"Fine. Since you're the one who's packing, you can take the lead."

Many of you are probably thinking about playing the new BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger game after work online on your PS3s and 360s. Many of you remember how rock-on the OST was; I’m sure you have your particular favourite stuck in your head. Many of you sorta remember the story that came along with it: a time when the alternate fantasy version of what seems to be Earth was governed by a single faction called The Library and the enraged white-haired man who wishes to eradicate them. And yet somehow, I see the really thin connection between BlazBlue and two other landmark animes of yesteryear and beyond; as if BlazBlue was what could be Shinichiro Watanabe’s long-lost directorial debut in 2008-2009.

If you don’t know Shinichiro Watanabe (pictured above), a little context should be added here. He’s a well-known anime filmmaker and producer. While he’s currently more on the production and supervision side of things with Eureka Seven’s ending theme and small pieces of other animes, his two shows that he directed is what put him on the anime popularity map.

The shows I am referring to are two of Watanabe’s directorial hits: Cowboy Bebop & Samurai Champloo. BlazBlue is considered (to this humble writer, at least) a spiritual successor to those two shows simply because one element ties them all together in a weird circle-of-life kinda way; the music.

Cowboy Bebop is a space-themed action-packed show featuring bounty hunters with a jazz and blues BGM. There is a huge emphasis on the “blues” part, given the main character’s multiple predicaments in the show involving lost childhood, love, revenge, and the past catching up with you, guns ablazing. The show’s OST has an entire band backing it up, courtesy of legendary anime music composer Yoko Kanno and her band, The Seatbelts. As such, the band has varying styles primarily composed of jazz, blues and funk. A little bit of rock and roll and country is added in into the mix, but Cowboy Bebop’s primarily on accentuating the “Bebop” on the title.

Samurai Champloo is an Edo-period adventure starring two samurais and a former waitress with a twist: hip-hop culture ingrained with modernism and anachronistic elements mixed together with historical bits of the Edo period. The overall music is composed of DJ Tsutchie and the group Force of Nature, along with production help by Japanese DJ Nujabes and American MC Fat Jon. Stuff you expect to hear in a club like house, acid jazz, and R&B instrumentals and samples are all laid out in Samurai Champloo’s music.

Why do the two combatants here teleport into a black void with blue spinning rings around them whenever one of them do a Super Attack? Ah, one the many mysteries of videogame life that has yet to be solved.

So where the hell is rock and roll fitting into all this? Thankfully, BlazBlue has that line covered, as its story is set on a steampunk-esque fantasy battle royale of a planet. Usually when you think fantasy, the last thing you expect is rock and roll (unless you count the movie A Knight’s Tale). There’s a little jazz, blues, and opera-like chants in its character-specific music, but rock is the soul of BlazBlue’s music. Story-wise, it doesn’t hold a candle to the two aforementioned shows in terms of presentation, but it at least establishes the world and characters of the magic-cum-science amalgamation of Kagutsuchi. Plus, there are themes of rebellion and revenge (one of the themes of rock and roll), since Ragna’s out for blood against the higher power called The Library because of a grudge from ages ago orchestrated by forces unknown. In essence, Ragna’s sticking it to the man.

To sum it up, Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo covered jazz and hip-hop respectively. BlazBlue covers rock and roll. If Shinichiro Watanabe had an idea to direct a show with a focus on the culture of rock, BlazBlue might be that template that would set things in motion.

*P.S: On that note, I should point out that Guilty Gear also has a nod to rock culture, but only by character names riffing off real-life metal references