Sony Anime Festival '06

If you cast your mind back to November last year, you might remember the brief flurry of excitement that came with the long, long, long awaited new Halcali single on Epic Records. When it finally came, it had Sony's In House stamp all over it. Giving the song to a guy who worked on fellow Sony stalwart Yuki’s Joy aside, it was also attached to the back of Sunday morning anime Eureka 7, for which all the opening and closing theme songs are commissioned to Sony artists. Halcali’s actual stint on that show is long over, but it looks like there’s still a bit more mileage to squeeze out of the tie-in yet, as Halcali have been added to the concept festival (I think it’s safe to call it that) Sony Anime Festival ’06.
As Sony knows, the real beauty of attaching one of your artists (particularly a new one) to the back of a popular TV show is that it’s essentially maximum promotion with minimum effort. Who cares about going to the trouble of pleasing, or even considering an existing fanbase when you can just jump on the hoverboard and hitch a ride on the back of an existing one? Tip Taps Tip embarrassed Twinkle Star in terms of record sales, but the fact is that Sony’s promotion of both singles was equally slack, both singles suffering from massive under exposure from a major label that (one would presume) would be able to get this manufactured pop band further up the charts than an indie subsidiary could. The only real difference between the two being, of course, that the former came with free picture postcards and a readymade weekly built in audience.
My problem here isn’t so much the fact that it was attached to an anime as such, it’s more like this general feeling that Halcali have been almost totally neglected by their label except in the few instances where it fits in with their plan for them, which so far appears to be nothing more than to use them as a tool to promote a kids TV show.
Anyway, let’s get back to the plot for a second. The festival will feature a different stage for each show that Sony had artists perform songs on, and will take place over a period of two days in Tokyo (May 6/7) and Osaka (June 10/11). There are a lot of artists on the bill (along with various voice actors from the show), and considering the Eureka 7 stage starts at 6:00pm, this presumably means either very short sets (which Halcali should be used to by now anyway), or…well the prospect of them coming out and only playing their theme tune for the show seems too grim to contemplate.