The man who composed the opening theme music for One Piece has outraged fans by proclaiming “adults shouldn’t be reading manga” and bragging that he had never even watched One Piece when he wrote the song, freely admitting it doesn’t have anything to do with or fit the series at all.
Shinsuke Shimada, a Kyoto-born comedian, “talent” and composer, is here noted for composing “Kaze wo Sagashite,” the theme music for One Piece:
However, he brazenly admits he “has no interest in manga,” that “I never watched it when I took the job and just did it anyway” and also says “adults shouldn’t be reading manga!”:
He says he showed it to his daughter, a One Piece fan, only to be told it “didn’t fit at all.” Naturally he took no notice and so the show’s latest OP was born.
Shimada is already notorious for a different kind of performance – he became enraged with an agency manager for failing to use the proper honorifics when speaking of company superiors, dragged her into another room and began punching her, pulling her hair, hitting her with objects and spitting on her after she showed insufficient remorse when he began harrying her.
She filed charges and he was later convicted of assault, tearfully admitting his wrongs to the press but stopping short of withdrawing from showbusiness, returning to work after only 2 months.
Somehow his showbusiness career survived the incident and he is evidently still keen on accruing notoriety.
His victim alleges she was forced out of her position after the incident and has had partial success in suing him, winning over $100,000 in damages.
Various allegations of media bias towards him were later made after certain broadcasters refused to identify him by name or to call him a “suspect,” apparently out of deference to his agency connections.
Needless to say, One Piece fans are less than pleased that this character was entrusted with scoring the opening.
A veritable source of what mature adults “should” and “should not” do, indeed.
Song ain’t bad, though.
I’m a male and me and my buddy both agree that this guy is a disgrace to all males out there. My buddy who is Japanese say’s this guy is a disgrace to all Japanese. Seriously this world is so corrupt. This guy should have had the center of attention on the news. Hush money, that’s terrible. I feel sorry for the women losing her managing position. The corporation is fucked up to drive her out because of that incident.
ummm no.
there’s a reason why manga is available at ALL ages.
No s♥♥t.
Of course no adult should be reading a One Piece manga… Hell. no adult should read manga.
Manga = Comics
s♥♥t. Some people never grow up.
Comics and manga is not as s♥♥t as you think it is. Within any given medium, the vast majority is crap. That does not mean there cannot be any mature and complex movies, theatre/opera plays, books, music, comics and so on. Sturgeon’s Law (the second one, to be specific), read up on it.
For western examples, Maus by Art Spiegelman is a classical example, or the Watchmen by Alan Moore. Will Eisner is a western artist who paved way for serious and mature in the US in the earlier half of the previous century and afterwards. The French probably always took their comics seriously.
When it comes to manga, the ur-example would be much of Osamu Tezuka’s works, including the Phoenix collection(which I admittedly haven’t gotten around to reading yet, just heard great stuff about) and Adolf.