Kudos goes out to Jessica Stan for sending this in for review.
Released in 2018, this Varan soundtrack set arrives a whopping 22 years after Toshiba’s excellent Great Monster Varan (TYCY-5500) CD from 1996. That earlier release already felt comprehensive, packing over 73 minutes of music onto a single disc. Rather than simply reissuing the same material, Cinema-Kan opted for a more ambitious presentation by expanding the soundtrack into a two-disc set. This sees one disc devoted to the theatrical version of the film and the other dedicated to the score as it would have appeared in the unmade television cut. While the amount of newly uncovered music is fairly small, just over four minutes of outtakes, the organization and presentation make this edition feel worthwhile for collectors and longtime fans of composer Akira Ifukube’s work.
Now the score itself remains one of the more fascinating entries in Ifukube’s filmography. Several standout themes appear throughout the soundtrack, particularly the slightly tribal “Main Title,” later repurposed as Rodan’s theme in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964). The vocal-driven “Ending” is another highlight, while cues such as “Varan vs. the Self-Defense Forces IV” showcase Ifukube’s gift for energetic military action music. The real standout, however, is “Varan vs. the Self-Defense Forces I,” a thrilling composition later reused to even greater effect in Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965). In many ways, that is both the strength and weakness of the score: much of this material would later reappear in other productions and sounding more refined there. Even so, Varan deserves recognition as the birthplace of several great themes from Ifukube.
Moving on to the sound quality, Cinema-Kan’s audio presentation is excellent overall. The mastering features noticeably higher volume levels than the Toshiba release, yet avoids clipping or distortion. For comparing the two editions side by side, I decided to do a blind listening test. This involved me dumping the tracks onto my computer and then setting them to around the same volume level losslessly as for a fair comparison. Using “Varan vs. the Self-Defense Forces I” (titled “Varan vs. the Bomber Neptune” on the Toshiba edition) for this test, it felt like there was marginally better clarity in the Cinema-Kan version. Which instruments were highlighted also felt a little different between them, and actually walked away preferring the Toshiba edition… but I think that was strictly because of nostalgia, as I have heard this soundtrack a lot and had grown accustomed to how it sounded on that 1996 release. More surprising, however, was discovering that the two versions of the cue are actually different edits. The Toshiba release fades out early, likely to remove an odd “air release” sound near the end of the recording, while Cinema-Kan preserves the full cue, extending it by roughly four seconds. A similar difference appears in “Varan vs. the Self-Defense Forces II,” where Toshiba again fades the track early due to unusual instrumentation at the ending. Comparing others, though, those were the only two I noticed that were different.
As for genuinely new material, the additions are modest. Newly included cues consist of:
- Mystery of the 20th Century (M2-T1)
- Rockets and Eastern Monsters (TV2-T3)
- Rockets and Eastern Monsters (TV2-T4)
- Special Explosive (TV14-T1)
Beyond these, several duplicate tracks are included to reconstruct the television version of the score in proper sequence. There is also a variation of the main title featuring Varan’s roars layered over the music, making for an interesting alternate take.
Bottom line, this release succeeds as the most complete presentation of Varan. While the score itself has arguably aged less gracefully than some of Ifukube’s other science-fiction works, largely because so much of its material was later reused more effectively elsewhere, it remains an important and highly enjoyable soundtrack in its own right. For newcomers who do not already own the 1996 Toshiba CD, this Cinema-Kan edition is an easy recommendation thanks to its strong sound quality and expanded presentation. For owners of the older release, however, the improvements and additional material are probably too minor to justify upgrading unless you are a particularly dedicated collector.
As a side note, the track titles here start out being pretty much the same as they are on the Toshiba release, with an early exception being M7 (from “Lake Bombardment” to “Varan’s Lake”, which is a little short sighted as there is a different TV cue already called “The Lake of Varan”). However, starting from M11 onward they are quite different, so keep that in mind. |
