Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: soundtrack album (w/music info), extracted audio
Info
I didn’t have the best initial impressions of Masafumi Takada as a composer through the Grasshopper Manufacture soundtracks of his that were popular back when I first became aware of him. But there were a few random tracks I’d heard over the years that I absolutely adored in every way, particularly “Marionation Gear” from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and “Chapter 5: Into the Labyrinth” from Kid Icarus: Uprising, so a few years ago a friend and I went through a bunch of his music to see if maybe we had just been exposed to the wrong stuff, and the verdict was he’s pretty great! Cool harmonic and tonal senses and an interesting spontaneity in his willingness to fuse various flavors of electronica with whatever other instruments or musical styles he randomly pulled off the shelf because he thought it’d sound neat.
If you’ve heard Takada’s music for the Danganronpa series, his style of mixing electronic music with rock guitar, jazzy keyboards, funky bass, and a little quirkiness will be very familiar here. It’s a mystery game with “rain” in the title so it’s probably not super surprising that the game has a lot of chill music, getting into lo-fi/rainy mood vibes at times. It has a maximalist sound design approach that Takada has demonstrated before (I’m thinking Danganronpa V3 specifically) where he piles a bunch of cool synth noises on top of a lot of tracks, it’s great music to listen to if you have a short attention span like me because every second there’s probably something new happening somewhere in the mix. I wouldn’t say that Takada sits in one place long enough to have a “standard style,” but to the extent that he does, this is reasonably representative of it. I find it pretty fun!
Four “radio songs” are credited with titles to a composer I’ve never heard of before, DekaDai, but we only have official titles for a few tracks, so I’m not actually sure which four are his. There’s also a vocalist, Mayumi Enomoto, credited generally for these songs, but there aren’t any songs with lyrics in the game rip that I listened to, so that doesn’t help. I would guess the rip is incomplete, though it’s possible she just did wordless vocals (which are present in a few tracks, albeit ones that sound like Takada) or something.
The limited edition of the game came with a 10 track sampler album, and I don’t know if a full soundtrack release is planned at some point. Takada has published soundtracks of his works through his own company in the past, but the last one was more than five years ago and the previous game he composed for by the same company (Death Come True) remains unreleased.
2023-12-14 update: an almost-complete soundtrack was released at the end of November, but it’s also missing the “radio songs.” It also reveals that Jun Fukuda, who is only credited in the game with sound effects and guitar, was also responsible for the game’s jingles and one short track, and that Satoshi Iwase arranged the game’s ending theme.
Recommended tracks:
All selections composed by Masafumi Takada.
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“La q-ave” has a mallet percussion figure I really enjoy
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“Exotic Nation” is sumptuously cyberpunk
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“Tremolo Horizon” is one of my favorite pieces of music by Takada now, a strange, nearly formless mix of sounds anchored by a chord erratically moving around in pitch, rhythm, and stereo space
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“Breaking Noir” busts out some 5/8 fusion, for the fans
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“Noi! Noi!” is cute and bouncy and has my favorite chord progression in the game
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“Melancholy, and Then…” is really pretty in the way it transposes up and down in unpredictable intervals
(all track titles except “Tremolo Horizon” are unofficial translations by me)
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