Oh Wow My Album Came With a Fighting Game
Hello, welcome to a long rant about how some random Japanese guy managed to be born with the talent capacity of a US oil tanker. Guilty Gear is a fighting game franchise cooked up by Daisuke Ishiwatari probably while he was making some deal with the devil to just learn literally everything. He is the creator, head developer, lead designer, and main composer of the game, he decided one job wasn’t enough and decided to do all of them apparently. Sadly though this blog isn’t talking about how incredibly talented Daisuke is, it’s about the music as his works just add an extra layer to why the game is so good. He puts so much effort into the music not only in this game but the previous games as well, adding in musical references, story bits, and generally a diverse soundtrack. I will be talking about two of my favorite character themes from the game to perfectly encapsulate their personality and backstory whilst pointing out various musical references.
First theme is Baiken, a one-armed, one-eyed, samurai whose theme, Mirror Of The World, reflects her character development throughout the series. To summarize an event that basically nuked all of Japan caused the Japanese to be refugees, Baiken included. At an unspecified time, the camp she was staying at was attacked by creatures named Gears, being led by who she believed was Asuka. During this raid, she lost her family, friends, her arm, and her eye. She thus became the samurai we see in the game, bent on revenge up until the current game where she has mellowed out which is reflected in her theme. In the song, we see lyrics of the Mantra of Light a popular scripture in Japanese Buddhism used to cleanse sin and ironically sung as Baiken believes could not be atoned for. Then the rest of the lyrics detail her journey to “cut off all vexations” and move on from her journey as a vengeful force, instead being said Mirror Of The World, to help people like her old self to move on as well.
Next theme is Drift, Happy Chaos’s(yes that is his name) theme, where Daisuke gave himself an epileptic seizure creating the time signatures for. The song is certainly interesting in its composition being segmented into multiple different styles, from a swing like piano to Prague rock-esque nonsense, and even eventually to a Disney musical. In the story, Chaos was the first magic user who discovered a god-like entity in another dimension which he would take half her power. This basically made him even more powerful whilst also “enlightening” him with more information than any human should have. He is summed up in the song's lyrics, “ It took me 10 years to find the answer to something------ I forgot about it in 2 seconds,” and,” nothing is important to me---- That’s why everything is beautiful.” Because of all the information he essentially lives in a state where his attachment to the world is solely just to live in an enjoyable way which he views as a never-ending narrative, as reflected by the song just being composed of confusing time signatures and lyrics that make no sense, at least to me.
If you want to listen to the songs here are the links:
Drift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlhzs171vwA
Mirror of The World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE9NxbSNejQ
Word Count: 541
Music in video games always ends up being very hit or miss with me. It’s either ok and I never listen to it outside the game. Or it’s amazing and I will listen to the soundtrack for days in a row, for example, this game called Hades, I never thought traditional music could mix so well with metal and rock, Hades is one of the first games that made me really appreciate video game music, so I understand the thought process you go through when think about the music.
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