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Soundtrack: Yanagi Nagi - Just Because! Original Motion Soundtrack (2018)

86 / 100
The Just Because! OST is not merely background music but an emotional trigger—intimate, melancholic, and deeply personal.
Ah… this is all because of that damn post-rock/ambient!

Because of those two genres, I started feeling emotional while watching anime during the pandemic era—especially Just Because!. Even though it is “only” a romance/slice-of-life anime, I admit it is a melodrama with a chest-piercing, underrated soundtrack.

The composer behind it is the well-known singer Yanagi Nagi, who also performs the opening theme, which was quite surprising at the time. One of the most important tracks here is “Shinkan no Mae wa,” which inspired me to form Oaksean, despite having no instrumental background whatsoever. Somehow, almost magically, I was able to grasp the notes of its opening part, which I approximated in C4 as far as I know:

C–D–E C–C–A3–G3
C–D–E C–C–E–D
C–D–E C–C–A3–G3
C–A–G– …

Yes, that’s all I could really follow. But it truly changed the color of my life. I started randomly playing on the Walk Band piano, producing hundreds of tracks. They were extremely amateurish and low-quality, and unfortunately I couldn’t save them all. What remained, I eventually uploaded to Bandcamp with whatever polishing I could manage.

Besides that track, there is also the anthemic and memorable “In Unison.” Then there is the instrumental version of the opening theme “Over and Over,” which appears as “Signs and Wonders.” Some tracks even sound like children’s songs, such as “Little Toy Box,” while others feel tense, for example “Kuubaku no Frustration.”

Out of the 43 tracks, it is very clear that I gravitate toward those driven primarily by emotional piano and violin. After this anime, I gradually became unable to watch Japanese dramas or anime anymore, because their new age/cinematic background music would make me pause and choose to sink into sadness instead. Unfortunately, digital access to works like this is very limited. Even buying physical releases is mostly restricted to Japan.
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