JEDDAH — Jeddah Season 2022 brought the Grammy nominee Rasha Rizk to perform on Anime Village stage from Thursday to Saturday as part of the City Walk attractions. There were many more activities, but Rasha was easily the star of the event and received the lion's share of attention and love. Rasha is a Syrian artist and songwriter who rose to fame by singing many anime and cartoon theme songs in Venus Center, which was responsible of dubbing almost all of Spacetoon's animated shows. She was trained in opera and studied music from an early age. She is considered the emblem voice of the childhood to many Arab Millennials and early Gen Z (people born in the 80s, 90s and early 00s). Before she even took the stage, the audience was chanting her name, and once she appeared, like a luminary spectrum, she mesmerized them with her powerful voice that transcended them to a space sphere full of warm nostalgia, hopes, and tenderness that capsulated their young dreams. Rasha sings from the heart; the quality of her voice doesn't seem to drop for a second. Her presence on stage is ethereal, her energy evokes old echoes of family love and friendship with lyrics colored with perseverance and compassion. She brings back the audience to an old fantasy. "Nostalgia remains a thread that wraps our hearts," she sings with them, while the audience waves their hands in joy and harmony within the sparks of light and shades of their shared memories. The audience's heartful engagement with her seems to stem from something bigger than their reminiscence of simpler times. It's more of a sense of gratitude for how each word in the lyrics connects with them today. These songs are their remedy for the trials of time; it is a sweet bandage against the harsh part of life. To them, she symbolizes comfort, a warm soulful memory, and the pure voice of hope. Because the Arab world lacked animation production studios, dubbing ones came to the fore. Many translators at Venus Center and other voice-over houses concentrated their efforts on translating something that would resonate to an Arab audience. As a result, each song is written from an Arab perspective and references to a value shared by Japanese and Arab cultures. The singer said at the close of her concert: "I hope you guys support local productions and the young artists and screenwriters. Since these works require high-quality production and cost a lot of money, your support is vital in order to create stories that speak about us," she continued. "All of these series are great, but we want more works that genuinely represent our culture to the world. Please give it more support." Many young creators and filmmakers are eager to fulfill the goal of producing authentic content more than any time before. All of them have alluded to those animation shows as one of their inspirations and even some have previously used Spacetoon songs in their work.
