How Music Makes a Fight Scene

Key Takeaways

• Sound design enhances animation depth in shows like Cowboy Bebop by accentuating visual action with music.
• Music in anime fight scenes, like in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, elevates moments through pacing and rhythm.
• Cowboy Bebop and Jojo’s blend visual and audio art, creating rhythmically beautiful fight scenes.

Although it might seem a bit contradictory, one of the most important parts of any animation has always been sound design. While animation is purely a visual medium, the accompanying auditory elements help enhance the animation, even for well-animated shows like Cowboy Bebop, drastically. While it doesn’t directly improve anything on its own, strong music and sound effects can help accentuate already stellar animation, improving it on a deeper level.

When it comes to fight scenes in anime, music, despite seeming insignificant, can drastically improve the scene overall. While many fight scenes have amazing animation, complete with jaw-dropping drawings and impact frames, the proper use of music is what truly can elevate moments like these to the next level. Two shows that accomplish this masterful blend of visual and audio elements are Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Cowboy Bebop, acting as two perfect examples of how music can make a fight scene.

Cowboy Bebop and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Are Two Anime Classics

Two Highly-Stylized Works of Art

Cowboy Bebop, as many anime fans are well aware, is a 1998 anime, one of the best anime of all time, and many Western audience members’ first interaction with the genre. Set in a space-western-style future, Cowboy Bebop utilized a jazz and western soundtrack to help emphasize the setting. The music for the show itself was very different from other anime of the time period, helping Western audiences connect more to the American-style sound the show had.

The series, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, on the other hand, is more difficult to pin down exactly what style it is. Jojo’s, specifically the 2012 animation of the classic Manga series, has utilized many different styles of music in the show, ranging from Disco to Pop, to Rock. However, music has always been a major theme and inspiration of the Jojo’s universe, with many characters and abilities in the show being direct references to musical audiences. In turn, the music of Jojo’s itself has always been praised and found its way into pop culture through the use of memes that utilize its music.

While both the sci-fi epic Cowboy Bebop and the bromance-filled Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure have good music, the fact that the music is good isn’t what improves the fight scenes. When dealing with a proper fight scene, two of the most important elements are pacing and rhythm. In both cases of Cowboy Bebop and Jojo’s, music helps solidify these two elements, accenting the visual satisfaction of each fight scene with rhythmic satisfaction.

Cowboy Bebop Paces Fighting With Jazz

Dancing and Fighting Are Similar After All

Firstly, for pacing, Cowboy Bebop, which had its own live-action adaptation, expertly uses repetitive fills and the punchy accents of jazz to accent the ups and downs of the action on screen. Looking at the fight scene between Spike and Asimov during the pilot of the show, the fight simply begins with a simple baseline and drum fill, while the characters throw punches and use dance-like movements to get into position. However, when more action starts occurring, mainly Asimov destroying a table, the main riff from the Saxophones comes in, accenting the increase in visual action.

The Cowboy Bebop music continues this pattern of accenting the rhythm of the fight until the clash is broken up by gunfire. The drums then return to a much calmer steady rhythm and leave only the rhythm section setting a beat, calming the intensity of the fight down for the ensuing chase scene. Overall, the Jazz riffs and stings in the music create a great sense of rhythm in the fight, while the overall instrumentation of the fight creates a greater sense of pacing.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Builds Hype Through Instrumentation and Rhythm

“That” Moment in Every Jojo’s Theme

As for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure music, the rhythm, and pacing of the fight scene is accented by major increases and decreases in the instrumentation of the music. The best example of this is in Giorno’s theme, especially in the major break-down section of the song. In Mista’s and Giorno’s fight with Ghiaccio, after Mista is defeated, Ghiaccio believes he has completely won. However, the music starts playing Giorno’s theme, and it is revealed that Giorno has saved Mista.

I, Giorno Giovanna, have a dream. – Giorno Giovanna

This part of the Part 5 protagonist, Giorno’s, theme, involves a piano as the only instrument. However, as Giorno delivers his speech, more and more instruments are added to the song. This ladder helps with the pace of this moment in the fight, increasing the intensity of the scene until the moment of the beatdown. Finally, as the intense moment of the beatdown occurs, the music also enters the driving guitar section once again, laying down a rhythmic beat that’s perfect for the rhythmic rush-down attacks of Jojo’s characters.

Although these are two small examples, there are many other ways that music in Cowboy Bebop and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure enhances their fight scenes overall. In a way, these two shows have expertly linked the mediums of visual and audio art through the use of beautiful fight scene animations. In the end, hopefully, more shows in the future follow the trends set by these two examples, creating more rhythmically beautiful fight scenes years down the line.