Forum - View topicMost epic composer(s) and soundtracks of anime music
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Kusanagi_Kei
 Posts: 230 |
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I've watched a lot of anime, and most anime titles feature cute themes and soft styles, cueing sweet melodies and such.
I've only watched several titles which feature serious and highly epic soundtracks. So I'd like to venture and discuss which composers and what anime titles there are which have a very epic style. The only one that captures my ear, and truly a masterpiece of scores he creates, is Iwasaki Taku. I'm totally moved by this guy's music. Without the dynamic ambience he created in Read Or Die, or without the ever so emotional spirit he put in Rurouni Kenshin; I knew I wouldn't have shedded those tears. I mean just listen to his music. It's simply breathtaking, matches the theme of the anime perfectly. Also, one of Iwasaki's great touches is his use of that synthetic breathing effect. You can hear it from Read Or Die and Rurouni Kenshin, it's spooky but it's an excellent touch. Another epic soundtrack I heard was from Takagi Hiroshi, in Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu. But I (personally IMO) definitely hail Iwasaki Taku to create THE MOST epic music ever. Does anyone agree with me here, or anybody else have any favorite epic composers of their own? |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=116077#116077 |
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Kusanagi_Kei
Posts: 230 |
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Hehe thanks dormcat. Excellent. I knew I was right about Iwasaki-san.
EDIT: I apologise, and I know that there are already hundreds of "which music/composer do you like?" threads around. But in this thread that I have created, I'd like to only discuss and point out along with help from other people, the epic or "sophisticated" composers who have created exciting and orchestrated music. |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11447 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Iwasaki Taku is one of my favorites in terms of creating a dramatic/epic atmosphere. I just started watching Yakitate!! Japan, and it amazes me how he can turn a series about bread into such a fun and adventurous trip.
The score ranges from upbeat and jazzy tunes, a la R.O.D., to some of those really mellow string arrangements he likes to use (similar to Kenshin). I seriously need to buy the OST for this. I think it would make excellent background music that can both relax and inspire in any given mood. And while I'm at it, I'd like to commend Sahashi Toshihiko. Most of his work varies from title to title, but two particular scores I really like are for Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture and Hunter x Hunter. FF uses a lot of brass with string accompaniment. It really brings a sort of epic feel in conjunction to the plot of the movie itself. As for HxH, the music feels very Western, a la the first Wild Arms game. I especially enjoy the insturmental renditions of the first opening and ending songs. And as a final (and biased) honorable mention, I really like Asakura Noriyuki's music for Rurouni Kenshin. A lot of the score from Season 1 wasn't too great (aside from the ones that used a lot of Spanish guitar), but the Kyoto arc music is some of the best stuff I've heard in anime (it really helps bring out the adventure and drama). I love how he uses brass, strings, piano, and of course, more Spanish guitar  .
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hanachan01
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For me, one of the most moving soundtracks I've heard is Joe Hisashi for 'Spirited Away'. Everytime I hear Spirited Away's music, I remember the amazed feeling I got while watching that movie. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the movie itself was amazing! The music definately added though. The very pretty, soft song with mostly pianos the play at the end when Chihiro says goodbye to Haku is my favorite piece, and it makes the scene it's in even more moving. Oh, and random fact, Spirited Away is my most rewatched anime, and 8 times and counting.
I haven't actually seen this anime yet (I don't know if it's any good....), but everytime I hear the song 'Moon' from Turn A Gundam, composed by the great Goddess Yoko Kanno-sama, I just sit up and listen. It's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. It's such a powerful song as well. I wish I knew what was being sung, so I could sing along, but this song is moving without even knowing what the words mean! |
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Fui
 Posts: 339 |
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D'oh some people already mentioned Joe Hisaishi before I could get to this thread
I noticed his music when I heard the musical score from Howl's Moving Castle. The main theme is amazing. I understand he does other Miyazaki films as well but haven't looked too much into it. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Discussing Joe Hisaishi here is just like voting Hayao Miyazaki in this poll. This thread should be renamed to "who is the most epic composer of anime music, other than Joe Hisaishi?"
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jetscreamer
Posts: 2 Location: UK |
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Whilst I personally like the music of Joe Hisaishi, I would have to vote my most epic composer & soundtrack as Kenji Kawai, and Mobile Police Patlabor (1). Kawai's score for Patlabor 1 was incredible, emotional, and yet kind of creepy, envoking a real sense of the tension hidden under the film. Excellent. (Joe does come a close second thought for Sen to Chihiro...
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Kusanagi_Kei
Posts: 230 |
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Well I've listened to all of the music from the TV series, and I find it to be rather repetitive. It's strange. The music to me sounds like what you get from videogames, i.e. Nintendo and such, the older generation style, where NES games tend to have a repeated melody. That's what I heard from Rurouni Kenshin TV music, that's what I think.
Yes! Another great epic composer, Kawai Kenji. I've watched the "Patlabor" movies, and "Ghost in the Shell". I think the scores were great. As well as having composed other great anime music such as "Ranma 1/2" and "You're Under Arrest", although not so epic, he gave good touch to the exciting cop chasing theme. I've several CDs by Inoue Kikuko, and all her songs were composed by Kawai Kenji as well. They're very nice. 
Yeah, as people mentioned before, I actually forgot about Joe Hisaishi, mainly because I've only watched one Miyazaki movie (Spirited Away). I particularly liked "Inochi no Namae" (Name of Life), the music is good. Another epic piece that I'd like to highlight is that from "3x3 Eyes" by Wada Kaoru. I'm not sure of the name of the BGM but it does get repeated every so often during the anime. And most of all it reaches a climax at the end of "3x3 Eyes Seima Densetsu". |
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
 Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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"Epic" music to me is a brass-fest with a screaming lead, and one of my favorites is probably Dolce Triade in the Last Exile Soundtracks (both of them). The power packed by some of these songs is incredible, plus some of the ballads are really lovely. I'll second Iwasaki Taku, though I've only heard his Rurouni Kenshin Tsuikiohen and Yakitate Japan soundtracks. I love his overtures, especially the song War of the Last Wolves from the Rurouni Kenshin OVA soundtrack which breaks the standard overture ABA and never goes back up to the "virtuoso" from the middle part.
Don't know about others, but I have to say that Sahashi Toshihiko who did all of the Full Metal Panic! soundtracks is pretty epic as well. It's partly because of an amazing lead trumpet player, Eric Miyashiro, but the power of the end of the songs is always very impactful, and slowly build up to a climax before a screaming final note, a short codetta, with the song ending. Granted, some of the songs are sort of standard overturish type songs, but some songs are truly a gem. Well, i'm a sucker for brass and screaming lead trumpets playing a double Bb, but thats pretty much what i consider "epic" (plus a full orchestra is always nice). |
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Conspera
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Indeed, Toshihiko Sahashi is probably one of my top anime composers -- his works in the Gundam SEED/SEED DESTINY series were quite epic, especially near the third soundtracks. "Justice and Freedom" and "A Critical Blow" are both very enjoyable to listen to it, as are pieces like "Fly! Freedom". Big-O and Gunslinger Girl also featured many epic pieces, such as "Stoning" and "Tema IV", respectively. I'm surprised no one mentioned Shirou Hamaguchi yet, though. His compositions in the Ah! My Goddess movie was absolutely beautiful, as well as in the more recent Ah! My Goddess TV series. |
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Kusanagi_Kei
Posts: 230 |
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Sahashi Toshihiko is a good composer, but I've only heard his music from Tsukikage Ran, which I loved very much as it was enka style.
Hamaguchi Shirou is great I have to admit, at least to the extent of the works from the Ah! My Goddess movie score. That was fabulous. However, for the recent Ah! My Goddess TV series, it was good but only at an average level to me. The whole nature and feel of Ah! My Goddess seemed to changed to like country and folkish kind of fashion. I adored his piano compositions though (e.g. Yasashii kokoro), however in my opinion I just like Yasuda Takeshi's (though not epic) OVA score which to me was more fitting to A!MG. Getting back to A!MG TV, I was pretty disappointed with the theme songs composed for the series. They were indeed good, but none of them suited the theme of Ah! My Goddess EXCEPT for the opening song "Open Your Mind" sung by Ishida Youko. This then brings me to the excellence of Tanaka Kouhei, who composed that theme song. Kouhei is just fantastic. I really love his large archive of scores for Sakura Taisen. The music from Sakura Wars may not be epic per se, but it is very dramatic, like broadway, little of the cute and children themed melodies, using mostly (if not only) orchestral instruments and few synthesizers as heard in comedy anime. Tanaka Kouhei made excellent use of a combination of oriental, European and Western themes for Sakura Taisen. |
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d.yaro
Posts: 528 |
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Interesting...got me wondering about what is "epic" to me? The Iliad? Yes. "Henry V"? Not sure. "Lawrence of Arabia"? Yes though I've mercifully forgotten about the music. The Taiheiki? Yes but I've never seen a film based on it. Princess Mononoke? More or less "Yes"...but I don't remember a bar of music from it other than a bit of the song near the last third point of the film. Nausicca? Once again more or less "Yes" and I certainly remember virtually all of the music. I found the two GitS movies intense and intellectual but lacking in the absurdly larger than life characters I associate with an epic. Plus I can't remember any of the music other than the opening themes. The three Patlabor movies are good but their landscape is definitely "just Tokyo" and having lived there I just think of it as being "huge" but not "epic". Real good music in the second movie though.
Thinking about TV anime I have this odd ball realization that maybe TV programs are typically less than "epic" to me simply because of the physical constraint of my TV screen size. So no matter how grand the music is, it can't make an epic out of what's on the TV screen because it just isn't "big" enough. To me, TV programs, anime or anything else, can do a wonderful job at presenting the pain, anguish, joy, exhilaration and moments of enlightenment one finds in personal drama. But TV just isn't epic. (Mind you, watching a mini-series in one week can be an epic effort.) Perhaps I've been influenced by Miyazaki's statement about how little regard he had for his films on video. He made his films for the cinema screen and I suppose that scale represents the size of his vision. Second odd ball realization: I've only seen only four anime movies on a cinema screen - Akira, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Ghost in the Shell - Innocence. As mentioned earlier, I'd pick Princess Mononoke as being the most "epic" in scale and scope. But likewise, I can't remember more than a bar of music from the film. So the most "epic" in terms of music ends up being "None of the above" from that lot. Now having rambled on thus far, here's my proverbial "Spanner in the works"...next to Hisaishi for "Nausicaa", my next nominee for most "epic" composer in an anime work is Beethoven based on the excerpt of his Ninth Symphony used in the original TV version of Evangelion. Heck, no one said anything about the soundtrack one mentions here having to be an original soundrack (did they?). ('  )
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Bruce Lee
 Posts: 715 Location: Seattle, Washington |
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Epic is the only word I can use to describe the first FullMetal Alchemist OST. From my first listen, I was hooked. Big, rousing marches are abound at the beginning, then transitioning into darker, more strings driven and moody pieces. Truly one of my favorite CDs period. And the fact that it includes my favorite OP and ED of the show doesn't hurt, either!
Michiru Oshima was the musical brains behind this operation, and has been envolved with musical production in 2 other shows I'm very interested in seeing: Boys Over Flowers, and Gokusen (LA). Does anybody have any input on these shows - musically or otherwise? Another composer whose work I really like is Tenmon from the 2 Makoto Shinkai films. Not necessarily epic sounding in the traditional sense, but the ammount of emotion and feeling he can convey in his work is astonishing. I'm a big fan of both of these OSTs. |
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Westlo
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Taki Iwasaki is the clear standout to me when it comes to thinking of an epic anime composer. His work on the Rurouni Kenshin OVAS alone would put him in the upper echelons and than you add Read or Die, Witch Hunter Robin, Gurren Lagann the choice becomes clear.
I seem to find him criminally underused but maybe him being not over exposed is why he is my fav composer hands down. I was hoping to see him get the job for one of the upcoming Gundam or Macross tv series but they look like going to Kenji and Kanno respectively. Can't wait for the Gurren Lagann OST to be released, whenever that is... wtb release date at least :( |
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