Game info: GameFAQs
Listening: extracted audio, YouTube (missing 5 tracks)
Credits
Music: Hiroshi Tanabe
Sound Effects: Kiyoko Kumasaka
Recording: Rie Yamatani
Multi Audio: Yasuhisa Ito
Sound Treatment: Rie Yamatani
Sound Recording Advice: Toshihisa Furusawa
Info
Here’s a random manga/anime tie-in game that came to my attention because a prolific product editor on VGMdb added it to the database and I saw the name of the composer. Hiroshi Tanabe is a freelance composer who mostly composes now under the name Naoto, but once upon a time he was an employee at Konami, working mostly on licensed games. Like this one!
I haven’t dived too deeply into Tanabe’s discography, but I’ve heard a number of things and they’re all pretty good. He seems to be a fan of both breakbeat electronica and prog with cool synth sounds in it, all of which I am also a fan of, so he’s to my taste. This soundtrack tends much more heavily to the breakbeat electronica side of his work, with a few random rock tracks here and there and some more emotionally/stylistically varied tracks for cutscenes.
This soundtrack is weird because… well frankly, because it feels like the stage and boss themes, which are the vast majority of the soundtrack, were all busted out in like five minutes and then just put into the game as-is? A lot of the tracks have bits of interesting writing or cool sounds, which are combined with some combination of underbaked, repetitive, and sometimes even clashing accompaniments, oddly unfocused synth manipulation, or questionable mixing. It all sounds very unpolished in a way I wouldn’t normally associate with Konami music, so I’m really curious if this game’s development was rushed as a tie-in, and so Tanabe didn’t have time for a polish pass or just had to grab a bunch of unused tunes from other projects? It’s not at all unlistenable; Tanabe’s voice still comes through and I think a few tracks are quite nice. It’s just weird.
Recommended tracks:
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“Manly” is a nice and funky event theme
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“Fear” is a spooky ambient theme with some spooky sounds
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“Stage 2-3” was I think the most fully realized of the stage themes, the part at 1:01 with the string writing in the background is cool
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“Stage 3-3” has some pretty trademark Tanabe long syncopated rhythms
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“Stage 6” just has a synth riff I really like
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“Boss 1-3” has weird prog solos over what feels like a completely unrelated backing track
(track titles are unofficial)
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