Of two minds
Feb. 18th, 2022 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoZhou 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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-21 02:14 pm (UTC)Eeeeeeh, I'm not feeling the song. Even the more ballad-y Pokémon songs are still energetic, for example:
Chisaki no mono(小さきもの)
Kaze to Issho ni (風といっしょに)
Hateshinai Sekai (はてしない世界)
響 -こえ- · Every Little Thing
Egao (笑顔)
Post ni Koe wo Nageirete (ポストに声を投げ入れて)
I picked samples some from the beginning, middle, and most recent eras of Pokémon movie end themes to make the point. As you can hear, there's still a swelling energy, even in the ballads. Meanwhile, 《可梦》 for me is just too...hm, how to put it, too lackadaisical. There's a depressive atmosphere to the music that doesn't fit the more gungho lyrics, which is contributing to lyric-melody dissonance. And not in a good way like Cruel Angel Thesis (残酷な天使のテーゼ) pulled off, which contrasts the depressive lyrics with a high energy musical beat. (The lyrics ultimately say that you will pull through, after much suffering, so it's not completely doom-gloom.)
So yeah, I don't think this song works as a theme song. (As background OST, sure, but then why bother to set it to lyrics?) As for the MV...eh, 《生僻字》 also runs on having a bunch of lyrics as the gimmick. I think if they just animated the lyrics to bounce in time with the music would look better, but this one just smacks of a first-draft rather than a finished product.
Edit to add: Actually, even 《无所畏惧》 fits better as a game theme, and that's also more ballad-y.
Edit further to add: Hell, even 国风 style music can be more fitting for Pokémon, like 《左手指月》. So it's not like there's an excuse for 《可梦》 not fitting other than failing to grasp the core engagement of Pokémon. （Here's a proof of concept. You can't tell me this isn't better, even for an exploration, darker Legend of Arceus game.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-21 03:03 pm (UTC)I do agree that the overall quality of the work isn't what I would expect from something funded by Nintendo. I mean, I wonder if there was something lost in translation between whoever is in charge of ordering these anniversary songs on the japanese side versus whoever was in charge of putting together the music on the chinese side.
From the credits, it doesn't seem like Zhou Shen's studio was involved in it at all (unlike many of his other songs), so I would guess he was brought in after the song was already composed/written/arranged just to record it (and not even to film video clips!). Also wonder if it was originally just decided to be a song with no MV. And then later one side or the other thought they needed a MV anyways and then...just got an intern to throw something together or whatnot. -_-
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-21 03:43 pm (UTC)Huh. Not sure why they bothered to commission a bunch of songs that have nothing to do with Pokémon to celebrate the anniversary. Seems...weird.
Seems like shoddy work, yeah. Even the song itself needed to go through editorial a few more times, since I feel the melody and lyrics don't match, even ignoring the "not about Pokémon" aspect. Whoever worked on the melody seemed to have a misunderstanding of the lyrics (or the lyricist failed to judge the mood of the melody).
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-21 10:38 pm (UTC)Which then raises the question of why they didn't just have Zhou Shen sing the japanese lyrics (which he's perfectly capable of) directly. Or why they didn't just directly translate the japanese lyrics rather than, apparently, hired someone to write completely unrelated chinese lyrics.
*shrug*
I guess Nintendo dropped the ball somewhere. They can't all be 王者荣耀 or Honkai Impact 3.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-22 03:58 am (UTC)Huh, I wonder how exactly the Japanese lyrics differed, since the Chinese and Japanese are pretty close as far as I can tell. Maybe there's some subtleties I'm missing on. Or maybe it's just different interpretation. ╮(╯▽╰)╭
Since Zhou Shen is capable of singing in Japanese, I wonder why they didn't just have him sing it in Japanese in the first place. Weird. Ah well, mysteries. Pokémon still selling like hotcakes, so I guess it doesn't matter much either way.