Question for those of you who've read the BECK manga.

[loopychew]

Was Belle Ame always a pointed attack at L'Arc~en~Ciel, or did the anime just make it that way with the music?

Comments

[insanitykun.livejournal.com]

I haven't read tha manga in a whiile (I need to catch up), but I would guess that it was just the anime. There's absolutely no similarities between the two that I can see.

Different numbers of members, different situations, L'arc also never had any big hotshot producer. As far as I know they do most of their own production.

[loopychew.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. The reason I figured it was done as such was basically because of two things:

1. The French name, which I've always found kind of pretentious.
2. "Lost Melody," the primary song they use when Belle Ame is on stage, is very much inspired by L'Arc, as far as I can tell. (Granted, all I have to work off of are OPs and EDs, and I've not purchased or downloaded a L'Arc song/album for, like, a lifetime ago.) Other incidental music they use at Greatful Sound also have that feel to it.

[insanitykun.livejournal.com]

French, or generally foreign names are very, very common in Japanese music. To me it seems more as a takeoff of the mid-90's light-visual-kei explosion as a whole, rather than one specific band. There were, and are, a lot of two or three person bands with stupid names playing bad pop rock while wearing a little bit of makeup.