Something happened to Janne Da Arc since the release of their last album, GAIA. Their singles started breaking into the top ten on the Oricon charts. This sudden jump in popularity can be attributed mostly to the use of their singles in TV promotions. "So, how does that affect this album?" you may ask. It seems that Janne Da Arc focused on making their album appeal to a more general audience this time, whereas GAIA was still mostly for hard-core J-Rock fans. J-Fan liked the hard core sound of GAIA, and gave the album a nine, despite the lack of variety in the songs. How is this album different from GAIA, and how does it compare? Let's take a look. If you examine the packaging and lyric book, not to mention the name of the album, you'll probably figure out that this album has a story that goes with it. The story is about a working Japanese woman named Nozomi who finds an adventure book that she had written when she was a little girl. She goes on a quest through the book (figuratively) to discover what is truly important in her life. The text of the story is written between the song lyrics in the lyric book, and there are three transitional tracks that have to do with the story in the album. They are listed in quotation marks in the track list below. Also, in the lyric book, there are some song lyrics in every song which are written in red. These are the lyrics that are supposedly directly related to the story. Some of the songs on the album like, "rasen" have a lot to do with the story, and it seems that they wrote the song lyrics with the story in mind. Since the lyrics in the three included singles were probably written before the story, their relevance to the story is a bit questionable. But enough about the story, let's talk about the music. There are a total of ten new songs and only three singles included on this album. That is very impressive, and it is a higher number of new songs than GAIA had. In order to appeal to a wider audience, they have made an effort to include a variety of different kinds of new songs. They wanted to avoid the lack of variety that was present in GAIA, and they have done just that. This is probably Janne Da Arc's most well-rounded album yet. Included are hard rock songs like "OASIS" and "suicide note" which sound similar to their recent B-side tracks. There are softer songs like "rasen" and "Rainy ~ai no shirabe~", darker songs like "explosion" and "VAMPIRE", and bright songs like "in the story", "akai tsuki", and "PARADISE". The most unique sounding song on the album is "What's up!", which sounds a bit like some sort of '80's American "tough guy" type of rock. It is nothing like anything Janne Da Arc has done before, at least until it gets to the chorus. This song works surprisingly well for the group, and is quite enjoyable to listen to. The three singles, "MARIA no tsumeato", "kasumiyuku sora se ni shite", and "Shining ray" all received moderately high ratings from J-Fan, but within the context of an album, these three songs sound great. The three transitional tracks tie the album together well, and don't get in the way of the listening experience. "1/5 no otobako" and "shoujo to koori no joou" give a preview of the main melody from "Rainy ~ai no shirabe~". "ubawareta chie" is just a 15-second transition of sound effects between "akai tsuki" and "suicide note". The first song, "in the story", which is on track 2, sounds kind of like an introductory song, though there was already an introduction on the track before it. It's a complete song, but it definitely sounds kind of like a warm-up, and does a fine job of getting the listener excited about the album from the beginning. It's a good song too. There are some amusing lyrics in "suicide note". The lyrics are a fictional suicide note left by a Japanese student. He mentions at the beginning of the song that he had to learn about "Martin Luther King Jr." in class, and he calls it useless book knowledge that he doesn't need to know for anything, and he uses it as reason for being upset with the world. He's right. I don't see too much reason why Japanese students need to learn about an American revolutionary figure like Martin Luther King Jr. It's just kind of amusing to an American who had to learn about him since childhood. "rasen" is an ominous-sounding song that is highly related to the story of the album. There is a computerized voice that tells parts of the story in English in the background. If you've ever messed around with the voices on a Macintosh, you will recognize these classic computerized voices. Despite the presence of unique songs like "What's up!", some of the songs sound a bit derivative of previous Janne Da Arc songs. For instance, "Rainy ~ai no shirabe~" sounds a bit like their early single "Heaven's Place" and "in the story" sounds a bit like "AGE" on their previous album. We won't count this against them too much since the new songs are different enough, and those old songs were great anyway. The majority of listeners will prefer ANOTHER STORY to GAIA. The variety of music and the lower number of really hard sounding tracks makes this album much easier to listen to. Plus, there is a very large amount of new music, and all of it is good. However, there was some sentiment at J-Fan that GAIA was better because some preferred the hard-core sound of GAIA despite the lack of variety. Others loved this album, proclaimed it to be the best album from Janne Da Arc yet, and had an inclination to give it a perfect ten rating. In the end though, J-Fan had to settle on a nine since the perfect rating couldn't be agreed upon. Besides, there really wasn't anything that blew us away here, though the songs are all pretty good. It gets the same rating that GAIA received, but you can probably consider this one to be a higher nine because it has more new songs, and most listeners will prefer ANOTHER STORY. GAIA was an album that took some getting used to for most listeners, while this one you will probably find more enjoyable upon the first listen. At any rate, ANOTHER STORY is an excellent album, and you are sure to enjoy it.
Buy it here.
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