Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s favourite anime
Radiohead have become a cultural force in their own right. If setting the world alight in the 1990s with their unique take on alternative rock wasn’t enough, they subsequently masterfully delved into the worlds of electronica and classical music in the records that followed.
Both Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have also worked in film and have written several excellent scores, including Suspiria, The Master, and There Will Be Blood. Greenwood also has a profound taste for the world of anime, and on his most-used Fender Telecaster Plus, he has a decal sticker of the anime and manga series Attack No. 1 placed on its scratchplate, so we can assume that he is a tremendous fan of the show.
Attack No. 1 is an anime adaptation of Chikako Urano’s manga series and has the honour of being the first female sports anime series to be televised. The manga sits comfortably in the shojo category, which targets an audience of adolescent girls and young women.
The story of Attack No. 1 revolves around a high school girl named Kozue Ayuhara, who tries out for the volleyball team at her new school. Along with her new friend, Midori Hayakawa, Kozue impresses her coach, Shunsuke Hongo, although this leads to her becoming enemies with the star of the volleyball team Yumi Katsuragi.
The series focuses on Kozue’s discovery of the stress that occurs as a result of being at the top of her game. This is intertwined with the natural difficulties that happen during her time being an everyday high school student. Still, Kozue makes it her goal to overcome these challenges and become the best volleyball player at her school, in her country and, eventually, in the world.
The manga had first been serialised in the Weekly Margaret Magazine and capitalised on the gold medal that the Japanese women’s team won at the 1964 Olympics. In the 1960s, the world of anime and manga had been dominated by shonen stories, which were aimed at young boys and men.
Yet Attack No. 1 is not the only anime series that Greenwood and Radiohead have a link to. The 2006 anime series Ergo Proxy is a cyberpunk-themed anime set in a post-apocalyptic utopia where humans and androids live in harmony.
That is until a virus bestows self-consciousness upon the androids, which causes them to rebel and commit murders. Fittingly, given the nature of the show, its producers selected the Radiohead classic ‘Paranoid Android’ as its ending theme tune, which will have likely delighted Greenwood to no end.
