After the rather nice surprise of hearing Oasis singing the opening for Eden of the East, I did a little research to check what other anime had songs sung by popular western bands with plans to write a post about them. Then I instantly forgot until 3 moths later when I came across an anime opening sung by the Backstreet Boys. So I decided to go back and write the post, even though ito’s not quite the hot topic it was when Eden was airing.
The theme songs, whether it's for the opening and the ending song, really does give impacts to people who have watched the anime or played the video games. Usually, people just know the theme songs for the particular anime and video games but never the artists because I believe they don't even know who are they. But the most important thing is the visual-kei bands are able to penetrate other groups of people besides visual-kei bands fans like me.
Honestly speaking, there are some anime that I watched because the theme songs are by visual-kei bands. I didn't find anything wrong with visual-kei songs become the theme song for the anime because for me, it will be easier for me to recommend people to listen to their songs. It's more like it'll be easier to introduce the bands since they know the songs. Most important thing is, the song itself fits with the anime storyline otherwise these bands will be accused for cheap promotion.
Gackt and Malice Mizer are also good bands (Gackt was the lead singer of MM for a few years before it disbanded), though I'm not sure as to the fact that they've done any anime openings/endings. Moi Dix Mois was formed by one of the Malice Mizer members after MM was disbanded, and it's also a very good band.
