30 - AL 8b - Soundtrack Review

With 115 of the 218 track under his name, Masami Ueda can easily be called the principal composer for Okami. But is he?

Though I’ve never worked on a soundtrack with multiple composers all contributing, I can only imagine it being difficult. Though they are professionals, every composer has their own style and creative process, and these don’t necessarily meld. And lets look at the soundtrack this way:

Masami Ueda – 115 songs

Hiroshi Yamaguchi – 65 songs (2 overlap with Ueda)

Rei Kondoh – 35 songs

Akari Groves – 4 songs

Ayaka Hirahara – Composed “Reset”

So surely one can attribute the soundtrack’s overall direction to Ueda. But if we looked at Ueda’s past work, such as the first three Resident Evil games, and other Clover Studio games, we know that the soundtracks he composes to have a distinct style to each one. And we can also a few stylistic notes that are common to each one, they are often very strings centric, and the backing instruments have very similar combinations per soundtrack. In Okami, there is a lot of very string centric compositions, and the combination of backing instruments is very similar for each track. Another trait of Udea’s music is the use of 3+ note letimofs. Right from Resident Evil 2 with the three note horn theme that appeared through the whole game, and now here, these letimofs are all through the soundtrack. Issun’s theme, Amaterasu’s theme, Ushiwaka’s theme, Susano’s theme and the destiny theme that appears in very different forms through the game are all Udean contributions.

And with a strong leader who has a fantastic creative direction for a soundtrack, we get… a fantastic soundtrack. The maths isn’t hard here, Ueda set out the musical style for the game, which was versatile enough for several composers to come in and use, and together they created this. This majestic, sweeping, grand accompaniment to one of my favorite games.

The instrumentation fits the Feudal Japanese settings with the flutes, and harps, and harpsichords and wooden percussion and beautiful string elements. And for a synthesized soundtrack, it is incredibly well sampled. The music is sharp and clear, and every element is hearable and well mixed into the fray. A lot of care and attention went into this soundtrack, and it shows. All of the composers music blends together, it compliments the game perfectly, and the sheer quantity of memorable music here is staggering. Ueda is absolutely among the Japanese composers elite group, and this soundtrack is all he needs on his resume.

R. A., Dan, I’ll hear from you next week.

Also, I think I’m coming down with an anime/ation addiction. I’ll get back to you.

Andrew Lyons.