Why didn't Akihito Tokunaga come back for Kai?

[DB1984]

Nothing against Kenji Yamamoto, but why didn't Tokunaga return for Kai? His music was the most underrated the franchise had to offer. His music was the one ray of sunlight of the otherwise dreadful GT.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Nothing against Kenji Yamamoto, but why didn't Tokunaga return for Kai? His music was the most underrated the franchise had to offer. His music was the one ray of sunlight of the otherwise dreadful GT.

Not a clue why he didn't come back. No official explanation has ever been given, and for that matter, Tokunaga hasn't even been acknowledged in any way during the production of Kai (at least not publicly). For all we know, he was asked and declined, but my guess--and I emphasize the word "guess," since we have no way of knowing for sure--is a combination of the fact that he's busy with other stuff and that GT really didn't do that well in Japan, so perhaps Toei didn't want Kai to be associated with the series that (up to that point, at least) fared the worst in Japan.

That's a pity, because I agree, while I prefer Kikuchi overall, Tokunaga did make some great, underrated music. I keep hoping that every time there's an anniversary for GT that they'll announce a new CD release with all of his unreleased tracks. Not gonna happen, I know, but a guy can dream. The final two episodes of GT in particular have some of the best music and music placement I've ever heard in a Dragon Ball anime.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Maybe it was because Kenji had more experience with the series?

[DoomieDoomie911]

I've never really given this much thought, but Kai would have been so, so much better if Tokunaga had done the music. His music was by far the best thing about GT.

[InfernalVegito]

Indeed this is quite a pity. I always said I would have loved to see what Tokunaga could have come up with for Z and Kai could have been just that chance.

I mean at the time he scored for GT he was just around 25(?) years old or so which just shows what kind of talented guy he is considering the masterpiece he created.

[Chuquita]

so perhaps Toei didn't want Kai to be associated with the series that (up to that point, at least) fared the worst in Japan.

I second this theory. Tokunaga's music was good. He just couldn't escape the GT association.

[Black_Liger]

Tokunaga was a beast in the Path to Power movie... freaking beautiful music. They should have gone back to him for BoG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoTr12RuD6o

This choir piece bro... THIS CHOIR PIECE BRO!

[Lord Beerus]

I really wish Tokunaga had come back for Kai too. His scores for GT and Path To Power were fantastic and really captures the essence of Dragon Ball. But like TheBlackPaladin commented, I think his integral inclusion in the commercial flop that was GT lead to him not being called back.

[Blade]

He was very young when he got the GT gig, and it was kinda crazy that he even did, given that he was a rookie stepping into the role vacated by a heavyweight name like Kikuchi. I think in general apart from some work on Slam Dunk, his career moved away from scoring Anime more towards pop music performance, writing and arrangements - which is a shame, because for me, his score is one of the best things about GT.

Kenji Yamamoto was actually a pretty natural choice given the fact that by then, through years and years of work on the Dragonball video games. he had sort of become the loyal go-to guy for the franchise. Furthermore, his CV made for very impressive reading and demonstrated much suitability for the role. Tokunaga had drifted from the franchise during those intermediary years, and I think that when you consider that he wasn't the one who scored the original Z anime in the first place, it didn't make a lot of sense to have him come back in for the remaster. Moreover, I just think that no one at Toei really owed him the gig, his name probably was never even considered.

I just think that Toei's biggest misstep was that they didn't take the accusations of plagiarism that had circled his work for the video games more seriously when they hired him. They brushed the whole thing off as internet tittle-tattle, when at the very least, they could have warned him to steer away from heavily derivative compositions in his work for Kai, which for all intents and purposes, was always going to be under greater scrutiny than anything he'd written for the franchise previously.

[KaiserNeko]

I feel like I'm one of the only people on this forum who really does not enjoy Akihito Tokunaga's work in DragonBall? Saikyo e no Michi included? I just feel like it's corny, tinny, and boring... I legitimately wonder where all the love for his work comes from. I'm a fan of Kikuchi, Yamamoto, a handful of Faulconer tracks, would have loved to hear more from Hiroshi Takaki, and I hate Sumitomo and Menza... so it's not like I'm a complete outlier in terms of public opinion on music around here, yet the score for GT and "Path to Power" are apparently beloved while I can't stand them.

[kenisu3000]

I feel like I'm one of the only people on this forum who really does not enjoy Akihito Tokunaga's work in DragonBall? Saikyo e no Michi included? I just feel like it's corny, tinny, and boring... I legitimately wonder where all the love for his work comes from.

To be honest, I've always had a certain amount of trouble getting into the 10th anniversary movie score. I think it has something to do with the synth in a couple of Hatchan cues (tracks 20 and 42), which has that "crib mobile" sound to it I associate with a boring Sunday, holed up in the house with cabin fever watching boring TV. I'm also not a fraction as crazy about the choir pieces at the end as others here are. Or it could be because all the really catchy cues are over all too quickly (I'm looking at you, Yamcha The Strong Foe), but Tokunaga was scoring to picture for the movie, and considering the film's lightning pace of "we've gotta introduce this character really quickly so that we can move on to the next scene", he didn't really have the room to flesh his material out.

But I adore the GT television soundtrack so, so much. It can play up the action moments with incredible drive (Dynamic Duel, Fugitives On The Run, The Fiery Battlefield), strike terror in my heart during the horrifying moments (Chill Of The Spine, Emergency Landing, The Unbelievable Disaster), make me feel on top of the world when victory is at hand (Rising Out Of The Shadows, Off To A New World), and when the action is done, it's got so much down-to-earth charm to it (The Village In Peace Again, Lost And Forlorn, Days Gone Past).

And that's not even counting the Dan-Dan and Hitori Ja Nai instrumentals, which I left out of the last paragraph because they're arrangements of someone else's melodies. But when you combine these with Tokunaga's original cues, the score as a whole completely knocks it out of the ballpark.

[Gonstead]

I feel like I'm one of the only people on this forum who really does not enjoy Akihito Tokunaga's work in DragonBall? Saikyo e no Michi included? I just feel like it's corny, tinny, and boring... I legitimately wonder where all the love for his work comes from. I'm a fan of Kikuchi, Yamamoto, a handful of Faulconer tracks, would have loved to hear more from Hiroshi Takaki, and I hate Sumitomo and Menza... so it's not like I'm a complete outlier in terms of public opinion on music around here, yet the score for GT and "Path to Power" are apparently beloved while I can't stand them.

You're definitely not alone.

Personally to me, in addition to what you described I also feel the score is quite generic. Nothing ever really stood out to me about it apart from overuse of Dan Dan, which I'll also admit I'm not a fan of either.

I also agree with what Blade said with Kenji Yamamoto being the natural choice. It would have also probably helped garner interest in the series as well when people know that the new composer for a Dragon Ball series is one that fans are already familiar with. If the Yamamoto scandal hadn't happened, I'm sure that Toei would have kept Yamamoto as the main composer for any future DB projects including Battle of Gods, Resurrection F and Super.