BOY (Ousama Ranking OP1)-King Gnu

Ousama Ranking was one of my favorite anime series in 2021 and the Opening Song BOY from King Gnu was simply a perfect song to capture the cheery mood from our favorite Prince Bojji. I was really inspired by Bojji’s never-ending optimism and his courage could literally move mountains. I really hope we will see a second season very soon because I already miss Bojji and his trusted friend Kage already.

To be honest, arranging this song was outside of my comfort zone again, because I couldn’t make full use of my usual orchestral arrangement style with its many layers of sound. Instead, I thought a more minimalistic approach is more suitable for an upbeat song like BOY and this arrangement should be played as light-hearted as possible with only minimum pedal use.

Having said that, I still "sneaked" in some secondary melodies into the arrangement. Just imagine Kage is secretly following Bojji who is playing the main melody (笑). A good example would be the upper voice in the right hand in 0:39 or the fast middle voice in 1:12 and 1:22. Aside from that, I also included a few techniques I rarely use nowadays, for example the “octave sniping” in 3:29 or the chromatic octave run in 4:06.

But my favorite part was actually playing the key change in 3:32 because this is the moment where I was finally “released” from the C-major key. I don’t know whether other pianists would agree with me but playing only white keys (aka C-major) feels really “unnatural” to me. I literally couldn’t wait to play all the black keys again and the key change to Db-major felt like heaven to me. Maybe it’s just me, who loves playing on black keys, haha.

Well, that’s it everyone!

See you next time again!

Animenz

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🎹Piano arrangement by Animenz

Original Song: BOY

Anime: Ousama Ranking / 王様ランキング

Published by: Sony Music Labels Inc. (2021)

Composed by: Daiki Tsuneta / 常田 大希

Performed by: King Gnu