First off, thanks goes out to Jessica Stan for sending this in to be reviewed.
Now this disc contains the soundtrack to the 1996 show Guyferd, which was a co-production between Toho, Capcom and TV Tokyo. This CD was released in June of 1996, before the show had concluded in September of that year. While there is a bit of variety to this soundtrack, with some songs and instrumental tracks from Takeshi Yamanaka, it’s not the best stand alone experience. Furthermore, this particular release feels a bit weak as it’s padded with unrelated music for its bonus material.
Starting off, let's cover the two songs for the show. The first, “Eternal Vow” by Kenzo Fukuyama, is a nice guitar riff vocal track. It does very much evoke that feeling of an opening title song, although this version is expanded here to four minutes. The next vocal track is “Befriend” by Kotono Shibuya, which is a good end credits song. It’s soothing, certainly not energetic like Fukuyama’s song, but is pleasant to listen to.
Switching over to Yamanaka’s instrumental tracks, as a whole, it comes off as being a bit simplistic. The best way to describe it is like a cross between a 1990's show and a Playstation era video game soundtrack. There are quite a bit of guitar and drum heavy tracks here, like “King Ki Ultimate Star Fist” and “Cyborg”. A weakness of the score is that it lack highlights, as most of the tracks fall within that just okay range. There are a few tracks that miss the mark, though, such as the meandering “Fallah” or “Crisis” which features offkey horn work, although at least the latter is a bit unique for the instrumentation used.
Sadly, this CD features very annoying dialogue that’s occasionally inserted into the tracks. This starts off pretty early with someone shouting before “King Ki Ultimate Star Fist” begins, which is jarring. If only that was isolated it would be easy to overlook, but it’s not. “Crown” also features dialogue, but rather than a quick snippet before the track starts here it’s overlaid as narration on the second half of the track, which is very frustrating as one couldn’t even edit it out if they wanted. Finally, there is also dialogue in “King Ki Blazing Hit”, although at least this is just before the actual track starts and not overlaid on the music.
Now let’s talk about the random bonus tracks. I emphasize random because there’s not much tying them to the Guyferd other than the obvious Capcom connection. To be blunt, these are more promos for then recent video games from Capcom. If you are expecting music from the gameplay portion itself, though, it’s best to think of these as songs that are meant to promote the games. The first are two songs related to Mega Man X3. These are a little bit more tied in as at least the singer, Kotono Shibuya, also did the end song for Guyferd. “One More Time” is not bad either, a nice pop song. “I’m Believer” (yes, that’s the title in English) is also decent, with great vocals although they don’t really gel well with the background music. Following this are two songs for Resident Evil, the first 1996 entry. If you are picturing something atmospheric to match the horror zombie title, you’d be shocked to hear two pop songs by Fumitaka Fuchigami. Granted, “I Won’t Let This End as a Dream” starts with an explosion and helicopter sound effects, but quickly jumps into an okay sounding pop song.
Overall, if you are a big fan of the show, this could be worth seeking out. For casual fans or just general soundtrack collectors, though, I would say this disc is on the weak side. |
