I DON'T HEAR THE SIMILARITIES. THEY JUST SOUND A BIT SUPERFICIALLY SIMILAR.

The Rob Paravonian rant was awesome.

Though I'm not enough of a music nerd to be able to hear Pachelbel's Canon everywhere, unlike Rob.

Ornette wrote:

NAveryW wrote:Let me revise my statement: I guarantee you that, if "Background Music II" and "Magnificent Seven" consisted only of the samples I posted, any court of law in the united states with the least bit of competence would find the first piece derivative of the latter.

No, they would just say "these sound kinda similar", and that would be the end of it.

For God's sake let's not bring law into this. Debating "what a court would decide" is like predicting the Kentucky Derby. The Pretty Woman case had nothing to do with "slander"... We're on this forum to discuss Eva and its influences.

Thanks for posting these, NAveryW. Taking them one by one and bringing in the comments on the thread:

"Decisive Battle" and "007"

No two ways about this one. It's incredibly similar. This is clearly not a case of the Pachelbel murk (more on that soon). Decisive Battle and 007 start off with almost identical timpani, transition to similar brass layered with similar strings on top. Unlike the Pachelbel melody, no other type of music sounds like or is structured like this. I have 0% doubt that this inspired Shirou.

"Misato" and "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"

The similarity with the Misato melody is an interesting comparison that's worth pointing out. It's a common enough melody. Beyond that, there's not much to say.

"Background Music II" and "Magnificent Seven"

Like 007, there is just no debating this one. They are incredibly similar and nothing else sounds like them. I have 0% doubt that this inspired Shirou.

"Komm Susser Tod" and "Whiter Shade of Pale", "Hey, Jude"

I think Xard nailed this one:

Xard wrote: This is because Let It Be's chord progression is yet another song in never ending list of hit songs with "Let's rip off Pachelbel lol" theme

Komm Süsser Tod is basically Pachelbel's Kanon In D made pop with Hey Jude's nananana-outro melody as chorus melody.

So KST is mostly Kanon/Canon with some Beatles thrown in for good measure.

Some things to add:

1) Shirou has borrowed melodies like a mofo throughout his career. There's lots of examples from other shows Shirou did soundtrack for: Kare Kano (melodies from such classical pieces as Borodin's Prince Igor), Re: Cutie Honey (Santa Esmeralda's "Don't let me be misunderstood," from the Kill Bill OST), Mahoromatic (can't remember right now but there's a couple)...

2) But are these reference or ripoff? Forget law-- this is the question that should interest Eva fans.

Personally, I dunno. One the one hand, they can be seen as homages to famous films everyone knows, but I also suspect that Shirou simply gets lazy sometimes. The jury's out. Oh wait, that's law :)

We should add a section on musical reference to the wiki if one doesn't already exist.

I've never heard of any "Background Music II" before. But it sounded identical to a track in the S2 works called "Theme of NERV - Macaroni Western style". And that name kinda speaks for itself.

But it was never actually heard in the series, was it?

Theme of Nerv? No.

But it was used in the After the End "drama" and the GoS2 game.

Didn't Evangelion come before the movie that had 007?

Or I must be thinking of something else.

Otaprince wrote:1) Shirou has borrowed melodies like a mofo throughout his career. There's lots of examples from other shows Shirou did soundtrack for: Kare Kano (melodies from such classical pieces as Borodin's Prince Igor), Re: Cutie Honey (Santa Esmeralda's "Don't let me be misunderstood," from the Kill Bill OST), Mahoromatic (can't remember right now but there's a couple)...

Sagisu didn't do the music for Re: Cutie Honey or Mahoromatic. I haven't seen R:CH, but I remember that a certain piece of music in Mahoromatic that was supposed to be happy had a lot in common with the song "I'm Mad" from Animaniacs, and that was always pretty distracting. I'm guessing it's coincidental there, though, because I really don't think the composer wanted to invoke "I'm Mad" in the audience's mind for the scenes it was used in.

Barinax wrote:Didn't Evangelion come before the movie that had 007?

Most certainly not.

Barinax wrote:Didn't Evangelion come before the movie that had 007?

Barinax wrote:Didn't Evangelion come before the movie that had 007?

oh dear

http://lolcats.com/images/u/07/35/lolcatsdotcomzobjfiofjc9a2vw2.jpg

I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere the first time I heard this. Either that or I'm thinking of something else.

Barinax wrote:I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere the first time I heard this. Either that or I'm thinking of something else.

You DO know 007 Theme is from James Bond, right?

NAveryW wrote:

Otaprince wrote:1) Shirou has borrowed melodies like a mofo throughout his career. There's lots of examples from other shows Shirou did soundtrack for: Kare Kano (melodies from such classical pieces as Borodin's Prince Igor), Re: Cutie Honey (Santa Esmeralda's "Don't let me be misunderstood," from the Kill Bill OST), Mahoromatic (can't remember right now but there's a couple)...

Sagisu didn't do the music for Re: Cutie Honey or Mahoromatic. I haven't seen R:CH, but I remember that a certain piece of music in Mahoromatic that was supposed to be happy had a lot in common with the song "I'm Mad" from Animaniacs, and that was always pretty distracting. I'm guessing it's coincidental there, though, because I really don't think the composer wanted to invoke "I'm Mad" in the audience's mind for the scenes it was used in.

My bad-- I was thinking of Abenobashi rather than Mahoro. The Abenobashi OST is laden with references, but then again so is the show, so maybe we can't fault Sagisu for stealing on that one.

Kare Kano stands as a good example, though-- they even include the classical pieces he used on the last Kare Kano OST Cd, i believe.

Background Music II had always bugged me a bit as it just.. wasn't eva
I didn't realise it was in one of the games (not having played any) but had never heard it in the anime and it was just soo blatantly magnificent 7 XP

ah well...

Just in case any of you didn't know, Shirou has also been doing the music for Bleach (which is awesome) and in particular the song 'never meant to belong' is very much like some of his eva music, in fact I'm pretty sure the repeating piano chords in the background were used in an eva song...

I was listening to the original cast recording of Les Miserables today and realized that the song "One Day More" may have inspired "Infantile Dependence, Adult Dependency". The chord progression is very similar, but you can't really prove one way or another whether it's a coincidence. Les Miserables is really well-known, but the song itself is rather simple. Still, I'd bet that the similarity is more than coincidental. I find it rather odd that, although I've heard "One Day More" a couple of times before, I never realized how similar it is to the song from NGE.

Click here for a comparison.

EDIT: I just confirmed it... it's not just "One Day More"; many songs in Les Miserables use that motif. Definitely not a coincidence.

There was another song that I found that was really similar to something in Evangelion that I've meant to post for months, but now I can't remember for the life of me.

Interestingly, I realized upon a recent rewatch of the series that "Background Music II" is used practically in its entirety in the show. However, the "Magnificent Seven" ripoff part is left out and is only present on the soundtrack. Isn't that lovely?

Finally, the reason for my bump: my father was looking at the IMDb trivia page for John Barry today and pointed out to me this tidbit:

IMDb wrote:Japanese film and television composer Shirô Sagisu has acknowledged Barry's work as an influence; in fact, one of Shirô's compositions for "Shin seiki evangerion" (1995) is a blatant homage to a theme called "007" which appears in almost every James Bond film scored by Barry.

It was always obvious to me that "Decisive Battle" was heavily inspired by "007", but I've never seen Sagisu acknowledge this anywhere. IMDb trivia is often made up, so I'm really curious as to if anyone can find Sagisu mention Barry anywhere.

This may or may not be worth a bump: Upon rewatching the series in its entirety a while back, I found that the sections of Background Music II that copied the Magnificent Seven theme were removed for the actual show. I'm glad they did; it's way too overt for my taste and would have been really distracting.

I get the feeling Ornette was outright lying in his first post when he said he didn't hear similarities, especially because in a later post he said he's not saying they don't sound similar.

EDIT: Oh yeah! I completely forgot to mention: the first version of Expansion of Blockade Sagisu composed that can be heard on S2 Works (EoE went with the second version) begins very distractingly similarly to "Phantom of the Opera". I'd post a sample but as far as I can tell nobody cares.

Ornette wrote:The typical musical vocabulary in pop music is relatively small, there are bound to be tons of superficial similarities everywhere.

I'm going to punch your head for the glory of Brian Wilson.

This version of the James Bond tune ("007 Takes the Lektor") is probably a better comparison with "Decisive Battle". It's even more similar and plays during a gunfight.

Gonna do a bit of a thread revival with this one.

I was listening to Barefoot in the Park recently, and I couldn't help but notice that it sounded like a song I'd heard redone in a Henry Mancini album a while back: The Girl from Ipanema.

If you need proof, compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEp4rIUJacM to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWxefG-jrCQ (I know the lyrics are different in the later, but the key is closer to Barefoot to help with the comparison). If that doesn't help, just sing the original lyrics over Barefoot and see how it turns out, like I did.

A bit of a soundtrack buff myself but only recently got into NGE.

I thought EVA-02 sounded a bit like some of the space fighter themes in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

I don't know if its a common motif because of the Mecha genre in anime etc but the EVA-00 theme reminded me of the Dai-X from X-Bomber/Star Fleet.