AMBIENCE -- Rising/Back to You

 

Despite being an old-fashioned Marvel Comics fan centering upon the "X-Men" books, I've been keeping my interests for the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large, although as you might expect, I had also seen the original "X-Men" movies with Sir Patrick Stewart and even earlier, the Fox animated series in the early 1990s. However, continuing collecting those comics was impossible (though I tried) while living in Japan because the prices were simply way too expensive for my non-mutant blood. So, I was happy to see that Hollywood had finally decided to explore the world of Marvel via full motion pictures by the end of the last century.

As the thumbnail at the top says, it was truly a Marvel onslaught yesterday at a San Diego's Comicon presentation when Kevin Feige made his prognostications regarding the future of the MCU through Phases 5 and 6. Now that we're not only twenty years into this huge era of superhero movies and TV series but in the immediate post-"Endgame" era, I don't particularly have any major excitement for any one movie or Disney+ series, though "She-Hulk" looks entertaining enough. I guess that I may be suffering from Marvel fatigue of a sort. The one thing that I did notice though was that Feige didn't mention any timeline for the emergence of MCU's "X-Men" although hints have begun popping up at the end of "Ms. Marvel", and of course, that Professor X cameo in "Dr. Strange In the Multiverse of Madness". Perhaps that might be Phase 7.

Getting back to the 90s animated series of "X-Men", that mysterious and dramatic and shall we say downright uncanny theme by Ron Wasserman has been so beloved that it even made cameos itself in those two MCU projects that I just mentioned. I certainly wouldn't mind it coming back in full someday down the decade.

Now I know that the animated series did get its debut in Japan a few years later. Before I started prepping for this article, I had also assumed that the series would have its own opening and closing themes done by Japanese musicians, and that in all likelihood, the songs would be hard rock. Well, I should have bought a lottery ticket today since I was right on both counts.

NOTE: I wrote the following down not realizing that I had actually done an article on "Rising", though not on "Back to You", all the way back in May 2016 but there is some new information here about the band so I'm retaining things as is.

The rock band AMBIENCE had a short life between 1990 and 1994 before starting up again from 2012. Near the end of their initial run in 1994, they released their second and third singles which were involved with "X-Men". That second single from May seems to be a double A-side since there are the two titles of "Rising" and "Dreamin'". "Rising", being the first of the two opening themes for the Japanese broadcast of the show in 1994, was written by vocalist Hiroshi Kitagawa（北川浩）and composed by guitarist Shuhei Endo（遠藤修平）and drummer Akihiko Shinone（篠根晃彦）. I have to admit that I got walloped with a lot of "Ai wo Torimodose!!" （愛をとりもどせ!!）vibes especially with that first word of "SHOCK!" in the lyrics. I also got a kick out of the new opening credits with the mutant team going up against the Brood.

The third single, "Back to You", came out later in November 1994 and it served as the show's ending theme. And from the sound of it, it's a little less intense. Written and composed by Endo, I guess that it's almost like the Japanese X-Men version of "It's Miller Time!". Let's head back to the X-Mansion for some brewskis and dinner. As one commenter put it, I think it's really nice that the producers put up covers of actual "X-Men" issues during the closing credits. I actually have some of those issues although where they are now and what condition they're in, I have no idea.

In any case, I've got a sneaking feeling that by the time the MCU finally draws down its curtains, I may end up having a couple of zeroes in my age.