Great Anime Composers: Hitoshi Sakimoto

Hitoshi Sakimoto is a good case that you don’t need to graduate from the finest music institutions as long as you study the fundamentals of music properly by yourself. The self-professed game and anime composer and founder of video game music company Basiscape is a brilliant silver-age film composer in his own right.

His scores for TV anime are proof of that. Romeo X Juliet is a great romantic film score with a love theme to die for.

For the Ogre games he composed some great music as well, most brilliantly arranged in the orchestral album Ogre: Grand Repeat (together with Masaharu Iwata) which you can take as a classic fantasy score.

The Tower of Druaga (The Sword of Uruk) is a continuation of his classic film score sensibilities with a bombastic tour-de-force and yet another great theme.

Valkyria Chronicles is military bombast done right with great patriotic themes as well as much beauty to contrast the banging onslaught of (metal) percussion. I also find his synth sounds to be pretty much the only ones I can stomach despite the outdated samples. Good composition will of course always triumph over sound limitations.

Dragon’s Crown is another score I would really like to hear performed live. His world map theme haunts me still (also a really great game in my book). But I must confess I don’t really like other Basiscape scores if Sakimoto is not the lead composer.

Finally some symphonic or live-orchestral arrangements from game scores that are pretty much the only pieces that I return to.

Its downright criminal that a composer with such potential is barely given enough opportunities to flex his muscles with a real orchestra so any news of Sakimoto with a live orchestra (like the recent Dragon’s Crown) is wonderful news.

LINK IN DESCRIPTION (https://mega.nz/#!p7wjTYLT!JJCyKliZzE_ASxmHyFd6CRytLENWT1eqv1xcUT9z1mQ)

From Ivalice to Neo Verona
The Music of Hitoshi Sakimoto
Eminence Symphony Orchestra

Download (https://mega.nz/#!Bu4F0aBQ!ydwFkqczpjgxLLYMXxl8KpT15DToCi-KbmxoiyxP5R4)

Sample (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJg9I1kJo0)

Over two hours of orchestral goodness from Sakimoto, arranged by myself. Should there ever be a concert of his music, I hope some people take my suggestions here. One of my very first shares in this thread was a symphonic arrangement of One Piece, so in a sense I’ve come full-circle as well.
I’ve arranged a 40 minute arrangement of his Romeo X Juliet followed by various suites and medleys of his anime and game scores. Here’s the full tracklist:

Romeo x Juliet Symphonic Suite I [The Red Storm of Neo Verona]
Romeo x Juliet Symphonic Suite II [Vigor and Agony]
Romeo x Juliet Symphonic Suite III [Oath and Revolution]
Romeo x Juliet Symphonic Suite IV [The Twin Trees of Escalus]
Aegis of Uruk [Suite of the legendary Climber]
Tactics Ogre [Suite of Field Tactics]
Valkyria Chronicles [Main Theme]
Valkyria Chronicles [Succeeded Wish]
Valkyria Chronicles 2 [Gallian Academy]
Valkyria Chronicles 3 [To the Frontline]
Vagrant Story [Staff Roll]
Odin Sphere [Suite of Valkyrie Descent]
Valkyria Chronicles Animation [Suite of Tragedy and Peace]
FFXII [Suite of the Zodiac Age]
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 [Words that were put together]
Dragon’s Crown [Suite of Ancient Legend]
Encore #1 [Neo Verona]
Encore #2 [The Dalmasca Estersand]

Sakimoto is a composer that perhaps unlike any other game composer deserves far more projects with a symphony orchestra than what we got. The self-professed game composer and tunesmith par excellence graced us however with some pretty unforgotteable game scores. Here is a musical celebration of his modest but quality career.

He’s also living his dream as a passionate gamer himself.

Needless to say the games he scored for are full of quality aswell. His music sometimes just works better ingame though. Every gameexcept maybe VC2+3 gets a recommendation.
Please let him loose on a symphony orchestra again, Japan, thank you.