Thursday, July 21, 2011

Mr. Big - "Shine" (Hellsing ending theme)

Here's an unusual choice for anime theme music. The music is in English, by an American band, who until I saw this show I had never heard of. Mr. Big is a rock band from Los Angeles, founded in the late 80s. They've had many hits but no real chart-toppers in the U.S. They are much more popular in Japan than in the U.S.

Even this short 80-second theme version of their song "Shine" really caught my ear; it was stuck in my head for days after I first heard it. I went to Amazon and bought the mp3 and it's on my favorites list and almost always can be found on my mp3 player. "Shine" went to #1 on the Japan charts and was from their 2001 album Actual Size.

This ending theme version was the only one I could find on YouTube, except for one which had been muted by YouTube because of copyright problems. I don't know why they left this one alone. I was not able to find a "clean" version, and if my ears don't mistake me, it's in mono. So here it is...







So there you get to see some of the weapons featured in this series. If I recall correctly, the reflection in Alucard's glasses at the end is different with each episode.

You can look for this song at YouTube and find quite a few clips of the band performing it live, but the audio is a little off on all the ones I looked at. Here's an album version (in stereo!) with a wallpaper of Sir Integra Hellsing smoking one of her cigarillos for the backdrop.

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