Yoko Kanno (Gabriela Robin) -- Moon

 

Last night, as I was doing my usual browsings (grazings 🐮?) through YouTube, I found this video of the great Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）on a 1988 TV show introducing his backing band, and one of those musicians happened to be an adorable-looking mid-20s keyboardist by the name of Yoko Kanno（菅野よう子）. Yes, that Yoko Kanno who would come up with one of the most iconic anime theme songs in history along with other musical delights.

I then decided to see if there were any other Yoko Kanno compositions that I could explore. She did provide the soundtrack for one of the shows in the "Gundam" franchise, "Turn A Gundam"（∀ガンダム）in 1999 following her winning turn for "Cowboy Be-Bop". My exposure to the most famous Japanese robot of them all has been limited to just the first three movies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, though.

Therefore, "Turn A Gundam" was never in my viewscreen (and frankly my anime buddy may either laud or slam it) but I did encounter this beautiful piece from Kanno's soundtrack for this particular entry in the franchise. "Moon" was of course composed by Kanno and then written and performed by Gabriela Robin. From what I've read, folks had been wondering who this lovely Gabriela Robin was for years but then Kanno finally let the cat out of the bag and admitted that she was the Robin.

Well, that knocked folks out for a loop. I'm fairly sure that people wondered why she hadn't considered a recording career but I think that there are some artists who prefer to just be on the songwriting end of things, and that's fine. But indeed, Kanno as Robin has a wonderfully ethereal voice in "Moon", and though I've never seen a single episode of "Turn A Gundam", I can imagine that this track was used for a quiet introspective scene on the eve of one spectacular battle with the last half of the song reflecting the preparations of the gigantic Gundam itself.