Introduction: Patrick Cunningham has translated the biography of ARISAWA Takanori from the Sailor Moon CD booklets and written a review and exegesis of his music for Sailor Moon. Questions and comments should be sent to him at dulles AT smhall DOT org. The following are his comments.
From the Sailor Stars Vol.2 CD booklet
trans: ADC
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Profile/ARISAWA Takanori
b. April 2 1951, Tokyo
His recording debut was in 1980 – with Epic Sony Records: “Shinjuku Transfer” performed by the SOAP Chorus Group. The year after he released the album “Hamot Pier” [1]. This album was rereleased in 1993.
In 1981 he was awarded the New Composer Incentive Award at the Tokyo Music Festival.
He worked at TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Service), participating regularly with the music for the Coca Cola commercials. He then composed the music for JAL’s 30th year anniversary, releasing two singles titled “Takeoff of Love.”
After SOAP broke up in 1982 he worked extensively as a composer/arranger, reaching his current popularity today.
Mr. Arisawa received the Golden Disk Grand Prize from Columbia Records after scoring the hit TV anime “Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon” soundtrack in 1993. He became the Music Director of Sailor Moon, writing music for the “R”, “S” and “Supers” stage shows, as well as scoring the continuing TV series through the last season: “SailorStars”.
As far as other works are concerned, he has written for various TV Dramas, anime (including Galaxy Fraulien) and commercials. He was music director of the NHK series “Let’s Learn English!” He has also written the music for several video games, including the Sailor Moon RPG games.[2]
Aside from the music composed specifically for the Sailor Moon soundtracks, he has released several CD’s that consist of Sailor Moon themed music, these contain his own compositions as well as arranged versions of a few of the songs.
Most recently, he has won the JASRAC International Award in 1998; awarded for the most international royalties: the popularity of his Sailor Moon soundtracks abroad is well known!
TRANSLATION NOTES
1) ‘Haamot Pia’ — I used my intuition
2) There is a huge list of works here, I do not deem it necessary to list them all. Also the kanji names are very hard to read and romanize!
~ Patrick Cunningham