1989

1989, by the pillows (who of course did the soundtrack for fooly cooly), is an absolutely stunning autobiographical song about the early days of the pillows, and how not reaching an audience feels like to an artist.
It is complimented by a video perfectly suited to it, and although the video does change the meaning of what’s being said at some points quite extremely (making the video itself non-autobiographical) I believe together they are a perfect combination, and the absolute best music anime I’ve seen.
Although, Before getting to the part where I shower this show with praise, some brutal honesty, the art is decent (at best) ... and the animation is pretty terrible, it looks like there’s a frame rate of right and around 6 at some points so it barely even registers as movement.
This show should be watched for the amazing song by the pillows and its fantastic message, which I shall now explore.

The video shows an alien landing near a village and trying to get people to listen to his songs, but they absolutely ignore him, going as far as to make a cut which makes it seem as if they’re walking through him like he’s not even there, not just ignoring him but not even noticing him, his skill or his effort, a struggle many artists go through.
But soon after this it’s shown that people are busy with other things in their life (the death of a friend and circle of life are both depicted masterfully in just a few seconds), he realises they can’t make him their priority, he believes this means he will never have an impact, all he’s done is meaningless and will always be meaningless, he reflects on his actions sitting alone looking out over the village and dies.

But when people are in despair they do listen to the songs he left behind, and they do help them through the tough time they are having, showing that one should not just make art because of the need to be praised, but because you want to create, and leave behind, something meaningful, and beautiful.

This gives a totally different meaning to the 1989 song, it redefines it and makes it something entirely seperate from the original, to get this out of the song is only possible because of the video shown with it.
It is the perfect music anime.