[Arabesque]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

Holy shit they made the first ending good. Well the singer is still way too damn nasally but damn son....what a difference a tempo change can make

I had a few more listens to them both, and I don't know. I like the ballad version, but I think the original is better overall. I honestly feel that it fits with AGE much better as a show IMO

One thing I can agree with you on Kaioshin, and that is Minami Kuribayashi isn't really that great of a singer If you aren't really that sold on this song, then I'd recommend not giving White Star a listen.

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

I don't know, somehow I still just don't feel that modern pop music suits Gundam all that well. For me I'm still all about the ballads. Somehow this version just feels more....right....

I think it has to do with you being a long term fan of the franchise, and since Gundam has a long musical history with ballads throughout its shows, it's natural that you might feel something is ''off'' or that this version is a better match, since in a way, it sort of is.

Still, I think that on the musical front, the Gundam franchise had always had generally fantastic music (with a few exceptions) and that modern music, even pop, can be utilized effectively and just as well (if not better at times) than ballads. It depends largely on the ability of the composer and how well the music is used in the show to make it work, and I think the first ED is good.

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

Speaking of which am I the only person that feels the music in AGE has gotten a little worse since the show started. Like I actually really liked a lot of the music that went into the first generation and even some of the early episodes of Gen 2 but since about the time the Zeydra was introduced I just haven't been feeling the soundtrack as much. It somehow went from low key orchestral music to kind of IMO uninspired techno.

Well, I would go as far as say that it's uninspired (though it is undoubtedly more techno than ever before) but ... yeah, I have been owning the soundtrack for a month now and had been listening to it for a while now, and I can say that the decent effort placed in the first OST had sort of fizzed out of it by Generation 2. I don't know, but where I had more motivation to listen to the first OST while I was writing my review, the second one leaves me with little to nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not bad, some of the tracks are still pretty nice to listen to (the second track I found to have a really nice theme) and the tracks are longer (a criticism I had with the first OST is that some of it's best tracks were really short) there is more variety to them (I think some of the music on the second OST sound like it came from a westerner ) and I honestly like how the first track (the main theme for AGE-2) sounds, even if it is just a techno version for the 100 year old tale (but then again, I have yet to meet a variation of the first OST's 1st track that I didn't like) and I think that it still gets across the same theme of the epic, heroic, century spanning tale the song has, just with adding a bit more of an edge to it (possibly to make it sound more ''rebellious'')

But overall, it's a really disappointing effort by Yoshikawa. Even after dropping my expectations down a lot (since I understood he had a very tough act to follow) this just wasn't on the same level as the previous soundtrack.

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

That and frankly the song itself is generic and uninspired as hell for a final opening.

Eh ...