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Of two minds
Feb. 18th, 2022 08:34 pmZhou Shen's latest song turns out to be for Pokemon's 25 anniversary. (Apparently really belated, or just China's celebrating this anniversary a year after everyone else??)
The song by itself is pretty much his typical chinese traditional (国风) style. What it isn't, it's not exactly what you expect of battle music or the very well known snappy songs everyone knows from the anime/movies. Something that a lot of gamers in China are unhappy about (along with the usual batch of ZS haters).
The youtube version of the song has pretty much all positive reviews under it. And yes, I did go through and google translate the japanese comments that make the majority. Seems like most people there are equating it with the Pokemon Legends: Arceus game...where, yeah, the song could easily serve as OST for any exploration based or mystery based game if you ignore any language barrier issues.
My problem with it is mostly with the MV. I can forgive the name being just 《可梦》 as a hit and miss attempt at puns (and honestly, english version of Pokemon certainly has plenty of bad puns to go with the good...so it is their "thing"). But the video just consists of...lyrics. I mean, whut? It's not like Nintendo can't afford to pay for a decent animated short, or just throw in a bunch of scenes from the Arceus game, or use thematically fitting cuts from any of the many many animes/movies, or even just film Zhou Shen singing it (costume optional). Just... eh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nVJln8bbE
For comparison, his previous non-OST song 《星鱼》 is a perfectly nice video with very basic art/animation plus a bunch of studio filming shots (and thus probably inexpensive to make), to go with the pretty pretty voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3LpSUq1U-w
EDIT1: Or something like this one made by fans.
(Disclaimer: I'm perfectly willing to eat my words if they end up doing something like...putting the song in the chinese edition of the game itself.)
The song by itself is pretty much his typical chinese traditional (国风) style. What it isn't, it's not exactly what you expect of battle music or the very well known snappy songs everyone knows from the anime/movies. Something that a lot of gamers in China are unhappy about (along with the usual batch of ZS haters).
The youtube version of the song has pretty much all positive reviews under it. And yes, I did go through and google translate the japanese comments that make the majority. Seems like most people there are equating it with the Pokemon Legends: Arceus game...where, yeah, the song could easily serve as OST for any exploration based or mystery based game if you ignore any language barrier issues.
My problem with it is mostly with the MV. I can forgive the name being just 《可梦》 as a hit and miss attempt at puns (and honestly, english version of Pokemon certainly has plenty of bad puns to go with the good...so it is their "thing"). But the video just consists of...lyrics. I mean, whut? It's not like Nintendo can't afford to pay for a decent animated short, or just throw in a bunch of scenes from the Arceus game, or use thematically fitting cuts from any of the many many animes/movies, or even just film Zhou Shen singing it (costume optional). Just... eh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nVJln8bbE
For comparison, his previous non-OST song 《星鱼》 is a perfectly nice video with very basic art/animation plus a bunch of studio filming shots (and thus probably inexpensive to make), to go with the pretty pretty voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3LpSUq1U-w
EDIT1: Or something like this one made by fans.
(Disclaimer: I'm perfectly willing to eat my words if they end up doing something like...putting the song in the chinese edition of the game itself.)
