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Born in 1924, Riichiro Manabe, despite his reputation among science fiction fans as a composer of dubious value, is quite a diverse and rich composer.
Having studied among many famed European composers as well as Akira Ifukube, Manabe was originally a chamber music student before he decided to transfer to film scoring because he found it more exciting.
In the late 1950s until the mid-60s, Manabe was the composer of choice for famed film director Nagisa Oshima, scoring a large majority of his early discography.
In interviews, Manabe has nothing to say usually on the subject of his career path of the 1970s. This is a period when many composers such as Kunihiko Murai, Toshiaki Tsushima and even Masaru Sato began branching out and experimenting with different styles of composition and diverse instrumentation and Manabe's case is hardly unique. His 70s scores took several of his older ideas and infused them with significant alteration, reusing them in somewhat of a different way such as the Combined Fleet theme from The Militarists (1970) being used for Godzilla's theme Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971). Manabe vanished from the film score radar around 1980, but still continued to teach musical composition. |
