Crossing Field - LiSA - Sword Art Online OP1 (Piano Cover)

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Crossing Field has got to be one of the most recognizable anime songs of all time, and it’s certainly one of my favorites as well. I mean, literally just hearing the first three notes and the filter slowly pulling in the low-end into the full production gives me chills every single time.

I’m a massive sucker for the pop-rock or even hard rock sound combined with a powerful or clear female vocal. I don’t know what it is, but literally give me any song with that combo and I’m almost guaranteed to vibe with it.

And LiSA is high-key the embodiment of that. The best word to describe her vocals in Crossing Field, Gurenge, Adamas, you name it, is powerful, and that shines through in the choruses and builds. But in the verses, it’s clear, measured, and contained. Like bruh.

And did I mention that I love the pop-rock sound? The guitars panned wide in the choruses, the clean bassline down the middle, texture guitars, strings, everything just comes together into this powerful, massive production that just slaps. I hope I get to work on something like this someday.

However, for all its pluses, Crossing Field does have one big minus, and that’s the fact that it’s the OP for Sword Art Online.

If you’ve ever talked to me about SAO before, you’ll know that I have massive problems with it. Asuna’s the only real character, Kirito makes no sense and becomes too op too quickly, even the sequences for the first OP aren’t that great (see ).

I will admit though that SAO is technically my gateway anime. In 8th grade, a whole bunch of my friends suddenly hit their weeb phase and all tried to pressure me into watching anime, too. And the one that everyone recommended was SAO.

So I went and watched SAO. Sure, I’ve seen Doraemon as a kid (dubbed in Cantonese so I thought it was a Chinese cartoon haha) and some Dragon Ball Z, but SAO was the first anime that I like sat down and watched a whole season of. And I remember, like many people, that it was exciting and interesting and good at first, but then something went horribly wrong in the second arc somehow, and the ending was so weak that my will to watch more anime was effectively crushed. I only managed to watch one episode of Angel Beats after finishing Season 1 of SAO (which I have problems with too now haha) before calling it quits.

Which sucks because now that I think about it, like how much more anime would I have seen if I hadn’t been so disillusioned by SAO? It took like 5 years before I actually started watching anime again.

But this is where it comes full circle.

Despite the anime being bad, I’ve always had a soft spot for Crossing Field. It was the only anime song I knew (because that four note F-G-A-C is sooo catchy), and so I would occasionally give it a listen.

Come last year, my roommate and I started messing around and listening to JPop and KPop. My roommate made the KPop recommendations, which unfortunately (or fortunately) didn’t make as strong of an impression on me which is maybe why I didn’t get that far into that rabbit hole. But I got us started on listening to Crossing Field, and somehow from there I started listening to more of LiSA’s discography in my spare time.

And suddenly I was open to watching anime again. And starting from JoJo, which I watched intermittently, and really hitting my stride with Anohana (so good), well, here I am making anime covers haha.

Anyways, coming back to Crossing Field, it’s incredible that despite all these negative connotations I have with SAO, I still remembered it so fondly. And gosh do I love playing this song on the piano. It hypes me up in all the right ways, and it feels so exciting, like I’m about to start an adventure.

For Crossing Field, I actually preferred Fonzi M’s arrangement for a few reasons: 1) it was a lot more friendly for a guy just getting back into things 2) Fonzi arranges with a relatively straightforward style that I really like and I think is really effective for a lot of songs, and I need to learn how to do at least some of that in my arrangements in order to get started and get better 3) Animenz’s arrangement in particularly is a bit more lyrical in places where I just want to be balling on the keyboard, and Fonzi’s does that.

I had so much fun with this one because I felt like I was playing 5 years of disjointed anime memories and memes and combining them into this year’s whole new adventure into and exploration of the genre and all the feels that are caught up in that. And besides that, my musical career has certainly felt like an adventure, especially with this whole new YouTube thing.

Until next time!

- WattKeys

Title: Crossing Field
Original Artist: LiSA
Anime: Sword Art Online
Arranger: Fonzi M

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#SwordArtOnline #SAO #CrossingField #LiSA #FonziM