Mmm...
hmm... bootlegs. Although fans of live action Japanese
cinema, and their soundtracks, are probably less familiar
with this aspect, boots are common occurrences for
many Anime soundtracks. As a general rule of thumb:
if the price seems too good to be true, chances are
it's not legit. Appearances alone are often not a
tell tale sign, which leads us to the subject of this
review: K-O Records. Based in Taiwan, this company
has distributed a ton of CDs into the market, all
based on Anime or Video Game material. The firm does
a good job of making their titles look authentic,
even reproducing the obi. I have seen a number of
the firm's titles, and many at a quick glance appear
that they could be the real deal. Fortunately, the
company itself is fairly proud of their work. All
of their titles remove the original copyright on the
back and replace it with a plug for their own "trading
company", not to mention they all have unique
CD numbers given to them as well. Outside of this,
though, many of these might pass for their legal twins,
even if one is very familiar with what the original
looks like. This is not the case, however, for the
Steamboy O.S.T..
For whatever reason, K-O Records decided to deviate
from the original release in their creation of this
CD. While the original by Victor (VICL-61445) features
a full body shot of the main character framed horizontally
across the cover, K-O Records decided to crop the
image at the knees and flip it vertically. The original
transparent cover to the CD booklet, which contains
the title on the front, is also absent (likely because
the bootlegger could not mass reproduce this easily
from their current resources). The ending result looks
more like someone slapped a stray high quality production
still on the cover of a CD case and called it a day.
Okay, so this release is a bootleg, but I will deviate
a little bit just to provide a review of the content
for those who might be reading it for that element.
Composed by Steve Jablonsky, the score here is a rousing
and sometimes elegant one. I love Jablonsky's work
on the 2007 Transformers movie, and was hopeful
for this soundtrack. As a whole package, its a pleasant
release, and boasts a real amazing theme in "The Chase" which steals the show.
It's a great enough cue that one could point to it saying that this was
the reason to own the CD. Aside from that show stopper, it's
an enjoyable soundtrack, especially cues like "Ray's Theme". That said, given what the composer is capable of, I was a
little disappointed to not see a few more cues with an
adrenaline pumping quality to them. That said, misplaced
expectations are probably the fault here, and what is presented is a solid stand alone experience.
In the end, the music itself is recommendable. The
soundtrack is available in the States too, from Domo
Records (73045-2), so people interested can pick it up fairly
inexpensively. The fact that K-O Records even bothered
to boot it at all is an odd choice, since a legal
copy will generally only run a few more dollars than
what this illegitimate copy runs for, even on the
auction sites. It should be noted that my bootleg also skips on the last track, but possible that was a defect and others are fine.
[for reference, the numeric score below is in relation
to the actual music found on the CD mostly]
Rating:  |
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