel so incredibly and terribly wrong.
So the “score editing” job exists precisely to prevent this from happening.
When I got my first job for Digimon, I could already sense that it was a very different kind of anime than ever before.
It may seem like a totally natural thing when you watch it now, but we had things like “Digimon evolving” and “whenever Digimon evolve, a vocal song always plays,” and on top of that, the length of the sequence would change every week.
Previous jobs I’d been involved with would have those kinds of things, but it’d take a few episodes to change like that.
So my work involved actual vocal songs instead of just BGM, and on top of that, with a different length each and every time…”Am I gonna be okay? Can I even pull this off?” I was full of worries.
And on top of that, in our industry, cutting down vocal songs and messing around with them was considered somewhat like a taboo.
After all, vocal songs have lyrics.
With an instrumental-only song, you don’t have to worry about lyrics.
But when there are lyrics, you have no room to be careless.
You can’t let people think “what the hell’s wrong with this song?!!”
And on the flip side, I was also filled with the thought “but if I can pull this off, it’ll be so cool!”
So, after several days, “brave heart” was delivered to me.
At first, I was half unsure of what I was doing, going back and forth and laboring day and night trimming down “brave heart”.
I was going at it so many times that even now, I look back on it and think, wow, I actually went through all that.
But right now, if you ask me, I really feel that was the time I went over so many songs so many times that I picked up all sorts of tools of the trade from it (so now that you’ve heard it, what do you think?).
It’s not something I can describe easily even now, but I mean things like “let’s have the intro but lead into the second verse” or “let’s put the intermezzo here” or “I think the karaoke version would fit perfectly here,” and of course this was all basically done to make the length fit, but I really worked as hard as I could to do this and that.
I’d even take things like the character songs, and if it felt like it’d fit, I’d think, “why not have it here?”
And then I ran into another problem as a score editor when I got a request for music that wasn’t in Digimon’s existing lineup.
To put it simply, there’d be cases of “they don’t have a song for this…”
So at those times, I’d end up just making one myself.
There’s the drama CD-exclusive song “Comical Breiv-hart”⁵, and from Frontier there’s “The Digimon Kindergarten Song” or “Mercuremon’s Second Movement for Organ”⁶, and while they were used on-air, they naturally weren’t put on any of the CDs or anything, so if you’re interested, please watch it on videotape or DVD and hear it for yourself.
I have so many memories about Digimon that I can’t write about all of them here, but if I had to pick one, it’d be the song we used in the final episode of the first Digimon Adventure, “Butter-Fly” (Piano Version)!!
A week or two before I started doing work on the final episode, I’d said “we should use this for the final episode,” and they actually went ahead and made a special final-episode arrangement for it, so it had a kind of special feeling to it.
I really love that scene in the end.
And that led into 02 as well.
And that led into me working on the evolution songs for 02 as well.
And then after that, that led to more and more CDs being made.
Although in my case, since I also had all of the tapes from before they were made into CDs, so my workspace ended up full of nothing but Digimon.
I ran out of storage space for all of it.
So while I know it’s a natural thing to “watch” anime, if everyone could end up “listening” to it as well, I can say that I’ve done my job right.

Junko Noda (voice of V-mon; Aoni Production)

Congratulations on the 100th release!
After the “Armor Evolvers” made their debut, they had us sing all sorts of things, and I particularly remember how our recording sessions sessions would turn into some kind of “dad joke meeting”, and on those days I was barely even holding myself together with the “dad jokes” the director was spouting…
Man~, it was really fun (laughs).
Please do your best and keep up the pace so you can hit 200 releases, so we can have another opportunity to meet like this.

Mamiko Noto (voice of 02 theatrical movie Chocomon; Office Osawa)

In the theatrical movie Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!!/Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals, there’s a scene where Wallace is worrying about Chocomon all by himself, and Daisuke follows him and cries for him.
The footage of the forest at night filled the screen completely with blue.
It’s the scene where Wallace and Daisuke really open up to each other about their feelings for the first time, and the music that played during it is still imprinted most strongly in my heart. It’s not particularly in-your-face music, but it’s calm and soft as it weaves its way into your heart, and the scene was full of so much that before I knew it, I was crying.

Masako Nozawa (voice of Guilmon, Digimon Tamers narration; 81 Produce)

It’s so easy to say “100 releases” in simple words, but that’s no easy feat at all.
It’s not even enough to just go “yay, we did it!”
All it has to do is play only once, and you end up imagining and anticipating what kind of Digimon or Tamers will be involved.
I’m so happy to have been able to participate in so many of these.
And this is releasing on December 25! That takes me back.
By that, I mean to the time back when I was singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the Christmas song.
Rudolph was supposed to be the protagonist of the song, but I sang it as joyfully as if Guilmon were somehow singing about himself.
Whenever I record for songs, I’m always nervous as I enter the studio, but they got me in so well that it was like they’d cast black magic or something, and I was in a wonderful mood as I left the studio.
Even from just listening to the song, I can easily imagine all these scenes of Guilmon running around and having fun with Takato.
And now we have a whole 100 of those kinds of scenes, and it really feels so cheerful and thrilling.
Once this CD releases on December 25, I look forward to awaiting what Santa might bring.

Kensuke Ohta/”Pile Volcano Ota” (currently in a highly anticipated transfer to WiZ!)

I feel like I’m just going to be writing the same thing as everyone else, but congratulations on reaching 100 releases! (^o^)ノ
Looking back on it, when I first heard “Butter-Fly”⁷, I was thinking, “hmm, it’s a cool song, but it doesn’t have the word ‘Digimon’ in it…” (as a joke!), and I remember that like it was only yesterday, and suddenly we’re at 100 CDs.
Also, I mean, it is true we have enough characters to make a whole 100 releases, but seriously, Matsui-san? Wasn’t this kind of overkill?
For all those releases you put in DVD cases, didn’t you have trouble figuring out what shops to have them shipped to?
Wasn’t I supposed to be saying congratulatory words here? (^＿^;) but when I close my eyes, all sorts of Digimon music starts flowing through my head…
(In particular, “Days -Affection and the Ordinary-” and ******** have parts that just play over and over and over and over in my head without me even thinking about it ^^;)
Truly, the world of Digimon has spread so far beyond these tiny little toys, and it’s all been thanks to the efforts of all of the staff and fans who have been supporting us.
I’m going to use this space to offer my greatest compliments and applause to all the producers and directors, the composers who made such wonderful songs, the lyricists who wrote such wonderful lyrics and crammed important messages in there, the singers and voice actors who used such beautiful voices to breathe life into them, the performers who played their instruments and colored each song so beautifully, the operators who recorded and compiled it into such cool collections, the CD production staff, the buyers who ordered them all…goodness, they just keep coming (-＿-;) but in closing, to all of the fans who listened to all of these Digimon CDs, for reaching this unprecedented milestone of 100 releases.
Mm~, Big Bang Voice!

Michihiko Ohta (arranger; Fuji Pacific Music Publishing)

First of all, congratulations on 100 releases.
My first involvement was with Digimon Adventure‘s insert song “brave heart”.
And time has now gone by so fast that we’ve gotten a whole three more years’ worth of melodies for this show.
And now, all of that history has been packed into this CD!
During this time, I’ve gotten to meet all sorts of people and have all sorts of experiences.
I feel like Digimon will become a part of my daily life in the following years, or in fact, it’ll become my daily life itself.
It really was a lot of fun working on this, getting to not only compose and arrange but even sing.
I would like to thank the staff for all of the hard work they’ve been doing up until now.
And I’m truly grateful from the bottom of my heart (and I look forward to more).
And to everyone who’s been supporting DiGiMONMUSiC all this time…I say this with all of my heart…thank you.

Masumi Ohzawa (fan ambassador)

To everyone who was involved with Digimon series music
I love every single song from the Digimon series.
I’m a total adult myself, but I’ve bought and collected so many Digimon CDs.
I love them when I hear them in the anime on TV, but on top of that, the composition and singing are all lovely.
All of the opening songs sung by Kouji Wada-san are so cool, and AiM-san, who mainly sang for the ending songs, has such gentle, bright, and fun songs.
And the character songs take the essence of character and put them to song exactly as they are.
Even if you can’t see them directly, you can visualize them just by hearing the songs.
And they’re all good in their own way, they’re all fun to listen to.
There are songs that make me want to sing.
I listen to the CDs and I’m singing along before I even know it.
And the Digimon series has so many of these kinds of songs.
Ever since “Butter-Fly”, going all the way up until now, everything has always made me think “wow, I wonder what kind of song will come next?”
100 releases…It really is a surprise.
I think it’s wonderful that all of these songs and music have been able to expand the world of Digimon this much.
I look forward to the release of this memorial CD.
And I look forward to future Digimon CDs that’ll spread this world even further.
Thank you very much.

Shousuke Okada (production manager; Toei Animation)

“100 dreams, 100 powers.”

Fumiko Orikasa (voice of Ruki Makino; Actor’s Cooperative)

Congratulations on 100 releases.
I’m glad to have been involved in this by singing as Ruki.
At first, Ruki wasn’t the kind of character who’d sing so cheerfully with her friends, so I was actually lost on what to do.
I ended up singing a lot, but the one I remember most deeply is “Sunset Promise”, the song that played in the Tamers theatrical movie Runaway Digimon Express.
It’s such a lovely song, and even though the TV show’s ended, it’s still my favorite (laughs).
I’m sure everyone in the staff and cast, as well as every Digimon fan out there, has all different kinds of memories associated with their own favorites from these 100 releases.
How wonderful! It still gives off such a refreshing feeling to listen to them again…
I’m going to go do that now!

Romi Park (voice of Ken Ichijouji; En Project)

Whoa! 100 releases…!!
It’s a reminder of what kind of power Digimon has…
Digimon is a series that I have very deep memories of.
So it’s something that gives me so much surprise and joy.
Digimon was the first time I ever went to the studio to record music in my entire life.
I still remember how hard my heart was pounding.
The Digimon Kaiser had just gone back to being Ken-chan, and he’d just started going on a journey with Wormmon to find himself, and I think it was around then they had me come into the studio.
I was so nervous that I completely snapped in the other direction, threw out all of my shame and diginity, went “who cares about hitting the right pitch?! It’s about heart! Heart!!“, kicked off my shoes and went barefoot, ripped open my blouse, messed up my hair…It must have been quite the ridiculous sight…(laughs).
But anyway, I just went in all the way.
And despite all that, Wormmon’s voice actor, Takahashi-san, was watching over me so kindly…
I gathered up all my courage as if to say “Wormmon! I’m gonna do my best!” and finished my very first song recording.
And “Our Digital World”…was a song that touched me so deeply. We all sang it together in a huge chorus!!
With the feelings of everyone from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, together as one…
It really gets me in the heart, both when I sang it and when I listen to it.
I think every song has those kinds of feelings attached to them.
I wonder if all of you listening to them can feel them…?
I hope all of these feelings will reach everyone, at any and all times, through however many releases…

Tomo Saeki (voice of Kai Urazoe; Kekke Corporation)

I’m Tomo Saeki, who played Takato’s cousin Kai Urazoe.
Kai Urazoe-kun is a young boy who was raised in Okinawa.
So in other words…that means he uses the Okinawa dialect.
It has an unusual kind of intonation.
You’ll probably know what I mean if you’ve seen the movie, but he sometimes adds that “sa~” at the end of his sentences.
When they handed me the script, they also gave me an MD with the lines spoken out in Okinawa dialect.
…
“The heck is this?!” I started panicking and started spending my days completely immersing myself in Okinawa dialect.
I kept playing the MD over and over, repeating the intonation over and over like I was doing practice conversations for an English class or something.
I recorded videotapes of The ******* of the Chura ***⁸ every day, and before I knew it I’d seen more videos about Okinawa dialect than I could count.
Then, I learned that the manager of a small bar near my home was originally from Okinawa!
I went ahead and brought the script with me to the bar.
Yeah, the shop was serving awamori and stir-fried bitter melon⁹.
Naturally, I needed it to study for my role, so I asked for some amamori and went up to the manager.
And then, it turned into an Okinawa class with all of the patrons.
Was this actually Okinawa? No, everyone was talking in a forced, fake dialect.
So the manager got mad and yelled “you can’t just add ‘sa~‘ to everything!”
Everyone gave me lots of encouragement, and I went home feeling much lighter as I walked home.
I definitely don’t think it was just the awamori.
To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had such an educational experience when working on anything else.
It’s to the point I don’t think I’d ever be able to accomplish so much in so short a period of time ever again.
And by the time the post-recording day came, I could say all of my lines in order from memory.
On that day, I had a dialect coach to help me, too.
Kai was a child who grew up splendidly in Okinawa, so I wanted to make my own performance as splendid as possible.
I’m sure it still probably sounds weird to people who are actually from Okinawa, but once I was finished, I felt so incredibly touched and relieved!!
I’m so happy I could take on this role and challenge it to the end.
Also, thanks to that, I became a huge fan of The ******* of the Chura *** and watched it all the way to the end, I got really into bitter melons, and my house became full of awamori bottles.
“Kai Urazoe-kun” is someone who brought me so many people who could help me.
So to everyone, including those who watched the movie, I give my deepest thanks.

Toshimitsu Sakairi (WonderSwan game developer; Bandai)

Congratulations on 100 releases ヾ(≧∇≦)〃
I also thank all of the artists on this album for being such a great help to us during the WonderSwan Battle Spirit events.
They were waving their arms around, not even bothering to go easy on the kids who were still new to playing games…
But every day, we’d have live concerts that would always be a big success, and I feel like they really brought out everything you wouldn’t be able to get with CDs alone (I’m saying this on a message meant for a CD liner, oops, please take that off).
Michihiko Ohta-san’s live version of “SLASH!” was so cool, and Tanimoto-san was dancing, and you naturally can’t see that on a CD ♪
And of course, we can’t forget Wada-san hyping everyone up!
And there was a special live-exclusive arrangement where you could hear AiM-san humming!
Hey, everyone, listen to the CD and come meet up at a Battle Spirit event!!…But then, if we listen to it too much, maybe we’ll mess up the lyrics…
But that’s another fun part about live concerts, too.
I’m looking forward to hearing even more cool music on stage, full of hype.

Chika Sakamoto (voice of Agumon; Arts Vision)

Congratulations on 100 Digimon releases.
Every Sunday morning at 9 AM, whenever the intro for “Butter-Fly” played, I’d be as hyped as any other kid in Japan.
And whenever I hear the episode recap music, it’s like I can hear Hiroaki Hirata-san’s narration on my head…
And when I hear the theme music for the next episode preview, I’m taken right back to the studio where Hirata-san was scrambling to fit everything in the precious few seconds he had, sweating while everyone’s hearts were pounding, until he finally got the OK and we all sighed in relief.
But beyond all else, there’s “brave heart”.
Whenever we Digimon went “***mon, evolve~!”, we’d always get so excited.
And then the fight would begin, and we’d go “all right, let’s go~!” and we’d feel amazing.
And my duet with Taichi, “Team”, was really fun, too~
Also, Etemon’s theme song “Love Serenade ~Etemon’s Theme~” is super popular at my place, and it makes me want to jack up the volume, pick up a mic, and start singing.
Etemon’s actor, Masutani-san, has a voice that makes you shiver like you’re going to explode.
Even now, I find myself wanting to listen to it and getting incredibly into it.
Isn’t it amazing how music brings out so much more of each character?
So…Agumon really likes ondo¹⁰, huh? (laughs)

Hiroyuki Sakurada (assistant producer; Toei Animation)

Congratulations on 100 DiGiMONMUSiC releases!
I’m not involved with Digimon anymore right now, but it’s a series that I’ve made tons of memories with, and especially with the music.
Every so often I listen to the music, especially the ones from the theatrical movies, and it takes me back to all the struggles we went through to produce them, and all the sweat and tears that went into it, and so I’m still spending time now enjoying (?) all of these Digimon songs.
I hope Digimon can keep continuing to put out more and more of these, and I’m looking forward to them.

Takahiro Sakurai (voice of Tentomon; 81 Produce)

Congratulations on reaaching 100 releases!
I’m kind of surprised…Digimon has such amazing power!
My strongest DiGiMONMUSiC memory has to be of “Electric Shock Rhapsody”.
I had a bit of a hard time singing in Tentomon’s voice, but it felt really good to sing, and I remember having a lot of fun as I was singing it (laughs).
I quickly scrambled to come up with lines that’d fit the music, and I tried to make it playful so it’d feel just like something Tentomon would do, and I ended up messing around so much that they told me I was overdoing it…I still distinctly remember what it was like at the recording session.
Let’s keep putting more music out and aim for 200 releases!!

Sammy (music artist)

Hello to everyone here with DiGiMONMUSiC.
Congratulations on 100 releases.
I’m Sammy, who got to have the honor of becoming part of the DiGiMONMUSiC family with the 2001 Toei Anime Fair movie Digimon Tamers: The Adventurers’ Battle, via its theme song “Sea of Friends”.
I was blessed with the opportunity to co-star (?!) with Culumon on the maxi single.
I remember the recording for “Sea of Friends” going so well that I had tons and tons of fun while I was singing for it.
Oh, by the way, this is just between you and me, but did you know that the lyricist, Yamada-san, and the composer, Yamazaki-san, were in the choral parts?!
I went to go see the movie in the theater (and I brought my friends, too!), and I got so drawn into it that I felt like I was actually going on an adventure with Takato and Guilmon in Okinawa (I’d never actually been to Okinawa before, so I got something out of it!).
But when my own song started playing, as you might expect, I went into so much shock that I actually started crying…(laughs)!!

Hiromi Seki (chief producer; Toei Animation)

Thank you to everyone in NEC Interchannel, especially Chiba-san, Matsui-san, and Yoshimura-san¹¹, for sticking with us for the last four years!
I’d like to share a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff with all of our fans who bought this CD…

When we make the demo tapes for the insert songs, we usually have them arranged and start writing lyrics while they still have their placeholder titles, and we only give them proper titles when they’re actually finished, so there’s a lot of times when I can’t actually tell which song is which.
Even if I read off the names of the songs on the album, I can’t figure out a thing (laughs).
We were handing everything out as reference data for the staff members, so I didn’t have a single one left for myself, and when I counted it all up again it turned out I didn’t have any more than 20 of our releases (sob)…!
The process of making a single opening theme would involve so many demo tapes that we’d end up having an average of 15-20 songs made just for it, and that really is kind of a big deal, isn’t it (ah, it’s the same for Do**Mi¹², huh!)?
Once you’ve got some time to settle down, Matsui-san, you need to start thinking about getting married.
Our producers Baba-kun and Sakurada-kun already have things going on in the works right now (Huh? What do you mean, this isn’t relevant? Of course it’s intentional~~~).
To our old~ man~ Yoshimura, who’s in charge of the BGM:
Let’s go out for some red wine sometime.
Arisawa-sensei, Yoshiumura-san, let’s be sure to not drink too much.
But we should also feel free to go hang out in Jiyuugaoka anytime.
I mean, it’s where Frontier‘s story starts…
Our wonderful Iwasaki from Fuji Pacific Music Publishing, our mild-mannered Iwasaki-san, had such a lovely bashful smile that was an incredible comfort to the Digimon music team.
Kimura-san from Yomiko Advertising likes the same 70s music as I do, but today it really dawned upon me that we’re not actually from the same generation!
In short, we’re both old people.
In regards to the line of consecutive producers from Fuji TV, the department producer is in their twenties, and I’m really feeling the weight of the fact that we probably wouldn’t have been able to pick the hit songs we did if it otherwise.
To both of our series directors, Mr. Kakudou and Kaizawa, thank you so much for putting up with me indulging myself and asking for things like “put in an insert song every episode.”
Thanks to the help of your music planning documents and firm decisions, we’ve finally reached this 100th release.
To our great Matsui and Yoshimura, thank you very much for responding to Mr. Hosoda and Yamauchi’s huge pile of requests for theatrical movie music!
If you need to blame someone, please blame me!!
To Wada-san and Maeda (AiM)-san, I really, truly look forward to every day when I can hear for myself how much you both have improved.

I was so excited that I was about to write a whole 100 points, but now it’s already 4 AM.
Sorry for piling on a whole dozen of these.
With that, I’ll be taking my leave.
Goodnight…

Ikkei Seta (voice of Cyberdramon; Gin Production)

I did something really funny during our DiGiMONMUSiC recording.
I wanted to sing like Cyberdramon as much as possible, so I was focusing myself all the way up until we started recording in the studio.
So we finally started. I was basically a rampaging Cyberdramon myself!
I clenched my fist and started singing, but just then, I heard a “bang!”, and I looked to the side and saw I’d sent the music stand flying, and the staff scolded me, saying “please keep calm inside the booth.”
When I’d first gotten the song to work with, I’d been so happy that I’d immediately thought, “all right, let’s go!!”, but then, wait, Cyberdramon’s not exactly all that talkative in the actual story, he’s more the type to go “grrrr” or howl during the story and sometimes fire off an attack like “Erase Claw!!”, and yet he’s going to sing…
So I was nervous, but when I looked at the lyrics, Cyberdramon’s personality was really there.
His feelings were expressed so beautifully that all of my worries were blown away, and I was really deeply moved.
And then when the song played during the fighting scene, I really thought “man, that’s so cool…” (I’m stroking my own ego too much!!)
I hope Ryou and Cyberdramon can have another opportunity to show up again someday.
After all, they’re the legendary Tamer and Digimon team…

Atori Shigematsu (voice of Piyomon; Tokyo Drama House)

Congratulations on reaching 100 releases!
Digimon was my first time recording music in a studio, so I remember it very strongly.
“Evolve with Guts!!” was especially so, so much fun.
And when we were recording for Best Partner, I was worrying a lot about how to show off the best parts of Piyomon’s characters.
But the staff gave me advice, and my partner (Sora’s voice actress, Yuuko Mizutani-san) gave me lots of support, so I did my best.
I hope the Digimon world can keep expanding even further and further from here…!

Kazuko Sugiyama (voice of Bokomon; Aoni Production)

100 releases! Congratulations~
I, Bokomon, had my first time singing with my partner Neemon during our song “The Great Spirit Operation ~Bokomon & Neemon’s Theme~”, you see.
All of our lines there were ad-libs we came up with on the spot-hara.
Listen to it once, no, twice, three times…it’s always fun to listen to it, no matter how many times you do-maki.
We were a great pair, so I’d like to do enka¹³ with him next time!!

Kenichi Suzumura (voice of Kouichi Kimura; Arts Vision)

Yay on reaching 100 releases!!
Suzumura here wasn’t involved with Digimon until Frontier, but I’m really glad to have the honor of being on this commemorative CD!
I’ve sung four songs so far, but when I first heard the song “Blader ~Duskmon’s Theme~”, it was right in the middle of a typhoon, and I heard the song so many times in the pouring rain that it really did start feeling like blues (laughs).
“With Broken Wings ~Kouichi’s Theme~” is the song that got the biggest response from fans, and it’s a personal favorite of mine as well.
If you were able to get anything out of it from the song or the animation, then I’m very happy.
I got along really well with everyone in the Digimon cast, and it was always really fun to be at the recording site with them.
Also, here’s a little secret: we made up lines for the intermission portion and kept messing around with them.
I can’t tell you what kinds of lines they were, though (← because it’s a secret).
No, but seriously~ it’s really something I shouldn’t be telling everyone (laughs).
We’ll keep doing our best to make this a series that keeps going longer and longer!
Let’s aim for 200 releases!! Yeah.

Translator's notes

Shaochung’s name is written “小春”, with the characters for “small” (小) and “spring” (春), and is meant to be read as a Chinese name instead of a Japanese one. The official romanization “Shaochung” seems to come from how the name would be read in Mandarin Chinese (xiǎochūn), but the official Japanese transcription and reading as “shiuchon” (シウチョン) seems to be made to resemble the Cantonese reading (siúcheūn), most likely due to her namesake, Jordan Chan Siu-chun, also using that reading in Japanese. Although Jiangyu being from Hong Kong should suggest that the Lee family speaks Cantonese, most of the family’s names are transcribed and read with Mandarin readings in official Tamers material, so since there seems to be no consistent baseline to work with, I’ve defaulted to the official romanization. [↩]
Nagano is most likely referring to the Kanou sisters (Nagano writes the surname as “加納”, but the correct writing would be “叶”), a pair of models who made their first major breakthrough in the late 1980s. [↩]
“The Sanrio 3D short” = Referring to Digimon Adventure 3D: Digimon Grand Prix!, which was a short shown at the Sanrio Puroland theme park from July 2000 to June 2002. [↩]
In Japanese, the word for Nishikawa’s job is “選曲” (“senkyoku“), which contains the kanji for “choose” and “song”. Nishikawa thus comments that because the job involves choosing songs, it’s exactly what the kanji would suggest. [↩]
For music enthusiasts keeping notes back here, “Comical Breiv-hart” is “コミカルぶれ～ぶはーと”. [↩]
Likewise, “The Digimon Kindergarten Song” is “デジモン小学校のうた” (“Digimon Shougakkou no Uta“), and “Mercuremon’s Second Movement for Organ” = “メルキューレモンの第二楽章のオルガン” (“Mercuremon no Dai-Ni Gakushou no Organ“). [↩]
Misprinted as “Batter-Fly” in the original text. [↩]
Saeki is most likely referring to The Promise of the Chura Sea, a Japanese TV drama that aired in 2001. The series centers around the lives of a family living in Okinawa. [↩]
“Awamori and stir-fried bitter melon” = Referring to local Okinawan specialties. Awamori (泡盛) refers to distilled rice alcohol, while stir-fried bitter melon (ゴーヤチャンプルー, “gohya chanpuruu“) is a common dish. [↩]
Ondo (音頭) = Referring to the style of folk song used in Agumon’s character song “Agumon ONDO”. [↩]
“Yoshimura-san” = Referring to supervisor Hitoshi Yoshimura from NEC Interchannel. [↩]
Do**Mi = Most likely referring to Magical DoReMi, a 1999-2003 magical girl series that was produced by Toei Animation concurrently with Digimon. Both series shared Hiromi Seki as a producer, as well as many other production aspects. [↩]
Enka = A style of Japanese music that was particularly popular in the 1950s-70s. [↩]