Yoko Kanno Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 1998

After a somewhat rocky start (that initially didn’t even see all episodes screened), Cowboy Bebop went on to become one of anime’s cultural milestones – on both sides of the Pacific. Setting itself apart from almost anything else produced for TV animation in either Japan or the USA, Cowboy Bebop merged disparate genres and visual styles in ways that helped the series introduce many new Western viewers to anime. Its cross-cultural appeal was partially based on its use of tropes that were familiar to Western audiences – Western, pulp fiction, film noir and cyberpunk (all within a space opera setting). Shinichirou Watanabe’s creation turned out to be popular enough to spawn a movie sequel and feature on many ‘best of’ lists in the years that followed.

As one would guess by looking at the series’ title, music played a crucial role in its eclectic aesthetic. Not surprisingly, the collaboration between director and composer on Cowboy Bebop was closer than usually – and the result was one of the most distinctive, attention-grabbing anime scores ever written. After her breakthrough with the orchestral fantasy masterpiece that was The Vision of Escaflowne, Yoko Kanno changed gears in spectacular fashion. Using jazz (and its many permutations) as the basis for Cowboy Bebop, Kanno branched out into a dizzying array of genres. She successfully dappled in everything from blues and metal to country music and opera, matching the series’ free-wheeling stylistic approach. Ultimately, Cowboy Bebop cemented Kanno’s status as one of anime’s foremost composers, able to seemingly nail just about any musical genre.

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Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream Soundtrack

Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 2000

Occasionally legend is indeed more intriguing than reality. One such case is Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream, a Japan-only Dreamcast title that initially made waves for having been developed by a predominantly (or even exclusively) female team. Unfortunately, a look at the game’s credits quickly shows that this wasn’t the case, although key design roles were indeed held by women. Ultimately, Napple Tale didn’t need these sorts of urban myths to stand apart from the competition. While not particularly challenging, the game created a wonderfully whimsical, dreamlike 2.5D world that mixed platforming with RPG elements. Around this framework, developer Chime Corporation wrapped a narrative that dealt with how the passing of seasons impacted the personality of the game’s characters.

While the game never left Japan, it did gain a certain level of popularity in the West – and that’s really due to Yoko Kanno’s involvement with this project. By the time she wrote the Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream soundtrack, Kanno had firmly cemented her position as one of Japan’s finest anime composers, coming off the twin successes of Cowboy Bebop and Turn A Gundam (maybe the greatest score ever written for this long-running franchise). What exactly inspired Kanno to make a return to video game scoring after having firmly established her film music career is unclear. However, it’s safe to say that Napple Tale is just as outstanding as her other scores of this era.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Bushou Fuuunroku Soundtrack (PC-88), Yoko Kanno, 1990

Developer KOEI didn’t rock the boat much with this fourth instalment of its Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise. The game continued its predecessors’ brand of menu-heavy strategising, set amongst feuding warlords in Japan during the 16^th century. As before, it targeted those gamers who preferred intensely in-depth gameplay over elaborate visuals. Despite the geographically specific subject matter, KOEI felt that there was an overseas audience for Bushou Fuuunroko, bringing the SNES and Sega Genesis ports to the American market under the title of Lord of Darkness.

While the early Nobunaga’s Ambition games were never visual stunners, their music was an entirely different story. Since the franchise’s second title Zenkokuban, future film and TV score legend Yoko Kanno had been responsible for the games’ soundtracks. Their various PC and console chiptunes scores didn’t give a strong indication of Kanno’s burgeoning talents. However, KOEI had developed a fascinating concept dubbed “Soundware”. Soundware albums contained red book audio scores for a number of KOEI PC-88 games. These albums replaced the games’ chiptunes soundtracks with upgraded music in case the PC in question was equipped with a CD drive. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as arrange albums, these CDs were sold with special retail editions of various Nobunaga’s Ambition games. However, KOEI also sold them separately as simple music albums.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Tenshouki Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1994

Tenshouki, the sixth instalment of KOEI’s long-running Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, heralded the end of an era in several ways (despite its strategy gameplay that focused on medieval Japanese warlords not changing much). It was the last Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be released on the PC-98 series of Japanese personal computers and the last franchise title to see the light of day on 16-bit platforms. Most importantly for our purpose, it was the final Nobunaga’s Ambition game to be scored by franchise mainstay Yoko Kanno.

Kanno’s star had been steadily rising throughout the early 1990s and by 1994, she was ready to focus on anime and film scoring – an area she had dabbled in as an arranger in recent years, with her breakthroughs Macross Plus and The Vision of Escaflowne just around the corner. For her farewell to the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, KOEI once more increased the budget allocation – and considerably so.

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98)

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden Soundtrack (PC-98), Yoko Kanno, 1992

As with previous instalments of the Nobunaga’s Ambition franchise, KOEI only tweaked details for its fifth instalment, Haouden. Clearly KOEI had hit upon a winning formula, happy to churn these games out to an audience hungry for their fix of historic strategy games that prioritised gameplay depth over fancy graphics. Not surprisingly, what stood out most about Haouden’s presentation was its soundtrack, provided by series regular Yoko Kanno.

Kanno had been given the opportunity to record previous franchise scores with live performers – a rare occurrence in video game music at the time. And thankfully, KOEI seemed willing to increase the music budget for each subsequent Nobunaga’s Ambition title. Bushou Fuuunroku had benefited from a mostly live ensemble – a chamber music-sized orchestra supplemented by a few solo performers and synths. For the Nobunaga’s Ambition: Haouden soundtrack, KOEI went one step further and hired a larger ensemble, now amounting to a small symphony orchestra.

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