The anime movie that inspired a song by Japanese Breakfast
Japanese Breakfast, a dream-pop project headed by songwriter and author Michelle Zauner, has quickly become an indie soft girl staple. Combining hazy synths, soft but strained vocals, and indie guitars, Zauner prioritises raw storytelling in her music as she charts themes of joy, grief, and the Korean-American experience.
Her most recent LP, Jubilee, is true to its name. It’s celebratory in tone, seeing Zauner move away from the sadder tones of Soft Sounds from Another Planet in favour of more playful, gentler sounds. The album’s glittering opener, ‘Paprika’ sets the tone for the entire record to take this route, blending a marching beat, triumphant horns, playful synths and the occasional gong (which often features onstage at Japanese Breakfast’s live performances).
The track’s optimistic marching band feel was inspired by Satoshi Kon’s 2006 anime sci-fi film Paprika. The film follows its eponymous character as she investigates cases of dream terrorism in the future. Zauner told NPR: “That is definitely the vibe. The song title comes from this Satoshi Kon movie, Paprika, and this sort of surreal parade that happens.”
The parade appears first in the dream of Paprika’s affiliate Shima. By the climax of the film, dreams and reality have become increasingly distinguishable, and the parade has taken over the city. In a chaotic, ominous scene accompanied by a marching drum and hissing cymbals, members of the city can be seen following and becoming one with the parade.
Zauner continues to explain the track’s inception: “I was playing around with a lot of these Spitfire Albion orchestra plugins, and I had come up with this marching band thing that built up into this huge crash in the chorus. I basically brought it to Craig and was just like, ‘How do we make this real?’”
Emulating the marching band sound, the track, like the film, is joyous and colourful on the surface but has an ominous undertone. Zauner’s lyrics detail similar themes of surreal dreaming and mindless following – Zauner opens the track with the lines, “Lucidity came slowly, I awoke from dreams of untying a great knot”, while in the chorus, she asks: “How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers to captivate every heart?”
Drummer Craig Hendrix explains how they translated Zauner’s vision, “The challenging part for that song was getting the feel. I wasn’t part of high school drumlines, and I don’t have the muscle memory of really solid snare drum chops that a lot of drummers have, so it definitely took some time to replicate those and maintain that momentum that a marching band would have.”
He adds: “But afterwards, it was a lot of fun to just put up every drum we had in the studio, and get all the different tom tones and the cymbal crashes and the big splash cymbals and everything. That part lives up to the name Jubilee.”
He rightfully states, “I think it’s tough not to dance while you’re playing.”
Like the parade, Hendrix’s joyful, marching percussion in ‘Paprika’ is involuntarily danceable for the band and audiences alike. It encourages listeners to get up and join the joy of Japanese Breakfast, lingering on Zauner’s every word.
