By now, it should be clear what the ongoing discussion topic is for my blog, and that would be Pokémon music. For that, the next discussion concerns a minor yet important figure in this realm. As I had brought up in a post reaching out to an external music game series I'm also interested in, in addition to contributing music there, Arata Iiyoshi has contributed to Pokémon by way of the Mystery Dungeon game series, obviously for its music. It's these contributions that I'd like to go over now in a little bit more depth to see how they are manifested.
According to genre, Arata's music is identified as "world" or "ethnic" music, so there are overtones of music styles from different regions. One of his BEMANI works, titled "BRIDAL FESTIVAL !!!", carries the genre of "happy jig" and with it thusly an Irish style; further, it too is remarkably similar to the opening music for the Rescue Team games and may be considered as close as it gets to having that in the said series of music games. The two pieces are still somewhat different, but the style is still definitively maintained regardless.
Meanwhile, there's also a certain diversity in his contributions to both BEMANI and Mystery Dungeon. The former is typically "electronica" but the world/ethnic style is "infused" therein, and the latter nicely adapts to various circumstances, including slow paces for tranquil settings and fast paces for intense circumstances (like boss battles). He also provides lyrics for some BEMANI songs, though of course that doesn't get put to use in Mystery Dungeon since it's all instrumental - yet one could try hard and compose lyrics for these if one wanted to.
I previously mentioned the "fusion of human emotion and nature", and an oft-cited example of this in the Mystery Dungeon realm is the music for the final throes of the Explorers games, from "Through the Sea of Time" to "Dialga's Fight to the Finish!", which also captures some of the diversity that I mentioned above. The instrumentation is definitely naturalistic yet the pacing and melodies are quite emotional, especially given the setting in which the music is placed in: a lead-up to and execution of a boss battle for the ages (literally).
One of Arata's aliases is "S.S.D.", which is short for "Shin Sound Design" and as such can be regarded as "New Sound Design", a common meaning of the first word in Japanese. World or ethnic music is nothing new - and some circles might also consider them "retro" - but it may be considered that true to the alias mentioned above, Arata can put his own "new" spin to it, evident in BEMANI and definitely applicable to Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. The manifestation brings together feelings, nature, and diversity, all of which are also thematic for Pokémon.
One year ago: Pokémon Species in Squeezy, Pillowy Form
Two years ago: Cosplay: Foodtopia Competitions
Three years ago: Introducing Mega Legendary Raids
Five years ago: Hanging by a Cliff
Six years ago: Folding Paper for Pokémon
Seven years ago: Pokémon in Poké Balls Stickers
Eight years ago: Cosplay: J-COSHOKAI 2 - Utsukushii Hana
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