A few interesting notes on Kenji Yamamoto

[GhostEmperorX]

A while back, there was a certain well-researched video about him (which was in Spanish with English CC) that I got to see, and it had quite a few important points, plagiarisms aside. Since then I've been able to find a few more of my own, typically through cursory discography browsing on VGMdb (where Booklet scans tend to be present for easy reference but only to registered users). Not sure how many may or may not know these or to what degree, but I don't think it would be a problem to open up a discussion on some of these.

From the aforementioned cursory searches on his discography (and a few classification updates for some entries), it shows that Yamamoto was pretty much the only person to get soundtracks of his DB game projects released.
This means that since the owners of the franchise bid him adieu in 2011, there hasn't been a single DB game with a normal soundtrack release, as anyone else has either had none or a limited type of release (enclosure, promotional, etc).

He also tended to get proper accreditation for the session musicians who performed on his projects, from the Hit Song Collection period till even 2011 on the cancelled Raging Blast 2 soundtrack release, and it features quite a few prominent names in that field known for working in numerous soundtrack sessions. Even further, he would go as far as to cite his sound equipment, model names & all just about any chance he got. Just imagine if he'd done this for his sources...

Aside the releases, he also had a lot of talented associates, including, of course, one Hironobu Kageyama as well as other vocalists (YUKA, Shinichi Ishihara, etc). There were other names such as studio engineers Hideki Matsutake and Haruo Saitoh, and even a cursory look through their own discographies is enough to show that their involvement with the franchise was altogether cut off right when Yamamoto's was.

His daughter, Kanon/Canon Yamamoto (better known as cAnON.) was apparently involved with some of his productions in some way prior to her own industry debut in the late 2000's, although she mainly just featured in a "Special Thanks" section along with her mother, Kodama Yamamoto, on the 90's CD releases.
Like his other associates, once the scandal popped off, her involvement with the franchise ceased completely. Now she's a regular collaborator with prolific anime soundtrack composer Hiroyuki Sawano (Gundam Unicorn, Kill la Kill, Attack on Titan, etc) aside from being a composer and lyricist elsewhere, far away from both Dragon Ball and anything her father was ever involved in, as though it was all a thing of the past to her (although she did show up in last year's One Piece Film Red which at least is a Toei production, but that was together with Sawano for one song).

All in all, he was practically the nucleus of a whole DB music division, and everything fell apart upon his (self-inflicted) demise. It was like an earthquake in that part of the franchise (which is uncanny as this was only two days before the one that would strike Japan itself that same year).

The studio he established in January of 2004, 59's Studio, was apparently a family operation run by his wife & daughter alongside him. Also, when reading the studio name with Goroawase, it reads as "Goku's Studio" (this part actually made me want to make this thread :p). Wonder if anything inspired him to make that particular choice.

A bit less relevant, but I noticed that the 6th Hit Song Collection containing his first and most complex plagiarized track, the eponymous Battle Point Unlimited, was released about 9 months before Episode 120's broadcast debut, aka the first and only time it was used in the series (1991-03-21 and 1991-12-11). Not sure how that one worked.
They also had no problem using a re-arranged version of the track in the JP edition of Raging Blast 2, don't know if that has changed post-2011 on that or later releases using the original Z anime's OST.

It turns out a similar thing happened with Unmei No Hi, making its debut almost 6 months before episode 184 when it was first used (1992-12-21 and 1993-05-05).

His group, MONOLITH, which featured a lot on the Hit Song Collections, seems to have been dissolved with the 15th Hit Song Collection in July of 1993.