Police arrested 35-year-old game and anime composer Hidekazu Tanaka in Tokyo on Monday on the charge of attempted forcible indecency — a Japanese legal term which includes sexual assault. NHK reported that Tanaka had allegedly uttered obscene words at a teenage girl and forcibly took her hand at a train station’s bicycle parking area in Tokyo’s Meguro ward in August.
According to police, the girl reported the incident at a nearby neighborhood police outpost. Police then reportedly found footage from the station’s security camera of a person following the girl.
Tanaka has composed numerous songs and soundtracks for anime and videogames during his career, most of it spent at the music production company MONACA. During his 10 years at MONACA, Tanaka composed music and songs for such anime as Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, Aikatsu!, Servant × Service, THE [email protected] MOVIE: Kagayaki no Mukōgawa e!, M3 the dark metal, The [email protected] Cinderella Girls, A Place Further Than the Universe, Sword Oratoria: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side, Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory, Mr. Tonegawa, Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, and Idoly Pride. He left MONACA at end of July 2021.
He is perhaps best known for composing the first opening song “Star!!” for The [email protected] Cinderella Girls anime, as well as composing the anime’s soundtrack. He also composed and arranged many of the songs in the larger The [email protected] Cinderella Girls franchise. More recently, he is credited as the composer for the second and fourth versions of the opening song “1・2・3” for the Pokémon Journeys: The Series anime, and composed the opening song “Ichigo Ichie Celebration” for the second season of the Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! anime. He composed the ending song “Calendar Girl” for the Aikatsu! anime.
Source: NHK via Hachima Kikō