Kohei Tanaka (田中公平, Tanaka Kohei) is a Japanese composer who has created numerous musical scores for famous anime series. Tanaka was born in Osaka, Osaka Prefecture in February 14, 1954.

He has created sweeping orchestral works for a range of formats, from anime audio CDs to Japanese game soundtracks.

He entered into Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (Music faculty-Composition department) and studied under Tomojirô Ikenouchi and other professors. Tanaka worked for three years at Victor Music Industries after he had graduated. He went to study to Berklee College of Music for two years after he had left Victor. After had returned to Japan, Tanaka started the activity as composer.

Though he had playing at the hotel at first, he was requested to compose an inserted song of “Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX”, a 1982 TV anime , and it became his first work as a composer. Afterwards, he handled some compositions of the inserted songs for the Super Sentai series and did the compositions of the background music for the first time for a TV anime Konpora Kid (コンポラキッド, Konpora Kiddo?) in 1985.

Notably, the Gunbuster’s BGM made his name and talent very famous among anime fans and is recognized one of the his most important works. He also handled the composition of Diebuster, a sequel series of Gunbuster, and showed a peculiar arrangement to his own work 17 years ago.

His composition is especially known by the Hot strings of that. Another his most important work is often enumerated The King of Braves GaoGaiGar, a 1997 TV anime, and GaoGaiGar Final, 2000 OVA.

In 2002, he won the first Tokyo Anime Award for Best Music by the music of Overman King Gainer. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.