Game info: Zettai Renai
Listening: soundtrack albums ([1] [2], [3] [4]), emulated audio
Info
Hey, I get to post one of those posts I’ve been sitting on now! I’ve been helping to curate a guessing game for the GameFAQs VGM community featuring “B-side” picks from the games represented in this year’s contest, and out of an abundance of caution to not accidentally spoil things for anyone (honestly like one person at most), I decided to not post about any of the games that I’m responsible for until after they showed up in the game. This one did on Sunday! But I never actually finished this post, oops, which is why I’m now getting this out on WednesdayThursday.
This is a visual novel about hot guys in a relay race club, managing their training so their stats go up while also possibly smooching one of them by the end. The music was done chiefly by longtime favorite Yasuhisa Watanabe (a.k.a. Yack.), who’s done a number of games like this, with a few tracks being contributed by Naohiro Koike (a.k.a. Nek) of composer duo GAINGAUGE, whom I know nothing about. If you’ve heard a Yack. VN soundtrack before then you probably know what to expect here: lots of chill, often cuteish music with plenty of piano and synths, frequent jazz and EDM elements, and huge chords. He does get into outright EDM quite a bit too, possibly because of the sports subject matter. It’s pretty solid.
Nek’s tracks fit in pretty well with Yack.’s, though it’s usually not too hard to tell them apart through the production and whatnot. I’d say Nek tended to do EDM and use guitar (acoustic or electric) a little bit more frequently and so there’s a little less variety in his tracks, but he also only did 1/5 of the soundtrack so his scope was more limited. His tracks have less big chords and less chords generally than Yack.’s so I wasn’t a super huge fan, but a couple of them are pretty nice.
While this game was released back in 2015, a real soundtrack was only released a few months ago in one of the most depraved methods I’ve ever seen. Something that’s not uncommon in Japan are fan lotteries for games: each ticket you buy is guaranteed to win a prize, with there being different reward tiers with shrinking odds as you go up the ladder. Sometimes game soundtracks get released exclusively through these lotteries, which is the case here, but the thing they did that’s new is split the soundtrack up into four different discs, each of which is a separate reward in the 5% odds tier. The rewards you get are randomly chosen from the prize tier, so you’re likely to get duplicates before completing the set. It’s super cool! The actual way to acquire this soundtrack physically is to just buy it secondhand on Mercari or something.
Recommended tracks:
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“Busy Times at Café Pirika” (Watanabe) is some pleasant café jazz
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“Let’s Study” (Watanabe) brings out the deep chords at 0:53, I don’t know what this has to do with studying but it’s cool
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“Colors of the wind” (Koike) is a feel-good track with the soaring anime melody at 0:58
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“Watakushi Collection’17” (Watanabe) is some chill drum ‘n’ bass with jazz flute doing some random things on top, good combo
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“I Don’t Understand Your Feelings” (Watanabe) is a very stereotypically Yack. package, goes a lot of different places
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“TELEPATHY?” (Watanabe) was the most ambient track in the game and has some noises I really like starting at 1:00
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“ON THE RADIO” (Watanabe) sounds a lot like a shmup ship selection screen for some reason
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“DEEP AIR DIVE” (Koike) was my favorite track by Nek, I’m down with the surprise rave section at 1:04
(some track titles are unofficial translations by me)
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