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An epic orchestral event based on one of the most popular anime television series is coming to Canada. This spring, audiences in Montreal and Toronto (and, in August, Vancouver) will experience Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure, a near-three-hour anthology of music from the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z soundtracks.
Producer Prakash Amarasooriya has loved anime since his early childhood. He used to tune into Canadian kids’ channels like YTV specifically to catch episodes of Dragon Ball, playing pretend as the characters. He founded Kashamara Productions in August 2022 to bring classical music to fans of TV, film, and video games, and he’s excited to present Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure as the company’s first show.
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z span around 450 episodes produced between 1986 and 2003. The first show explores superpowered alien child Son Goku’s quest to collect the seven titular artifacts, which have the power to summon a wish-granting dragon. In Dragon Ball Z, adult Goku and his son Gohan train in martial arts to protect Earth from powerful aliens, androids, and magical beings.
Amarasooriya said the long-running nature of the series allows viewers to connect to the characters and learn life lessons alongside them. He said anime tends to explore themes of personal growth and overcoming strife that, when incorporated into classical music, might draw in younger audiences.
“A lot of kids remember coming home after school and watching Dragon Ball. It was something that unified a lot of people’s experiences growing up, and it retains a lot of nostalgia to this day,” he said. “It still resonates with a lot of people (who now) have families.”
Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure was composed by the late Shunsuke Kikuchi and originally arranged by Paris-based Overlook Events in 2019. The show travelled overseas to Los Angeles in May 2022. Amarasooriya’s Canadian tour will be the country’s first anime-based symphonic concert.
The hour-long first act is dedicated to Dragon Ball, while the second act is 80 minutes of Dragon Ball Z music, separated by a 20-minute intermission. Both acts are synced with clips compiled from various episodes of their respective shows, projected on a screen at the front of the stage.
According to Amarasooriya, the concert is a new way for anime fans to experience the story. It’s also a way for non-fans to learn about Japanese music that’s “renowned for its excitement.”
Francis Choinière (Provided by Prakash Amarasooriya)
“It’s also great for international fans because there aren’t words in this production. It is purely a musical story, so whether you speak English, French, or neither, you’re able to follow along,” he said.
Kashamara Productions enlisted the FILMharmonic Orchestra, its principal conductor Francis Choinière and its 60 musicians to make the project a reality.
Since 2019, the orchestra has performed shows with music from Lord of the Rings and Star Wars as one of the few Canadian orchestras dedicated to symphonic presentations of film soundtracks.
FILMharmonic Orchestra (Provided by Prakash Amarasooriya)
Choinière feels the concert will open the door to a genre that has rarely been touched by the classical-music world. “(Anime is) one of those things that has a very strong cult following—the people that like it really like it. That’s what we like about these kinds of concerts,” Choinière said. “If this show works and the audience’s reaction is good, I think it will encourage future productions and collaborations.”
Amarasooriya chose the orchestra because they’re used to performing with a lot of synchronization. Typically, the FILMharmonic Orchestra will perform a soundtrack while the film plays in real time. This allows the orchestra to anticipate swells of music as the scenes progress, and take breaks as the music fades under dialogue.
“Obviously you can’t do the full material,” Choinière said, as Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure is cut together from various episodes. Since there are no natural breaks or visual cues, the performance requires a greater level of synchronization and endurance than usual.
Every musician in the orchestra is currently training with a click-track, a metronome fed directly into their headphones, to maintain tempo. Usually limited to the drummer, Amarasooriya said all musicians may use click-tracks in the final production due to complexity.
“The music caters to the Dragon Ball scenes happening on the screen, which may have unpredictable transitions in tempo and thus needs the musicians to adapt and stay aligned to the visuals without looking at the screen,” he said.
Hiroki Takahashi (Provided by Prakash Amarasooriya)
To cap off the show, Japanese singer and actor Hiroki Takahashi, the original voice behind Dragon Ball’s first opening theme song “Makafushigi Adventure,” will perform several songs from the shows alongside some original compositions.
Amarasooriya said it’s inspiring to work with people he looked up to as a child. “To actually see them live is a dream come true. I feel like a kid in a candy store.”
The producer has more sweets to grab: for a future production, he has already travelled to Japan to meet with another artist who influenced his childhood. He also intends to bring innovative technology like drones and three-dimensional projections to several “live-to-film” anime concerts to be announced.
Playlist
Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure:
FILMharmonic Orchestra
Montreal, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, May 24-25.
Toronto, Meridian Theatre, June 9-10.
Vancouver, Orpheum Theatre, Aug. 25.
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