there is no fan of dragonball that he is not celebrating the news in style. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi is back and this means the return of one of the fighting franchises that has left us the most hours of fun. Three titles contemplate this branch of the saga that saw the light of day around the 2000s and that coexisted successfully with Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. To understand such popularity, it is not only necessary to attend to the huge rosters of characters or the spectacularity of the combats, but to an element as fundamental as music.
The person responsible for many of the chords that we can hear in Bandai Namco games is Kenji Yamamoto, a composer who began his career in 1987 and ended it abruptly in 2011. The reason? Toei Animation realized that a lot of the material he had created infringed the copyrights of third parties and put him on the street forever regarding Goku and company.
a music legend
Yamamoto stood out during 24 years of profession for composing the chords of animes, video games and a multitude of productions that emerged from the entertainment factories of Japan. With everyoneHis link with the universe of Akira Toriyama was very recurrentbecoming for a long time a kind of official composer for video games in which the Saiyans were dedicated to distributing slaps.
The Dragon Ball: Super Butoden line of Super Nintendo welcomed its first melodies and even took charge of the unforgettable jump to 3D with Dragon Ball: Final Bout for the first PlayStation. THE BIGGEST FIGHT ~Clash~ with Hironobu Kageyama is an unforgettable classic for the animated intro in which the main characters were measured against the most characteristic villains, such as Buu or Cell. The same can be said of the music of the story’s ending, as it is Kimi wo Wasurenai.
He also dared at that time to try the 1999 Dr. Slump game and rubbed shoulders with some of Japan’s most famous special effects series. He participated in Super Sentai and Ultra Nyan: Extraordinary Cat who Descended from the Starry Sky, examples of his abilities going beyond the virtual plane. His heyday did not seem to end and with Dragon Ball Z: Budokai at the beginning of the 21st century was crowned again thanks to great songs of the caliber of Ore wa Tokoton Tomaranai!! with the collaboration of groups like TOTO and Tower of Power.
Hikari no Sasumirai e! for Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World, Kiseki no Honō yo Moeagare! in Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit and more compositions for Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai on PSP or Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 they kept it going at the top during those years. Even the main themes of it were recycled for Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, in the first installment of PS2 and Wii, where he only did not do the opening. That task was entrusted to him for Dragon ball z budokai tenkaichi 3, being composer of the initial piece. His work was so commendable and so applauded that Toei entrusted him with the tremendous responsibility of composing the soundtrack for Dragon Ball Kai in its first 95 episodes. You know, that review of the anime that came out a few years ago.
the star went out
Fortune and fame smiled on Yamamoto. However, there were those who began uploading videos to YouTube in 2010 making suspicious comparisons between the notes created by him and other songs. For example, Cell’s theme for Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden 2 sounded a lot like Pink Floyd’s One of These Days. Senritsu no Toki in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai looked like something out of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man and the Finnish group Stratovarius aimed to be a constant reference in their repertoire.
After pressure from fans, the entertainment company was forced to make a decision. On March 9, 2011, Toei issued a press release acknowledging that Yamamoto had infringed a multitude of copyrights with the musical pieces that he had composed Effective immediately, the artist was fired and replaced from his position on Dragon Ball by Shunsuke Kikuchi. In the anime version the plagiarism was even more notorious with Isshin Ittai based on Avatar War and Arata na Teki no Shutsugen sounding similar to the opening theme of Danny Elfman’s Terminator Salvation.
The disaster was such that subsequent reissues were modified to avoid problems of any kind. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 or the ports of Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden from Nintendo Switch and Super Butoden 2 from Nintendo 3DS were completely revised, eliminating the soundtracks of a lifetime. Only the original units contain music that sounded scandalous, but not all of it came from Yamamoto’s mind.