15th Anniversary of the Kenji Yamamoto controversy.

[TheBigBoy]

His Kai score was great. Let the man rip off songs who cares.

[rweasp]

Here is a recentish image of him along with some the Budokai music team members from 2024 in a sort of mini reunion.



From L to R: Teruo Murakami (recording engineer), Kenji Yamamoto, Unknown, Kanon Yamamoto (his daughter and fellow musician), Simon Phillips (drums, former drummer of Toto).

He seems to be doing quite well judging by Kanon's socials.

Also, as a fun little titbit, I asked him who his favorite DB character was.



Never would have guessed 18, thought maybe Trunks given the amount of amazing themes he has.

[MCDaveG]

What a bummer! I fell in love with Super Butouden 3 Themes back in the day, I did like the Budokai 3 music as well...
It wasn't long, until I found many of these comparisons on the internet. It was mostly 70s/80s tracks and I thought, well, that's quite a homage here and there... then I finally heard Propaganda versus Battle Point Unlimited and though whoa, hold your horses.

It was problematic even then but when he outright copied music from Avatar and Horner... come on, that was unhinged and honestly pissed me off. As a musician myself, I am OK when you get inspired by something good, like bassline idea and tweak it or use it somewhere in part as a nod.
As a listener, I really like work of James Horner, since Aliens. While I don't like Avatar as a movie, the war piece of music was great
and then in Kai, you hear the same thing. Flatout steal, something that was composed for something else, it doesn't have a place in Dragon Ball.

Yamamoto was great arranger and musician by skill, I really liked the setup and sound design as well, but he wasn't a great composer sadly, having to rely on stealing other's ideas and that is a shame, because I really liked some of his pieces and I will always love OG Chala Head Chala with his signature, but his approach during Kai got even more blatant and stupid.