We Love The 80s
[Video][Website]
[6.83]
Thomas Inskeep: Satellite Young’s theme to an ’80s-retro anime is absolutely on brand with their relentlessly retro new wave J-pop sound, very 1982. If you like that kind of thing, you’re likely to love this, but if not, you can skip it. Me, I’m fairly agnostic.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The opening synth fanfare and syndrums evoke Flashdance, and it’s easy to imagine a montage in which sensei and student smile as they solve trig problems. It twinkles too incessantly.
[6]
Ryo Miyauchi: Satellite Young’s music grabs hearts precisely because they celebrate the bubbly kitsch of their beloved source of the ’80s, to be specific Japanese pop music during that decade. From the classic senpai/kouhai romance to a series of lovely onomatopoeia, many details make “Don’t Graduate, Senpai!” so distinctly a product of Japan. But out of all, Emi Kusano’s use of English to emphasize her feelings defines this love letter as a righteous homage.
[8]
Katie Gill: 1980s synthwave aesthetics that also simultaneously evokes my love of mahou shoujo anime? Is it Christmas for Katie already? This sounds exactly like the sort of song that would play in an opening sequence or a big heartfelt conversation between two characters in said mahou shoujo anime. It’s a fun pastiche and a loving homage, a reproduction of that sort of sound with slightly anachronistic synths giving it a modern edge.
[8]
Will Adams: Compared to Magalie’s “Love Criminal,” which took hyper-pulse 80s electropop and updated it with modern flourishes, “Don’t Graduate, Senpai!” tends to get mired in the past — the opening comes off as a local news station’s theme, and the vocal mixing can be uneven. Still, the candy heart sweetness of it all is enough to make me revisit it, and the fact that my Facebook feed has been flooded with graduation posts for the past two weeks has primed me to give in to misty-eyed nostalgia.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: There have been lots of attempts at music that cribs from, emulates or even outwardly tries to be city pop over the last few years, and a lot of it ultimately came up short. But how ironic that what’s basically a parody of the genre ends up being the most ideal tribute.
[7]