Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

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GhostEmperorX
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Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by GhostEmperorX » Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:57 am

Honestly, the many variations of Piccolo’s theme are Shunsuke Kikuchi’s magnum opus of the series from the original till Z. One other excellent element is that it began right from Great Demon King Piccolo (direct translation of ピッコロ大魔王).
Are there any other themes as often used whether they come from DB or Z?

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Zestanor » Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:40 pm

I guess the arrangements of the DB opening song count as a character theme for Goku. Piccolo's is unique because that particular batch of music was ordered specifically for the Piccolo Daimao arc. The first half of the Red Ribbon was very military themed (I don't know how to describe it) but there wasn't a theme song per se. DBZ didn't even have arc music, since they used the film scores.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by GhostEmperorX » Sat Jun 06, 2020 1:26 am

Zestanor wrote: Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:40 pm I guess the arrangements of the DB opening song count as a character theme for Goku.
Opening songs and any re-arranged versions of them aren’t exactly like entirely instrumental motifs so I’m inclined to disagree. Character themes are also usually distinct from OP’s and any derived re-arrangements.
As far as the others go, you do raise a good point, though the Saiyan Saga did have music that was made for it. Like Gohan’s theme.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Xeogran » Sat Jun 06, 2020 8:42 am

There is "Hikari no Will Power" for Future Trunks, but that's game-exclusive. Still, it appears multiple times.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Grimlock » Sat Jun 06, 2020 3:19 pm

Vegeta has "Saiyan Blood" from Dragon Ball Kai. Bardock has "Solid State Scouter" from Dragon Ball Z and "Bardock Falls" from Dragon Ball Super.
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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by DBZ Macky » Wed Jun 10, 2020 5:20 am

I think you're actually correct in the assertion that Piccolo's probably the only character with a theme/leitmotif as prominent as his one.
Whether it be the original score, the Faulconer score, or even the video game music, there isn't as much consistency as there is with Piccolo/Piccolo Daimao's theme.

Though as Zestanor pointed out before, it does seem that Makafushigi Adventure and its various versions could be considered as "Goku's Theme" though that only works for the original Dragon Ball Anime, and the last time we prominently hear that (if I recall correctly) is in the Garlic Jr. Movie where they combine both "Goku's Theme" and "Piccolo's Theme" in the final squabble against Garlic Jr.

In a similar vein, it did seem to me that the versions of "We Gotta Power" prior to Goku's return in the Boo arc was mostly associated with Gohan/The Great Saiyaman. Though, of course that doesn't last very long.

That being said, there's a lot of tracks that you can associate with the other characters, but they're rarely the "defining" track for them like Piccolo's theme:

Freeza has "Tada Kogoeru Elegy" and of course, "F" by Maximum the Hormone

Future Trunks has "Hikari no Willpower" and "Lone Warrior", along with arguably "Battle Point Unlimited" (And he always gets the best themes, even in the video games)

Vegeta has "Saiyan Blood" from Kai, but his most iconic themes are probably from the Faulconer score like "Hell's Bells" etc.
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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by RoarkVegeta » Thu Jun 11, 2020 3:55 pm

Child Gohan has a few themes associated with him, I guess.

M713
M714
M717
M718
M720

And a few more..

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Psajdak » Sun Jun 14, 2020 9:21 pm

Ushio Hashimoto - Romantic Ageru Yo (first ending song) is often associated with Bulma, and it was even used as Bulma's "description" before Aya Hisakawa came out on some show with Dragon Ball Super: Broly seiyu.

Toru Furuya (Yamcha) - Wolf Hurricane

Satoko Yamano - Hatsukoi wa Kumo ni Notte - the singer in this song is basically singing as if she is Chichi, and how she fell in love with Goku, but the song itself was never heard in anime itself.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Soppa Saia People » Sun Jun 14, 2020 11:27 pm

DBZ Macky wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2020 5:20 am Though as Zestanor pointed out before, it does seem that Makafushigi Adventure and its various versions could be considered as "Goku's Theme" though that only works for the original Dragon Ball Anime, and the last time we prominently hear that (if I recall correctly) is in the Garlic Jr. Movie where they combine both "Goku's Theme" and "Piccolo's Theme" in the final squabble against Garlic Jr.
it plays in Z movie 2 as well, in one of my favorite renditions of it.
RoarkVegeta wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 3:55 pm Child Gohan has a few themes associated with him, I guess.

M713
M714
M717
M718
M720

And a few more..
honestly in the saiyan arc, kid gohan's may as well be as prominent as piccolo's, it and its renditions play constantly, especially in the gohan centric episodes lol. don't think it plays much after the artifical humans get introduced though, and i don't think it's in the boo arc at all.
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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Makaioshin » Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:13 am

Vegeta's theme tends to play whenever he makes a grand entrance in one of the films. The motif can also be heard when Gogeta appears.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by GhostEmperorX » Sat Jun 20, 2020 6:55 pm

RoarkVegeta wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 3:55 pm Child Gohan has a few themes associated with him, I guess.

M713
M714
M717
M718
M720

And a few more..
Yeah, Child Gohan’s theme is one of the best parts of the Saiyan Saga BGM.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Captain-Sora » Thu Jun 25, 2020 12:47 am

A good deal of the Dragon Team have their own leitmotifs (Goku himself actually has multiple motifs, as Kikuchi would start associating him with other ideas after Makafushigi Adventure was dropped), but due to how most of those themes originate from the film scores, they don't get featured as prominently as the ones introduced within the TV series itself.

The people responsible for the show's music placement were more focused on matching the tone of scenes rather than maintaining that thematic tapestry Kikuchi had woven, so a lot of these reoccurring ideas from the movies wind up either barely getting utilized at all or get placed in scenes that have nothing to do with the characters they're associated with.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by GhostEmperorX » Thu Jun 25, 2020 1:03 pm

Captain-Sora wrote: Thu Jun 25, 2020 12:47 am A good deal of the Dragon Team have their own leitmotifs (Goku himself actually has multiple motifs, as Kikuchi would start associating him with other ideas after Makafushigi Adventure was dropped), but due to how most of those themes originate from the film scores, they don't get featured as prominently as the ones introduced within the TV series itself.

The people responsible for the show's music placement were more focused on matching the tone of scenes rather than maintaining that thematic tapestry Kikuchi had woven, so a lot of these reoccurring ideas from the movies wind up either barely getting utilized at all or get placed in scenes that have nothing to do with the characters they're associated with.
More and more I believe that Toei’s directors screwed up the usage of the OST by not placing it appropriately, they undermined their own material. So the problem would lie more with them than with the score in itself.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:21 pm

Not specific to her character but I’ll always associate this piece with Chi Chi since it was used as a motif for her a lot

https://youtu.be/NztcJ98oCq0


Also Gohan’s theme

https://youtu.be/-_SeVpq5RNs

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Desassina » Tue Aug 11, 2020 3:39 pm

Will Blizzard become associated with Broly? The lyrics kind of made the music his and there were many arrangements in the movie.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Robo4900 » Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:09 am

So, I'm not even close to being an expert, but this is my understanding...

A lot of the characters do have themes (Gohan, Goku, General Blue, I'm pretty sure Bulma has one, etc.), but particularly in Z, there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for new arrangements of most of the character themes to pop up, since Kikuchi only did two packages of music specifically for the Z series (one at the beginning of Z, one when they changed OPs in episode 200), with Toei instead using Kikuchi's film scores to inject new themes into the series during Z.

Again, I'm no expert on Dragon Ball's score, but to my recollection, Cell doesn't really have a theme in the Kikuchi score, because Kikuchi never composed score for the Cell arc specifically, it was all music from earlier, and reused music from the movies. Similar case for Freeza.

However, Piccolo showed up in a lot of the movies (off the top of my head, he had a major presence in all the first 8 Z movies), and Kikuchi had given him some really good character themes in the package he composed in late DB (there was a specific Piccolo arc score package recorded, which was after the Piccolo arc had concluded in the manga), and I think he did at least one or two rearrangements of it for the first Z package. So, new versions of his theme popped up all throughout his presence in the anime.

For these reasons, you'll probably find there's some pretty good character theming throughout the original DB, and into the early parts of Z, but once we go to Namek, the score in general becomes less specific to the events going on at present. I think Vegeta has a theme or two that pops up now and then thanks to the Saiyan arc score session being after Vegeta had shown up in the manga, but the earliest Z movies didn't really have Vegeta in them, so there weren't any new arrangements of Vegeta's theme for a while.
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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Aug 12, 2020 7:26 pm

Not a major player but next to Piccolo name a more iconic character theme than Upa’s

https://youtu.be/GWXtdYwLFSA



Robo4900 wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:09 am So, I'm not even close to being an expert, but this is my understanding...

A lot of the characters do have themes (Gohan, Goku, General Blue, I'm pretty sure Bulma has one, etc.),
Bulma does indeed have her own theme

Sexy Girl Bulma: https://youtu.be/6cYX61xG5PA

Most of which, is course an instrumental of I’ll Give You Romance. Which made sense. Mystical Adventure was Goku’s song, I’ll Give you Romance was Bulma’s

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Koitsukai » Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:55 pm

I always associated Cell with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjOrNtzBdY
I can't think of anybody but Cell hunting down someone when that kicks in.

This one with Black https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8_xOoa4gg

this one with Jiren https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNW9lmujZxU
It sounds like game over and reflects what fighting Jiren must feel like.

And Ultra Instinct has two distinctive themes, Ultimate Battle and this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8qg-XzHgUk

I just realised the thread is about DB lol, way to go Koitsukai.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Zestanor » Fri Aug 14, 2020 6:01 pm

Koitsukai wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:55 pm I always associated Cell with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjOrNtzBdY
I can't think of anybody but Cell hunting down someone when that kicks in.

This one with Black https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8_xOoa4gg

this one with Jiren https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNW9lmujZxU
It sounds like game over and reflects what fighting Jiren must feel like.

And Ultra Instinct has two distinctive themes, Ultimate Battle and this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8qg-XzHgUk

I just realised the thread is about DB lol, way to go Koitsukai.
Haven’t seen Super but... that Goku Black theme. That’s straight up Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei. Yamamoto wasn’t an outlier.

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Re: Any DB character themes that are as prominent as Piccolo’s from the original?

Post by Majin Buu » Mon Sep 14, 2020 4:26 pm

To add to all this, there is a leitmotif for the Saiyans that originated in the TV series at the start of Z and shows up going forward in the movies as the Super Saiyan theme. It first shows up in the movies when Goku goes "Super Saiyan" against Slug in Movie 4 and plays more or less every time a character activates the form from then on (for instance, a dark reprise of it plays for Brolly when he activates his "Lendendary" form in Movie 8 ). The exceptions seem to be Movie 5 and Movie 7 (which is strange considering Movie 5 was the first film appearance of Super Saiyan proper and the Japanese title for Movie 7 is literally "The Three Great Super Saiyans").

Also, Brolly's theme in the movies becomes Majin Buu's theme in the TV series. Specifically, the arrangement that plays in Movie 11 when Bio Broly emerges.

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