How an inside joke about us being an “anime band” became real — and led us to the Anime Expo stage.
Atara Ara
It was so funny… We kept telling each other as the days led up to the show that “It’ll sink in soon, watch”. I mean it was big deal! — A massive convention that people flew in from all over the country to attend. We wanted to make it count.
Before the anime
Atara Ara was not always a band. In fact, it was for a long a time a solo pop project that I (Victoria) started on TikTok. I was just a fledgling songwriter with a few attempts at releasing original music under my belt during my college years. I rebranded as Atara Ara because this time, I wanted to go all in. So, I did everything — wrote, recorded, produced, marketed, cosplayed... (more on that another time), but I digress.
Eventually, I grew out of that phase as well. Hungry for real fulfillment in my art, I decided to just take a leap and do what I always wanted to do — write rock music. And so, I wrote “Everything’s Okay” during the summer of 2023 and produced it in 2024 in collaboration with Chandler Chilvers (former rhythm guitarist).
At the time, I was still envisioning Atara Ara as a solo project without any set bandmates per say. I had brought in Tyler Fraser and Eli Furie to record parts with no intention of keeping them permanently as bandmates. This workflow existed all the way through to the production of “3AM”. Little did I know, a certain anime convention would make me rethink everything that I thought Atara Ara was going to be.
The Training Arc
By the time summer of 2024 rolled around, “Everything’s Okay” and “3AM” had been very well received by peers and friends. A common thread started becoming apparent amongst our listeners:
We sounded like a J-rock band.
I always knew this sound was an inherent part of my identity as a writer — but I had no idea it would come across so clearly to listeners. Hearing all of this feedback solidified one thing for me: This stuff sounds legit, and I really think it can go somewhere.
And so, I leaned in. I gathered my musician friends, designed anime-inspired merch, announced a summer tour, and started referring to us as “the lovechild of Japanese rock and American Alternative”.
But that wasn’t enough — we needed an angle. We needed to get in front of an audience that would be invested in this type of music. And what better place to push J-rock inspired music than at an anime convention?
Auditioning: Anime Expo 2024
With everything lined up, we filmed our first audition for AX ever. It was in those rehearsals that I learned that every single one of us was deeply impacted by anime and Japanese music. It truly felt like something lit up like magic when we recorded our cover of “Shin Takarajima” by Sakanaction.
Once we played these covers for the audition, I knew that this was it. This is where Atara Ara needed to go. The energy was electric, and I wanted everyone to experience this!
We unfortunately didn’t end up getting chosen to play for Anime Expo, but I left that audition process with more zeal and optimism than ever before. It truly felt like an episode from an anime ;)
“Anime Band”
Fast forward to the end of the summer, we had our official launch show as a band and released “Talk to Me”. By this time, we had started to gain the reputation of being the “anime band”. Someone had even said to me once that “Talk to Me is the most weeb non-Japanese song that I’ve ever heard!” (haha). This became a huge running joke within the band and our community, and we leaned into the fun of it.
With each show, we started getting more and more attention and praise from peers and friends — and even the occasional fans from the internet! Our project was slowly growing, and seeds were being planted in the small world around us. With word spreading, we played more shows and even got to play for smaller anime conventions (Anime Night Mart OC, Anime Impulse LA). It was working.
Winter rolled around again — I took the recordings from all of the shows we gathered under our belt and submitted us again for consideration for Anime Expo. A few months passed — We went through a major personnel change, and a plethora of personal life obstacles in our individual lives. It soon became over half a year since we had released any new music, and at this point I was the most anxious that I had ever been about how things were going with Atara Ara.
And then we received an email.
“Thank you greatly for your interest in performing at our AX 2025 show taking place July 3-6, 2025, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Upon reviewing your application, we are happy to inform you that you have been preliminarily accepted to perform as a band at Beer Garden.”
Anime Expo 2025
We were ecstatic. We had not just been accepted to play — it turned out that they wanted us to play twice. It was amazing, it was huge, and I almost couldn’t believe it. (Although Caiden Craig claims that he knew that we could do it all along :P).
We ended up playing two killer sets, met so many amazing fellow musicians (shoutout OFFKNOWNEOUS), and were reminded of the growth that we achieve over just this first year as a band. As we achieved our biggest milestone as an “anime band”, I was left with a restored spirit and the courage to reimagine our growth beyond that title.
While I will save the more detailed reflection on Anime Expo for another time, I hope that you’ve enjoyed following along so far for this journey. If you’ve made it this far into my super long first blog post, thank you! I hope you’ll stick around 😊
Signing off,
Victoria
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