Sanger_Zonvolt
Member
And by OST, I mean the original Japanese one by Shunsuke Kikuchi, the award-winning composer who was active from the 60's right up till 1999:
As a preface, neither Faulconer nor any other existing replacement score (not even Kai as that was plagiarized) is my basis for any comparison here, but instead it will be the general BGM scene in Japanese media during the 80’s and 90’s which produced far better material than what was heard in DB, which by comparison doesn’t even enter top 30 in either decade not to mention 10 (which by this point I'm practically convinced of the more media from those decades I view since I've watched a numerous amount of anime from those time periods and seen clips from quite as many).
Kikuchi didn’t even compose the OP or ED for either show and only composed about 2 vocal insert themes in the original series, so these among just about every orchestral variation of them don't count (whether that's Cha-La-Head-Cha-La, We were Angels, Makafushigi Adventure, etc) when I'm talking about Kikuchi's OST. And I get that this is the guy who a lot of companies were hiring to compose the BGM's for their work (not just anime, but film and Tokusatsu also) as well as OP/ED songs, but a lot of that was in the decades prior to the 80's, because that's when everything began to move forward for the better and show BGM's weren't just seen purely as background wallpaper to just fill in the silence which is how it mostly was in the 60's and 70's (his prime) unless it was a variation of an OP or ED.
For why it's not all that, Kikuchi’s OST for the most part is the very definition of generic. Not only are more than half of the pieces composed on the same F minor scale (if he’s not overusing that he’s overusing C Minor which is only different by one note anyway), but you can also take a fair number of soundtracks from, say, his 70’s Super Robot anime BGM’s like Grendizer, Getter Robo, or Gaiking, place them in DBZ’s score and they’d fit right in with no problem (because he paints all the silence he comes across with the same key signatures). When that happens you know you have a problem with formulaic content (and I knew that the OST was 70's material even before I listened to his 70's compositions because I watched a lot of shows from that era growing up and it wasn't all that different). You can’t do that with the likes of Kōhei Tanaka however whose compositions for different series in less than one decade are easily distinguishable and can’t be mixed without a massive difference (see G Gundam and GaoGaiGar, or even Gunbuster and One Piece, or w/e 2 BGM's he's done that you're familiar with). Oh, and not to mention that the BGM’s for DB are literally nameless (a good metaphor for how generic they are).
There is some decent work here and there as far as some individual tracks go, and there's not much wrong with the instruments he uses such as violins, trumpets, and subdued electric guitars along with a full orchestra, but there's just so much of a 70's quality to them that prevents them from being truly unique to the show itself. It doesn't even change enough to capture the massive tonal shift in the series that takes place from DB to the Z portion of the anime. The only new soundtracks were composed for the movies and then reused in the show, which was a terrible move considering said movies are non-canon events with non-canon characters (this I blame Toei more for). Aside a few that have variations and choir they're really not all that memorable either, they could be applied to literally any other situation that fits the description from any 70's show.
As for series with better soundtracks in the same time period (either the 80's or 90's decade), popular names would be Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star (both made by Toei, I don't know what they missed not hiring either Yokoyama or Aoki for DB), Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Evangelion, really any other hit anime show that didn't have Shunsuke Kikuchi as the composer. Going into less popular series, we have Ideon, literally every Gundam series made before 2000, all entries in the Brave and Eldran series, Patlabor, just about anything Sunrise put out within that time (and that's a lot of them with different composers too), Laserion (made by Toei), Getter Robo Go (also Toei), the Gunbuster OVA (Gainax), etc but I believe I've made my point.
Now regarding composers who could certainly have done a better job on either DB, Z, or both, we have the likes of Kōhei Tanaka (who was even the arranger of the first DB OP), Seiji Yokoyama, Nozomi Aoki, Kōichi Sugiyama, Chūmei Watanabe (contemporaries of Kikuchi, with the latter being quite a bit older), Kenji Kawai, Yasunori Iwasaki (Solid State Scouter), etc. Literally any of them could have done a better job on Z if not on both series (highly doubt that as they would be able to compose something that actually fits the shifting tones of the shows).
Perhaps if Toei hadn't screwed things up from the beginning they wouldn't have had to rely on the plagiarist known as Kenji Yamamoto to re-score their remake of Z only to have him get exposed and then switch back to the very BGM they were trying to avoid. And now they want to use the same outdated 70's OST in their new game, in the 21st century when even Kikuchi has retired from composing. And his work is literally the bottom of the barrel within the kind of music he makes, because the 70's was a time in which BGM's weren't valued much beyond generic tunes to fill in the silence.
So in short, the 1970's called, they want their BGM back.
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Kikuchi didn’t even compose the OP or ED for either show and only composed about 2 vocal insert themes in the original series, so these among just about every orchestral variation of them don't count (whether that's Cha-La-Head-Cha-La, We were Angels, Makafushigi Adventure, etc) when I'm talking about Kikuchi's OST. And I get that this is the guy who a lot of companies were hiring to compose the BGM's for their work (not just anime, but film and Tokusatsu also) as well as OP/ED songs, but a lot of that was in the decades prior to the 80's, because that's when everything began to move forward for the better and show BGM's weren't just seen purely as background wallpaper to just fill in the silence which is how it mostly was in the 60's and 70's (his prime) unless it was a variation of an OP or ED.
For why it's not all that, Kikuchi’s OST for the most part is the very definition of generic. Not only are more than half of the pieces composed on the same F minor scale (if he’s not overusing that he’s overusing C Minor which is only different by one note anyway), but you can also take a fair number of soundtracks from, say, his 70’s Super Robot anime BGM’s like Grendizer, Getter Robo, or Gaiking, place them in DBZ’s score and they’d fit right in with no problem (because he paints all the silence he comes across with the same key signatures). When that happens you know you have a problem with formulaic content (and I knew that the OST was 70's material even before I listened to his 70's compositions because I watched a lot of shows from that era growing up and it wasn't all that different). You can’t do that with the likes of Kōhei Tanaka however whose compositions for different series in less than one decade are easily distinguishable and can’t be mixed without a massive difference (see G Gundam and GaoGaiGar, or even Gunbuster and One Piece, or w/e 2 BGM's he's done that you're familiar with). Oh, and not to mention that the BGM’s for DB are literally nameless (a good metaphor for how generic they are).
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And this is only the tip of the iceberg, there's way more in other different shows he composed back then that sound like this.There is some decent work here and there as far as some individual tracks go, and there's not much wrong with the instruments he uses such as violins, trumpets, and subdued electric guitars along with a full orchestra, but there's just so much of a 70's quality to them that prevents them from being truly unique to the show itself. It doesn't even change enough to capture the massive tonal shift in the series that takes place from DB to the Z portion of the anime. The only new soundtracks were composed for the movies and then reused in the show, which was a terrible move considering said movies are non-canon events with non-canon characters (this I blame Toei more for). Aside a few that have variations and choir they're really not all that memorable either, they could be applied to literally any other situation that fits the description from any 70's show.
As for series with better soundtracks in the same time period (either the 80's or 90's decade), popular names would be Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star (both made by Toei, I don't know what they missed not hiring either Yokoyama or Aoki for DB), Yu Yu Hakusho, Sailor Moon, Evangelion, really any other hit anime show that didn't have Shunsuke Kikuchi as the composer. Going into less popular series, we have Ideon, literally every Gundam series made before 2000, all entries in the Brave and Eldran series, Patlabor, just about anything Sunrise put out within that time (and that's a lot of them with different composers too), Laserion (made by Toei), Getter Robo Go (also Toei), the Gunbuster OVA (Gainax), etc but I believe I've made my point.
Now regarding composers who could certainly have done a better job on either DB, Z, or both, we have the likes of Kōhei Tanaka (who was even the arranger of the first DB OP), Seiji Yokoyama, Nozomi Aoki, Kōichi Sugiyama, Chūmei Watanabe (contemporaries of Kikuchi, with the latter being quite a bit older), Kenji Kawai, Yasunori Iwasaki (Solid State Scouter), etc. Literally any of them could have done a better job on Z if not on both series (highly doubt that as they would be able to compose something that actually fits the shifting tones of the shows).
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Even if some of these may not sound like they fit in with DB, the composers who made them could have made something which does.So in short, the 1970's called, they want their BGM back.
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