Review Time: Movies and Gaming

Hello once again viewers. It's about time I've done this type of topic but... once again I'm doing another review. I may as well start calling this 'Review Time' or something like that. Anyway, today's review revolves around my choice of a soundtrack from a movie. Don't ask why just deal with it. Anyway, instead I'm going to do something a little different with this review. I'm going to pick two soundtracks to review; one from a movie and the other from a video game. You don't have to read it all unless you want to but if you're here for one thing or the other, then the video game will be the top with the movie soundtrack below the first. Hope you enjoy and don't feel afraid to tell me what you'd like me to review or you can also put up a comment on requests for songs I could play on my general channel. Yes, I have a YouTube channel (two if you know any of my other blogs) but let's stop talking about this nonsense and let's get on with these reviews.

For my video game soundtrack, I will be reviewing one of my favorite video games called 'The World Ends With You'. If you're wanting more info on the game I'd suggest you check out my other blog on gaming and you'll maybe see a post on details of games I've played and enjoyed. The soundtrack has about four hours of music with a few remixes of certain songs. I've gotta say I really enjoy certain songs in the soundtrack since some can be extreme, jumpy, catchy, tension bringing, and often times have wacky lyrics. If I were to pick my favorite songs from the soundtrack it would be 'Twister', 'Calling', 'Deja vu', 'Three minutes of Clapping', 'A Lullaby for You' and 'The One Star'.

On with the real review on this soundtrack. You know the game's title but we'll be going over the composer of the soundtrack and all the other soundtracks this composer's worked on. Some might guess this if they've heard of the game but the composer of the soundtrack would be Takeharu Ishimoto. If you don't know him, he would be a musician who would be working for the gaming company 'Square Enix', the same company who would make the Final Fantasy franchise, Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends With You, and other Japanese titles. Takeharu has worked in soundtracks such as this one, the Crisis Core soundtrack, some of Final Fantasy VII's soundtrack, and the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack. With the tracks in TWEWY (The World Ends With You), he did up to 35 of the songs in the original soundtrack but only one song was made from somebody else known as Jyongri who made the song 'A Lullaby For You'. With the rest, they are crossovers along with a band known as Death March playing some of the soundtrack such as 'Hybrid', 'Calling', and 'Run Away'.

With the instrumentation, the soundtrack mostly has either rock, electronic, and sometimes a mixture of both. With instruments such as the guitar, drums, keyboard (in electronic tone perhaps), and some bass, they would be the main instruments in the soundtracks for most of the songs. But sometimes they'll add instruments such as piano, electronic instruments (guitar), vocals, and violin to provide a different tone and make the parts they play in sound dramatic, exciting or sad.

Since there happens to be remixes in the soundtrack such as 'Twister' it doesn't change the style as much. The vocals surely do but sometimes the beat will go by faster, it'll be longer, it'll be shorter, or it'll be a bit different.

In the soundtrack, almost every song is musically challenging because of the style, the genre, the lyrics (because some are Japanese), and playing the instruments at the speed of the more exciting and extreme parts. The only easiest song that could be played would be 'A Lullaby For You' since it has a much slower tone compared to the other songs and it calms down from the normal crazy beat.

With the message from the composer on the soundtrack, it can surely be uncertain. In one song, it can be a crazy, fast, and exciting beat that would appear in typical rock bands, in the next it could be an intenser song than the last, then it could give the feelings of tragedy or the feelings that something bad's going to happen. There can be messages that the composer could be trying to put out but it would simply be hard to figure it out since it can seem like rock, rap or normal music. The message can seem like one thing and then seem like something else once you hear a different song.

Identifying the songs in the soundtrack would probably be explained as in a fighting spirit which would come when the game gets into its battle phase. But sometimes it adds the songs that make it seem like there's the clash between the main protagonist and the members supporting the antagonist or there's 'A Lullaby For You' that brings the feeling of reunion.

As I've said before, there is a couple of songs from the soundtrack that I enjoy the most. If I could, I'd listen to them non-stop. The songs I enjoy will be in the second paragraph.

For enhancement of music, I'd say it's sort of an in-between. Why? Because some of the music is electronic and it's mostly fast for most of the soundtrack. Plus, it includes the Japanese lyrics which would make the songs with lyrics harder to understand. Surely there's the English versions but only some of them like 'Twister' is better in Japanese.

And that's all for my review on my soundtrack from one of my favorite games. I will again be making a future post on the game itself if enough people would like to know more instead of looking it up if you don't have the game yourself. Anyway, this has been yet another Review Time and I'm sure I'll be doing this sort of thing monthly and if not, well you'll just have to wait and see.

TWEWY Soundtrack Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgOVbk1pT0