I owe an apology to this composer......

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Majin Buu
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I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by Majin Buu » Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:39 am

Sumitomo.

I haven't had good things to say about his Dragon Ball work in the past, and he wasn't too far from Falconer in terms of Dragon Ball composers I have nothing good to say about; but now that I've watched the entirety of the Dragon Ball Super TV series, I now think he's better than I previously gave him credit for.

The first piece of music I heard from him that I outright liked was the Super Saiyan Blue theme that debuted in the RoF retelling. For me, it provided the level of bombastic gravitas Super Saiyan Blue's debut needed and single handedly carried that scene in the retelling when it otherwise would have been as underwhelming as it was in the film version.

After that, it was the piece that was used for the next episode previews during the Future arc (those scare chords at the end of the track are what does it for me). It got stuck in my head and has now become the track I associate most with that arc. Then the Universe Survival Saga came along and we got new tracks that felt more dynamic than the stuff that came before. It was also around this time, possibly because of those new tracks I liked, that some of the tracks that came before began to grow on me to the point that I started liking some of them. At times some elements of his work even vaguely remind me of Kikuchi (some of the more violin driven tracks as an example), which is something I did not expect to say about the guy.

At this point I would put Sumitomo on the same level as Tokunaga- He's no Kikuchi, and his work generally hovers around "serviceable"; but he can produce some genuinely good tracks from time to time.

(Though it's ironic that I turned around on the guy now that it seems like he may be gone from the franchise, given his absence in SuperHero).

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Re: I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by PurestEvil » Tue Nov 15, 2022 8:23 pm

Sumitomo made some tracks that sounded really good. They were just not used properly in the early parts of DBS; the overuse of "Omen of Victory" (DUN! DUN DUN DU-DUN! DUN DUN DU-DUUUUUUUN) comes to mind...

The ones made for the Goku Black arc onwards were definitely an improvement over the early ones, though.
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Re: I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by 90sDBZ » Tue Nov 15, 2022 10:20 pm

I feel like I'm one of the very few who enjoyed his music in Kai The Final Chapters. Theme of Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan 3, Crisis, Reviving Majin Buu, Piccolo's theme, the recap theme, and many others sound great. The track that plays during Vegeta's "You are Number 1!" speech is beautiful, and really adds emotion to that entire flashback.

I was really happy that a lot of these tracks made a comeback later on in Super.

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Re: I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by StevenPiccolo » Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:36 am

Very fond of the lowkey "peaceful" tracks but I like his orchestral stuff too. I usually find orchestral tracks in soundtracks to be boring, but I guess because of this guy's extensive work with synths, it affects the way he writes those "epic" pieces too in a way that makes them enjoyable and more catchy for me. I will miss him greatly.
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Re: I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by Rory » Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:07 pm

90sDBZ wrote: Tue Nov 15, 2022 10:20 pmI feel like I'm one of the very few who enjoyed his music in Kai The Final Chapters.
I liked it cause it really reminded me of the Yamamoto scores of the early 90s (ironically, considering the whole ordeal). Really just sounded like something you'd hear on an arrange album of a Butouden game, or a track from Ultimate Battle 22 or something (and that's kind of my shit).

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Re: I owe an apology to this composer......

Post by MCDaveG » Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:02 pm

Sumitomo is not bad at all... it's just hard coming from Kikuchi's Z, that is iconic and has this seal of nostalgia approval and then, switching to Yamamoto-stole-a-lot-it-got-him-fired for Kai and then getting Sumitomo to finish the task on basically the same series.

The Kai Final Chapters score was probably rushed and it is pretty simplistic and sounds subpar in comparison to the others and his style is completely different from other and older anime composers, that pretty much follow the classical route.
So it is harder getting used to.

I had almost the same problem with Tokunaga scoring the GT when it ran right after the Z on TV, because it was different a lot.
Score of Dragon Ball was always one of the main reasons why I fell in love with the series to begin with.
In case of Z and Kai, it's like taking away John Williams from Star Wars movies and replacing him with Ludwig Goransson.
But as GT was different visualy and tonally, I can't imagine it nowadays without Tokunaga and his score is unique, interesting and has this grander and bigger sound with simpler and more modern approach to what Kikuchi was doing.

I do appreciate Sumitomo more since his work on Super. For example the beat for Goku Black is something that blown me away, with the heavy drums, synth percussions and orchestra joining later with the beat still going on.
I love hard beats and percussion work and for me, Sumitomo excels with beats. That's his speciality for me.
It reminds me two other composers that have mixed classic with synths and beats, those are Toshihiko Sahashi (Gundam Seed, Saint Seiya) and Shigeaki Saegusa (Z Gundam, Char's Counterattack).
But the problem I still have with Sumitomo is when he goes full on or heavy with synth. That to me doesn't sound good at all.
Also his sound isn't as rich as that of other composers using more layering (Tokunaga) or live instruments (like Kikuchi and Yamamoto), which is probably one of the problems adding to it, as the show at times loses the grand scope and sounds more like morning excercise in kindergarten.
But things like the already mentioned Goku Black theme or the reendition of Chala Head Chala for recap are great plus lot of tracks from the Tournament Of Power are awesome that it feels like he was evolving during the show and finding his footing.
Another thing that made it hard for me to appreciate Sumitomo is his lack of reccuring themes and working with motives, as basically the score uses various approaches, so it seems all over the place in style until you are several episodes in and some of the themes are basically re-used in comparison to Kikuchi's music worldbuilding and building up/evolution with the same motifs or Tokunaga's score based on situations with fewer tracks and pretty much the same sound and style for the whole GT series (and a movie and TV Special).
Sumitomo's music was almost different for each arc.

He is a great composer, but for me, some of the nitpicks I have, combined with so many different tracks that constantly change and make it hard for me to become used to and familiar with, puts him probably to the last place of my fav DB composers.
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