Buddy Mission BOND Soundtrack

Buddy Mission BOND Soundtrack, Kosuke Mizukami, 2021

One of early 2021’s most polished Nintendo Switch titles was Buddy Mission BOND. With character design by Yusuke Murata, the manga artist behind Eyeshield 21 and One-Punch Man, the game’s presentation is immediately striking, especially its 2D story sequences, staged like comic-book panels brought to life. Structurally, the experience revolves around its quartet of protagonists and divides into three strands: visual-novel dialogue scenes with multiple-choice options, investigation chapters built around gathering clues, and 3D infiltration sequences that turn that information into stealthy puzzle-solving inside enemy bases.

Koei Tecmo did not lavish attention on the visuals alone. In keeping with the studio’s long tradition of well-funded scoring, Buddy Mission BOND was recorded with a live ensemble of more than twenty players, including a small string section and multiple brass instruments. The composer entrusted with that palette was Kosuke Mizukami, a Koei Tecmo veteran whose credits range across the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Dead or Alive Xtreme and Atelier series. Crucially, this was a rare opportunity for Mizukami to construct a musical world from the ground up rather than slot himself into an already established franchise sound.

The results are not uniformly strong. Mizukami wrote around 160 minutes of looped music, and a fair amount of it drifts, pleasantly enough, but without much direction. Several cues also rely too heavily on a recurring saxophone motif, to the point where it risks becoming unintentionally comic. Yet when the soundtrack finds its footing, it does so decisively. Its undisputed crown jewel is the jazz writing: a little over an hour of excellent material in which Mizukami makes his most persuasive use of the live ensemble. These are not merely “jazz-flavoured” loops. They are full-bodied, properly arranged jazz pieces that move organically from solo to solo, constantly generating new ideas through the kind of dense, reactive writing on which the genre thrives.

The jazz here is melodic and instantly ingratiating. Mizukami largely sidesteps the genre’s more abrasive experimental fringes and instead deploys its effortless sophistication to match the game’s stylish comic-book cool. That does not make the score one-dimensional. On the contrary, the soundtrack often feels like a guided tour through different jazz idioms, all filtered through the same glossy live-ensemble sensibility.

The more traditional cues are a delight. “Track 03” toggles between sumptuous brass-and-strings bursts and classic bar-jazz textures led by piano and briskly plucked double bass. Thanks to the excellent recording and mix, the bass remains clearly audible beneath the competing layers, keeping the groove energised while staccato brass pushes the cue into confident swagger. “Track 06” accelerates into the soundtrack’s liveliest gear, announced by vivacious brass fanfares and driven by insistent, rhythmically tricky drumming. Its most satisfying effect lies in the contrast between warm string writing and hectic percussion, neither side ever losing clarity. “Track 02”, equally elegant, stays at a steadier mid-tempo, presenting a languid sequence of brass soli and slipping in simpler pop-leaning gestures without compromising its sophistication.

Elsewhere, Mizukami slows the pulse and moves away from jazz’s brassy extroversion towards its more romantic interior. Carried by refined string writing, “Track 08” and “Track 17” do not aim to dazzle. They persuade instead, through tender melodies whose emotional restraint gives them understated grace and keeps them clear of cloying sentimentality. Of the two, “Track 17” has greater room to unfold: the interplay between strings and piano deepens, the dynamic range widens, and the cue gradually blossoms into passionate forte passages. The material is not especially complex, but it is moving in its sincerity and polish.

That is only the beginning of Mizukami’s jazz excursion. He repeatedly adjusts his layered language of piano, strings and brass to serve the game’s tenser moments, presumably the infiltration and stealth sequences, without abandoning the score’s sleek identity. “Track 05” combines taut funk guitar, trembling strings and dissonant piano stabs with the soundtrack’s trademark silky brass leads. “Track 07” builds on hammering staccato rhythms and jagged piano figures before erupting into a raucous clash of screaming brass, string ostinati, piano and what sounds like a massive drum strike landing as a final warning. “Track 14” achieves perhaps the most impressive fusion of all, marrying jazzy complexity and swagger to contemporary action-game sonics, with programmed percussion and cold, echoing synths tightening the atmosphere without flattening the live ensemble’s character.

The soundtrack’s most creative gesture, however, is to push the jazz writing one step further by fusing it with traditional Japanese instrumentation. It sounds like an unlikely marriage, yet Mizukami makes it feel effortless. “Track 04” again foregrounds funk, but the “flute” colour is actually a shamisen, and the melody passes between Western and Japanese timbres as if they had always belonged to the same phrase. “Track 10” mirrors the soundtrack’s slower string pieces: its pentatonic violin writing avoids easy orientalist cliché, while restrained shakuhachi lines bring a hushed intensity that feels both romantic and controlled. Most daring of all is “Track 11”, which begins with stringent, droning sonorities before shifting into a more static, texture-led string adagio. The result is genuinely original: music that bridges East and West with remarkable elegance.

The soundtrack also frames itself with a trio of songs as carefully written and produced as the instrumental material. “Track 01” sets the tone with verve as a sassy jazz number. Vocalist Celeina Ann moves fluidly between English and Japanese, and that bilingual agility suits the cue’s quick-change structure, which flips from sleek cool to pulsing drive without warning. Later, “Track 18” surprises with ritualistic koto-and-drum patterns and shakuhachi calls, a combination that perfectly complements its measured, introspective vocal writing before building towards a calm, moving majesty. Closing the album is “Track 19”, which opens with dreamy piano, slips into soft rock, tasteful throughout, and then lands on a jubilant jazz-pop chorus that sends the score out on precisely the right high.