Designing the sound of vintage anime

There haven't been a lot of anime-style sound effects libraries from the independent sound community - but Moon Echo Audio recently released their Vintage Anime SFX library, which does a great job capturing that 80s/90s retro sound. Here, library creator Cooper Skinner was kind enough to share the story behind the making of the library:

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What are some of the sounds included in the library? And How did you come up with the idea for the library in the first place?
I’ve been casually searching for an sfx pack of this nature for years with no luck. While I never had any specific use for anime sounds in my work, I always loved the feeling that the specific tones and textures found in classic anime elicited and was curious about different ways that they could be implemented in other types of media. For this reason I tried to recreate elements from different genres of anime. The library is full of ambiences, lasers, auras, explosions, robotic sounds, and magic spells.

Moon Echo Audio has released two demos to highlight the Vintage Anime SFX library – and here’s the first one

In general, what are some of the characteristics of vintage anime sound effects? And from a sound perspective, how does vintage anime differ from contemporary anime?

Vintage anime sound was always very abstract, and contemporary anime sound continues this tradition with a wider variety of options for designers to be able to recreate and source sound effects

Vintage anime sound was created with limited resources, primarily with synths recorded on tape. The tape distortion adds a particular flavor to the sounds which almost evokes the feeling that the sounds from say an old school Hannah Barbara library has (except those cartoons primarily employed the use of field recording, musical instruments, etc.)
Vintage anime sound was always very abstract, and contemporary anime sound continues this tradition with a wider variety of options for designers to be able to recreate and source sound effects.
 

Any particular movies or series that inspired you sonically for the library? And what sort of research did you do for the project?
Dragon Ball Z, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Vampire Hunter D were definitely some of my primary inspirations which lead me to research the people and places that made these iconic sounds possible. I recently discovered a designer by the name of Hidenori Ishida of Fizz Sound Creation (formally Ishida Sound Production) who is responsible for many of the sounds that inspired this pack. Youtube has many obscure anime clips from the 80’s/90’s that also reveled some interesting sonic findings.
 

What were some of the synths and plugins you used for the library – and did you know from the get-go what tools you’d need to get that vintage anime sound?
Through my research I was able to stumble upon a few archival photos of the Arp 2600 which is a synth that has high customization and modulation functionality which is primarily what I used to create this pack. As far as plugins go, the major players were actually stock Pro Tools plugins particularly those used to emulate tape distortion and frequency range, though most of my work was created with hardware and not plugins.
 

Can you describe the process behind the making of one of the sounds from the library, from your initial idea to the final sound?
The reason that anime sounds resonate with so many people is that they support and compliment that visuals so in a way that elevates the viewing experience exponentially. What I had to do was “turn off'” the ability to rely on the visuals in my own head during my creation process and just feel out the sounds themselves.

The reason that anime sounds resonate with so many people is that they support and compliment that visuals so in a way that elevates the viewing experience exponentially

I earned my MFA in Sound Design from Savannah College of Art and Design helped me to decipher the types of modulation and the syntheses that was necessary to create the layers and the complexity. I learned that most sounds actually weren’t layered and were rather defined by LFOs and modulators.
 

What were some of the hardest sounds to get right?
The impact sounds and explosions were particularly difficult because they possessed a very unique texture, but the solution was to take a step back and analyze both the synthesis and the way that the sound was rendered. You can get very sophisticated sounds by playing with the tape modulation and rendering. Experimenting with layer is also key. The biggest challenge was just the reconstruction process without the visuals and understanding the types of waves and LFOs that were most appropriate for each particular sound. The fundamental frequencies could have been modulated by noise or delay in a simple fashion.
 

Any favorite sounds in the library?
There are a lot of impact sounds that are very satisfying. You can hear them in the second demo here:

Hear the 2nd demo from the Vintage Anime SFX library above

Any especially fun moments or experiences making the library?
There are quite a few sounds in the pack that are intended to highlight humorous moments,sounds that illustrate embarrassment, silliness etc. I wasn’t initially intending to create such sounds but they were happy accidents that genuinely elicited a chuckle or two which is always rewarding. I decided to add them to the library because humor is an element found in many anime shows in addition to the action.
 

Any essential design advice for other sound designers who are going for that vintage anime sound?
A lot of the sounds reveal themselves when you filter out the frequencies. Tape distortion/frequency range brings out the majority of the characteristic range of the sounds at the time. When sounds are being tape compressed, that technique is the defining characteristic of the sound, not necessarily the syntheses of the sound itself.
 

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