Been having a real weird two weeks where I’ve been having wrenches constantly thrown into my schedule the moment it looks like I can finally do something I’ve been meaning to do. For example, yesterday when I was for sure finally going to write this post up, my external drive died! It’s great! Definitely a lot of fun to have to shell out a bunch of cash for a new drive suddenly and be stressed about if I’ll be able to actually recover any of the files in a couple of days when it arrives.
Anyway, let’s finally crank this recap post out to very temporarily distract myself from the impending specter of data loss. As always, we’re getting a bit proggy with the music here, but for the first time since I’ve been doing these biannual posts, all five pieces of music here were written by a Japanese composer, so I’ve guess we’ve got a hard national theme this time.
Dolls Nest – “Call to Multiply”
Composers: Yoh Ohyama (suspected composer), Lurtz69, Kyle Booth
Voice: Noriko Mitose
Who doesn’t like electro metal with wordless vocals on top? Obviously my favorite part is the stacked rhythm section at 0:48, especially when the polymetric guitar comes in at the end
Donkey Kong Bananza – “Freezer Layer: Chocolava Lake”
Music Lead: Naoto Kubo (suspected composer)
Music: Daisuke Matsuoka, Reika Nakai, Yuri Goto, Tsukasa Usui
“Super Mario Odyssey challenge room” is one of the best genres of Nintendo music to me and this was the song that made me listen to this soundtrack, love the synths and chords
Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Star-Crossed World – “Beast Drum of Meteors”
Music by Jun Ishikawa
What kind of music should we use for miniboss rounds in the new Colosseum difficulty? That’s right, the hardest prog track Jun Ishikawa has ever deployed in a video game. Never change, my hero 🫡
Shadow Labyrinth – “Popping Chicken Dance”
Main Composer: Katsuro Tajima
Composers: Yoshihito Yano, Kanaya Oki, Mei Osawa, Nobuyoshi Kobayashi, Kayoko Naoe, Hitomi Koto, Takeshi Watanabe, CHAMY.Ishi, Satoshi Okubo
And now for a completely different kind of prog, here’s more Yoshimi Kudo-esque orchestral prog. The constant jarring chord changes give me so much life. I’d really love to know who the hell composed this (Nobuyoshi Kobayashi????), though unfortunately Bandai Namco will never give this a real soundtrack release so we’ll never know.
Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree – “Mountain Ascetic – Calamity”
Composed and arranged by Hitoshi Sakimoto
We kind of saw Hitoshi Sakimoto return a little to electronic music production in Sword of Convallaria, but the “Calamity” themes in this game were a triumphant statement that the man’s still got it, crossing good Sakimoto composition with a hint of world music, 13 Sentinels synth design, and dark EDM. Corrupted, metallic, warped, chaotic, and bold
For the second year in a row, I actually get to use the cheat pick for its intended purpose and actually just post a single piece of music from 2024 that I only listened to in 2025, wowsers! It’ll probably never happen again!
MADO MONOGATARI: Fia and the Wondrous Academy – “Last Boss Theme”
Composed by Daisuke Nagata
Definitely the coolest piece of music I’ve ever heard by Daisuke Nagata, oppressively dark and rhythmically ambiguous and reminiscent in the best way of the insanity boss themes from the Shadow Hearts series
As always, some bonuses:
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Digimon Story Time Stranger – “Looming Threat” // unknown
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Hell Clock – “O Solo do meu Sertão (Dry Road Section A)” // Thommaz Kauffmann
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HYKE:Northern Light(s) – “VS. Extra-Terrestrial” // Ryo Nagamatsu
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Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods – “Whispering Woods” // Wilbert Roget, II
And I like posting a blog-exclusive track in these end-of-year wrap posts for all the RSS-using freaks out there, so here’s a preview for a post I’ll be writing some time after its soundtrack album is released in April 2026. The composers of Stray Children, Masanori Adachi and Hirofumi Taniguchi, have always shown prog influence in their music since their days at Konami games, but this game has several battle themes that sound like their usual nonsense crossed with weird ’70s avant-garde prog and that rules a lot
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