Another great example of this chord progression that came out after I uploaded the video is “Peaches” by Jack Black from the Super Mario Movie 🍑

it's like a progression that makes you want to never give it up

When that chord progression was played for the first time, I almost had a heart attack. It's like getting Rickrolled without actually getting Rickrolled.

This feels like the most elaborate Rick roll I've ever fallen for in my entire life

This explains why I get such a positive feeling when I listen to japanese music. As someone who tends to worry a lot, I always get a hopeful feeling after listening and it’s very motivating!

I'm Japanese and while I enjoy the video I wouldn't entire say that Odo 王道 translates to "easy way". It's more used as in the "most popular / common / basic way" and which doesn't usually mean the easy way. It's very nuanced, but in a culture where tradition is deemed important that efficiency and ease, 邪道 (antonym to 王道 and mean "malicious way") often is the easier / efficient way. I know this doesn't really impact your main point, but something I wanted to share. Edit: a fellow commenter suggested that "well-trodden path" might be easier for anglophones to understand.

I'm from Japan (born and raised), and yes this chord progression itself makes me feel like I'm home immediately.

This chord progression sounds like what really really missing someone feels like. Your happy at the thought of that person but also sad at the same time because there not here.

I remember hearing this progression in songs from shows like Pokémon and Inuyasha and I felt like my doubts are just thoughts,like I can accomplish anything. It’s so nostalgic

Can't believe it took this long for you to do a Rickroll. You'd think as a music theory channel there would be more opportunities for it.

Kyohei Tsutsumi, the godfather of J-POP, once said ”Rick Astley’s first album is filled with the sounds that Japanese people like”. かつて筒美京平は「リック・アストリーの1stアルバムには、日本人の好むサウンドが詰まっている」と話していたそうです。

As a Japanese person, this may be the nostalgia I feel when I listen to Western songs from the 80's.

The nostalgia bomb you put with the example songs in the beginning almost broke me

It's kind of funny actually, I've always thought Together Forever felt like an anime song. It's got that sort of calculated sappiness. I think a good word for the vibe of this progression is sentimental, it's like reflectively emotional without being necessarily sad and can lean either direction, either more bright and happy or more somber and bittersweet.

I've wondered for YEARS why Japanese anime openings and video game soundtracks sounded like _that_ . They all had a similar feel that I couldn't quite put my finger on since I don't have a background in music theory. Thanks you for answering a decade long question for me!

Just hearing the chords gave me a very "happy hardcore" vibe. I think a lot of old Happy Hardcore tracks also used this extensively. "Have You Ever Been Mellow" comes to mind, although that's a remix. Always loved that chord progression because of how "happy" it often sounded... And now I have to face the fact I've been willingly Rick rolling myself for years.

Those chords will never let you down or desert you

Never quite coming to a full resolution feels like a very Japanese storytelling aesthetic to me.

This chord progression is very uplifting, slightly bittersweet, and gives the songs a _soaring_ and hopeful feel compared to the usual I-IV-V or I-V-vi-IV. A lot of the anime/manga series are centered around the themes of turning pain 痛み / struggle 戦い (IV-V-iii) into hope for the future 希望 (vi).

You are helping me return to music theory and playing my guitar in middle age, and you are doing me a world of good. Thank you!

Royal Road Progression lives in my heart. All the American songs that had it also happened to be my favs. 😭

A video explaining the "just the two of us progression that Westerners prefer" is trending among Japanese. Therefore, watching this video explaining "the royal road progression that the Japanese prefer" actually makes me feel like I'm lost in a mirror world (because I'm Japanese).

Is just me, or this cord is popular in japanese pop music because it sounds "hopeful"? Is like the perfect one for a hero's theme or a nostalgic medley.

Coming late to this thread, I have one observation, after noting that your analysis was fantastic and fascinating (I’m already a subscriber, for the music, and didn’t notice you covered this topic which overlaps with my other deep interest of almost five decades now, Japanese culture and arts). There is a much deeper explanation as to why this progression appeals to Japanese beyond just, as you stated, it became popular and therefore self emulating. Japanese literature, or storytelling, has exhibited the feature of containing “unresolved” storylines since the very beginning, often in the form of “unrequited love”. Even the world’s first novel (or so it is commonly acknowledged, from around the year 1000 AD) the Tale of Genji not only contains story after story of unrequited love, the book itself ends without resolution. Or, as many western scholars say (sometimes complaining ) the book itself “has no ending”. That tradition of embracing the unresolved has continued in Japan now for over 1000 years in countless folk stories, kabuki, novels, manga and anime. I never connected the characteristic to popular music until viewing this video, but after hearing your analysis, the commonality is obvious. Some commenters here argue that the iii serves a tonic function, but I think that argument skirts the point that the iii leaves a clearly more ambiguous, unresolved feeling, begging the progression to simply go on, and on, and on. Very cool! Thank you.

It sound very good, and it has very bright colors, like white with hints of color in the background - and the patterns it creates in my mind's eye are actually like a road, before i even learned that it was called "royal road". Some of the progressions which are more popular in western pop music feel more grayish unless the instrumentals are powerful enough to make it more exiting.

I've never been less ready for a rickroll than now. Awesome video

It is worth pointing out that the writers of those two Rick Astley hits, Stock/Aitken/Waterman, used this chord progression on a TON of their hits, not just those two Rick Astley hits. It was even referred to as THE chord progression. However, they very often changed it up slightly, just as you point out with Never Gonna Give You Up.

You just gave a lot more people an opportunity to remix never gonna give you up into more anime songs

This is such a melancholy chord progression in a kind of saccharine way. All the music, but especially the Pokémon themes, make me feel emotional

I was wondering why this sounded so familiar and then it hit me: I grew up attending Latin American churches. I started playing piano there as a teenager. This is a common progression in many church songs (mostly from the 90’s). Many of the songs would feature a I - ii - V verse with this Japanese progression in the chorus section.

This chord progression literally SOUNDS like the Hero’s Journey in an RPG. The first is soft and warm, like the protagonist’s home town. The second presents adventure, a challenge for the hero to rise to. The third presents uncertainty and sadness, the hero doubting themselves at a low point. But finally the forth comes, the hero breaks their slump and rises to the occasion.

lovely explanation of the subdom, dom, tonic, resolution and tension bit, thank you

Just wanted to thank you for this and other similar videos. I'm working on my Master's degree right now. These videos are helping me write music for my digital sequencing course and my capstone project. They've been a great source of new approaches to take in my composition.

I feel like it’s prevalence in anime songs/title sequences is exactly due to that sense of movement without resolution that you illustrated. An opening sequence shouldn’t feel resolved, it should engage you right away and then propel you into the story. I think that’s why this progression is so effective in that context.

it's not just in japan, it's all over east asia; china, taiwan, malaysia and singapore. we have singers here who are topping the regional charts for decades and their songs regularly use the same chord progression over and over again that's it's a thing to mashup their own and even their fellow artist's songs together, even during their live performances

So the story is that Japan has been Rick Rolling everyone for years!

i really like this video, probably my most favourite video on youtube and i've watched this video so many times already. So thanks for making such an enjoyable video.

I imagine one of the big reasons this chord progression comes up so often in Japanese music is because it's very disco-y. A lot of the western examples you mention are either from the 80's or a throwback to 80's disco, like Versace on the Floor or Rick Astley's music. A lot of Japan's mass media culture stems directly from this particular era of disco and dance-pop, so it makes sense that if they want to make an upbeat song it's going to be largely informed by this approach to songmaking. Dance music is all about keeping you moving, so a chord progression without a definite, hard resolution makes you feel like the song doesn't stop.

One thing that’s interesting about you including Rick Astley when discussing this topic is that for quite some time people have seen similarities between “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Robo’s Theme”, from Chrono Trigger’s OST

I immediately recognized this progression as I listen to lots of songs from there but never thought so many songs had this

Great job David! Thank you

“O-Do” is commonly used in Japanese to mean the standard way of doing something. Not necessarily better or easier, but accepted as the standard. Adding milk is the “O-Do” way of eating cereal, for example. The opposite is “Ja-Do” which literally means “the snake way” meaning a non-standard way (and not in a good sense.) Eating cereal with water is Ja-Do. So the translation of O-Do Shinkou could simply be something like “the standard chord progression”. Meanwhile, unresolved tension is a big part of Japanese social culture (and subsequently anime content) and I think this chord progression mirrors that nicely by trying to resolve to the tonic but never quite getting there.

7:52 "Ongoing story." That has got to the most absolute big brain way of describing this. The fact that A LOT of anime/manga have a really long story to them or even after the anime/manga "finishes" people still wait it to go somewhere; they want more. Maybe that's what causes people to want to listen to these kinds of songs on infinite loop.

Youre description of the sounds starting at 6:10 are so accurate to my ears that it seems like youre reading my thoughts.

Your channel is resourceful, and giving us quite a lot of example! Even I am recommending your channel for studying chord progression examples to people who is willing to study music composition.

Ah, now I understand why most Japanese anime songs sound very similar to each other and this explained why. Thanks for the video! Also I'm glad you put in Super Mario 64 as an example, so that's pretty neato.

"Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi and Tatsuro Yamashita have the same progression of "Never Gonna Give You Up" (ii7, V,iii,vi)

This is great! Gives me inspiration for my own music. The Rick Astley connection is interesting too because both of his hits always reminded me of music you would hear in anime from the late 80s and early 90s. Now I know why.

This was a great video. It was very insightful, and I learned a lot.

The Japanese name refers to the saying attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid, "There is no royal road to geometry," supposedly as a response to the Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter who wanted a shorter, painless way to learn the subject. So a royal road originally meant an easy path in this context. Edited to clarify that this is where the expression originated and is not necessarily how Japanese speakers would understand the term nowadays.

This is blowing my mind a bit right now. It makes sense, but it also feels weird that there's a clear-cut science to why I've always had an ear for J-Pop/Rock & other Japanese-influenced music.

Wonderfully beautiful video Keep up the good work bruv

I love the version Silk Sonic and one of the JP examples use with the V chord in 3rd inversion/7th as the root. Has a really nice line in the bass and sounds a bit richer overall.

A few weeks ago, I read an article about how "Never Gonna Give You Up" turns into a "magical anime girl" theme song (a la Cardcaptors or Sailor Moon) by speeding it up, complete with a video of the sped up audio, synced to some Cardcaptors footage (click "Read more" for link). I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It really does sound like an "anime girl" song when sped up. And it indeed works so well because it has almost the same chord progression as many anime theme songs (in the original Japanese version; completely new songs are usually written for English). My mind was blown! Video: kzfaq.infoGXVYLbAlcbE

Bowser's Peaches song mainly uses this chord progression!!!! Also, the IV-V-iii-vi is a very very common sequence in Filipino songs but with an added ii-V-I-(I7 if repeating) to the original "Royal Road" progression.

It's bright but with a dash of darkness, placing it somewhere between whimsical and nostalgic.

If in this chord progression you replace the iii chord with a I chord with the 3° scale note as the bass note (a slash chord/or an inversion) instead, and the vi chord with a IV chord so that the IV chord sounds again when you play the next bar, you get the chord progression for "A Thousand Miles," by Vanessa Carlton. Any song that starts with the IV chord generally sounds nostalgic/yearning, like the opening verses of "Part of Your World," from Disney's "The Little Mermaid."

It evokes hope and has a sense of overcoming challenge. Japanese storytelling is really big on those themes.

This progression always felt like a beautiful story unraveling itself, powering through,blossoming and leaving this nostalgic feeling that keeps you coming back, subconsciously having your mind returning and/or gravitating towards music similar to it.

Fascinating

Thank you for this .

So much about anime is about never giving up and this progression never resolving back to the tonic gives it this sense of uplifting endurance that makes you feel like you can get up and keep going.

From what I understand, this chord progression comes from the way the Japanese non-pentatonic scale developed before western music introduced the chromatic scale. There's a video essay on why Joe Hiashi's music is so good that explains it very well

GREAT VIDEO, GREAT EXAMPLES, THANK YOU ❤

great video! love how you took the opportunity to rickroll not once but twice haha. i live in japan and i hear these chords quite frequently

The progression sounds like a very melancholic way to resolve tension. This is why it's popular for them. It almost has a romantic quality to it.

I find Japanese Pop/Rock music more similar in chord progressions and melodies to European Pop/Rock (EuroPop) and 70's 80's UK Pop/Rock, with diatonic melodies inspired by Classical music, whereas US Pop/Rock as well as K-Pop music is highly pentatonic based (Blues scales). On a side note, I find Japanese musicians to be a lot more educated in music theory than we are in the West.

as i heard the chord progression the only song that came to my mind was together forever. im glad you put it in as well

This video pop up on my feed very interesting. This was definitely a great video to watch and the outro was beautiful 8:55

I have noticed that j-pop composers don't like simplicity. They use passing chords, secondary chords, modal interchange or any other harmonic resource whenever they can. For example, instead of a simple I to IV change they do a I - IIm/IV - V7/IV - IV, which is a subdominant 2 5 1. (In C major the chords would be C Gm C7 F). It's a very interesting music style for any music analyst.

Got Rick rolled so beautifully i'm not even mad. Great stuff, as always.

Really fascinating video, very well explained to someone like me who doesn't know the first thing about music. I'll be keeping an ear out for this when I watch anime from now on...

What I find so amazing is how different all of the song examples you gave sound. It just fills me with this indescribable feeling

"Time after Time" by Cindy Lauper comes to mind. As always an excellent breakdown. Thank you!

plastic love does use this chord progression too (replaces IV with ii, like rick astley). I'm suprised not much people mention this when its one of the most internet popular examples. It is also curious how the lyrics goes like "plastic beat, plastic love" like the composer was aware of the chord progression being the easy way

Wowww this is sooo interesting. Blown my mind. I have a whole new perspective now

Thank you great video

After listening to J-Pop for the past 8 years (oh god, has it been that long?), I can confirm that this progression is absolutely everywhere. Even if it's not the main chord progression, they'll jam it in somewhere. At least in the style that I like, that is. XD

First song that came to mind when I heard this progression was Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper. Beautiful song. Beautiful chord progression.

love this

I just learned something today. Thanks!

3:26 this is a very interesting and simple concept man. Every musician should remember and use it 🤯🤯🤯

IMO it’s popular in Japan because it translates well from their traditional instruments (like the koto) into modern instruments from the West. So that sentiment/affinity is deeply rooted in history

3:20 OH NO RICKROLL

no wonder i love japans music so much. definitely gonna use this "core" for my music searches now

Please more vids on modern Japanese chord progressions. It's awesome!

Came for Japanese chord progression songs, got Rickrolled, instantly thought of Robo's Theme from Chrono Trigger. Great video

It feels bittersweet that melody does.

Dude Thanks for introducing me to Every Little Thing's Fragile Not entirely my cup of musical tea, but that song had that perfect Japanese melancholia that I love, and I actually think I needed to hear a song like that xD Cheers for the great video

Another Western example of a song that uses this progression is "Knowing Me, Knowing You" by ABBA. Which was actually what I immediately thought of when I heard the progression.

I personally love it when this progression has a major 3 chord instead of a minor. Gives it an intoxicatingly melancholic feeling

Awesome vid and all but the fact that you knew of/found and used a Buono! song impresses and makes me happier than anything lol

Omg I never noticed this before. Having been a life long anime fan for almost 30 years, it's crazy this went unnoticed and became so normal to me from such long term exposure to Japanese content. And now thinking about it, I realized a lot of Asian youtube content creators' videos use it too. Dianxiaoges videos often have videos with background music with this.

Melancholic is the feeling it always brings to mind. Never realized it was all the same chord progression, but a lot of those tunes have been in my ears for a long time, and ya, melancholy. The only time it gets close to resolving is when it's arguably at it's saddest as well, but still compelled to move forward. That's melancholy, stagnation, but still going on with it.

I always thought of the chord progression as 'Things seem dark but there's always a glimmer of hope"

So awesome now I can go to the space with this knowledge ❤

discovered your channel, subscribed, thanks for great content!

I guess this is one of the things that I really love about Japanese music, it feels playful but also nostalgic at the same time. The examples gave me chills, it feels so familiar even when it’s not.

Honestly, I fully believe that skilled musicians are no different from mages and witches; like, I NEVER would have caught on to the whole reusing of those chord progressions without anyone (like you and The Axis of Awesome) pointing it all out. Musicians who can incorporate similar (or straight up the exact same) notes from other songs but do so in a way that still sounds different from others is just freaking incredible to me!

cool video thanks!!