My Life in Fandom: Spreading The Love on Anisong Adaptors

For folks who are into the fan music scene, the names I'm about to drop are old news. For the rest of us, this is something of interest- if not new entirely.

I like finding well-done English adaptations of Japanese music original made for film, television, or videogames. (i.e. "anison" or "anisong") One guy I found and immediately too a liking to is Johnathan Young, who does covers of Disney tunes as well as as anisong adaptations. This is one of the two songs I use to introduce Young to others:

Comparing Young's cover to JAM Project's original reveals just how well his adaptation of "The Hero" is, and that's seen again when you compare his cover of Attack On Titan's first opening theme--"Guren no Yumiya"--to his adaptation and cover of it. Young is the real deal, and that's why I don't mind him shilling his Patreon account at t the end of every video of his.

But what about the ladies? You can't love the hell out of Yoko Kanno and her collaborators without wanting to find some women who can do what Young can do, even if you do learn Japanaese so you can comprehend the original versions. There may be others out there who measure up, but so far only AmaLee has come to my attention. You can see it here, with her cover of "Cruel Angel's Thesis":

I wish I saw more stuff like this on the Anglophonic singing competitions because it's worked in Peru and Thailand, but I think that some of that is due to legal constraints and the rest is due to the producers being more concerned with commercialization than the legal concerns. (Which may explain the lack of rock covers also, compared to--say--Germany or Russia.)

I want to find more of these people; some of them already show up in the sidebars of Young and AmaLee's videos at YouTube, but discoverability is still shit, and that means that Word of Mouth is still paramount. You know what to do folks: name names and drop links in the comments. Let's spread the love.