Anime info: Wikipedia
Listening/music info: soundtrack album volume 1, volume 2, volume 3
Credits
BGM: Kuniaki Haishima
Theme songs: Hideo Saito, Makihiko Araki
Info
Time for an anime with a funny name! This is another sci-fi work, this time about war with alien bugs or something called the Blue. I skimmed through a plot summary and asked Google and I have absolutely no idea how “gender” fits into this whole business… just like every time I sign up for a random website, am I right folks? Eh? Eh? So anyway, this isn’t a film but rather a 26-episode series, which is why we’ve got over two hours of music spread over three album releases to listen to for this one.
It seems that I’ve been taking the word “unhinged” in vain here a little bit in these Haishima posts, because it turns out I really should’ve been saving it for this soundtrack specifically. This is the soundtrack that cannot possibly have a context in which it makes sense—the one where you’ll be listening to weird synth brass techno, and then in the next track you’ll be listening to a three minute recording of Bartók piece with the worst electronic noises you’ve ever heard in your entire life layered on top, and then in the next track you’ll be listening to garage metal. This, more than any other soundtrack I’ve listened to in ages, feels like the composer said “fuck it, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want and it’s up to y’all to deal with it”; in the liner notes of the third album, Haishima even thanked the director Masashi Abe specifically for letting him do whatever the hell he wanted.
The result is the most stylistically random soundtrack so far, as you might’ve guessed from what I listed in the previous paragraph. To the extent is has a “distict” musical identity, this is definitely the most EDM Haishima soundtrack I’ve listened to, ranging from techno-ish music to trip-hop-ish music. I put “-ish” after those because he never just does a normal track, there’s always something weird about the instrumentation, composition, or effects to remind you that this is Haishima’s unfiltered nonsense. There’s also a decent amount of electric guitar here and there, usually but not always in more metal-ish pieces. This being a Haishima soundtrack, there’s of course some Drakengard-ish orchestra and low-key ambient tracks in the mix there too.
This isn’t my favorite Haishima work—I prefer the more focused and overwhelming atmosphere of Forbidden Siren 2—but I respect the audacity of just how consistently and uncompromisingly off-the-wall this is. They let Haishima off the leash and he delivered something super fucked up, and good for him.
Recommended tracks:
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“torque” is one of the more straightforwardly “experimental techno” tracks
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“downburst” was my favorite of the metal tracks, it’s not real complicated but there’s some nice rhythmic clashing between the ways the guitar chugs and drums are phrased
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“Cycle” is that defaced Bartók piece (thanks YouTube commenter @vashcz7280 for identifying it as 44 Duos for Two Violins, Sz. 98: No. 42, Arab dal, specifically the version performed by Iva Bittová & Dorothea Kellerová)
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“missing link” is on the more ambient side of the EDM tracks
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“hunter” is real noisy
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“pictogram” is one of a couple of more mystical-sounding tracks on volumes 2 & 3, though there’s still a bit of a weird, darker tonal edge in this
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“OPEN GATE” was self-described by Haishima as more of a sound collage
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“Stand-in” is one of the more dramatic, Tchaikovsky-ish orchestral pieces
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“Sleeper” is a tense electronic-orchestral hybrid that’s mostly in 5/4
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