really sad and stunned. Sorry for the typos and stuff just need to get this all out. gonna also use this to compile homages and messages shared by SRW related staff and personalities.
My friends know how i regularly ramble about that tv channel called Nolife that had a huge impact on my life from its birth in 2007 to its death in 2018. It’s thanks to it that I was inspired to become a game journalist. The channel’s ex-boss even gave me a big confidence boost in 2018 after I won an award at an otaku article writing competition he was part of the jury of that year. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to start applying to gaming sites for real.
Some of the streamers i watch weekly are related to Nolife. Some discord servers i’m active on and some french friends I’ve made these last 4 years are also things I met through Nolife.
The first time I saw Nolife in late 2007 or so while randomly going through channels, they were showing concerts of Mizuki Ichiro. It was showing the Captain Harlock song specifically. My head went “woah what the hell it’s the Mazinger Z OP guy and JAM Project guy! how come they’re showing this on TV????”. The channel also had several eyecatches, and one of them was Mizuki Ichiro going “Bonjour, it’s Mizuki Ichiro, and you’re watching… NOLIFE Z!!!!”
Mizuki Ichiro is one of those people that if not for them, japanese media and anime and everthing it influenced, so american/global north pop culture too, would be fidderent.
the beginning of the international reach of anime can also be partly attributed ot him as his songs were OPs for a lot of the first anime ever aired in europe, south america, arab world etc in the 70s-80s. (technically a lot of OPs in these countries were covers of the japanese one in the native language or changed altogether but a lot of people who became fans of anime with these series soon learned about him too).
Had a 54+years carreer so even after the 70s 80s he was still a huge influence too most notably with the formation of JAM Project in early 2000s
These last 4 years i would often read his tweets on twitter too. He’s one of those japanese personalities who’d always make a good morning tweet everyday so it was heartwarming to see. he’d talk about the games he played a lot too especially BOTW as famitsu’s obituary mentions:
Not only the main story, he’d even do the side content and challanges in a lot of games too despite his age or schedule. He was also a huge Super Robot Wars fan and played a lot of the games himself. I forgot if it was during an old SRW-related stream or a live concert or on twitter, but I also clearly remember him talking in very great detail about SRW Alpha 3 and talking about how he’d spend a lot of time reorganizing his squads.
It’s a weird feeling because it’s not like that i’m that sad because i feared for the worst even since he revealed his cancer a few months ago.
And it’s kinda like when you have old grandparents or family members, i was already preparing myself mentally, but at the same time i obviously wasn’t prepared, and didn’t want to see it, and i even regularly think like “you’re worrying about this family member dying or this personality you like dying, but you might as well end up dying before them” because whether you’re old or sick or whatever doesn’t change anything and you never know what might happen.
Even before he made his cancer public, during the SRW 30th anniversary live event a bit more than a year ago, he apologized at some point saying he can’t sing as well as in the past, and how he hesitated a lot on whether to go to the event or not, and how he hopes to sing better next time
(54:15)
So for me and im sure for many people around the world watching the event, that moment was like a (re)realization that he’s getting old and will leave us one day (and even so he was still pretty young he passed away at 74) .
I’m just a drop in the sea and I’m not implying i make much of a difference but in times like these I wish I still had a writing job right now to try and make an obituary in English that tries to be a bit more indepth than most. Though at the same time I’m happy to be jobless right now because it’s just a terrible feeling to have to write an obituary under a time limit or seo constraints and it feel like you’re disrespectful. In the first place it’s really messed up just having to pitch it and try to manage to explain to some ??? manager why is it important even if it’s not trending on google much.
Really sad. My prayers are with him and his family.
Watanabe Chumei also passed away earlier this year, so both the composer and singer of Mazinger’s Z OP have passed away. Watanabe Chumei and Ichiro Mizuki are among those who pretty much invented mecha songs and anime songs.
Homage tweets
Nekketsu Nikki 