LogFAQs > #962201688

92th
Game: Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon
Title: A Warning to All Pokemon!
Composer: Keisuke It, Yasuhiro Kawagoe, Noriko Murakami
Nominator: @Zigzagoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H310BCVZhQ

so i'm a ridiculously huge fan of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series' music, it's unsurprising this is in the 8/10 tier, and zig's highest ranked song, basically everything from this series would be. i imagine a lot of people probably don't see very much in this particular track but i can tell exactly why zigzagoon likes this haha. it's exactly those wonderfully dark spooky progressions with careful and tight chromatic movements that sound like "classical music" that show up around like :52, which are pretty great and come in at just the right time.

interestingly, a few days ago my brother was going through the whole psmd ost, he's infamously not as fond of it as other pmd osts, but he said he's changed his mind and this song was one of the NEW standouts for him upon a relisten. i would rank this track much higher than i did when i started this topic at this point (this is a recurring theme with zig's noms; your avg ranking will seriously skyrocket if i do a reranking at the end, and it's already pretty high despite this being your highest in the current 2018 version of the ranking incarnation actually). i dunno if i'd say this song is among my favorite in the game but it's like...top half or top quarter probably for me at this point of the ost?

honestly i love every section of this track for basically...every reason about it i could. cool sound design / cool composition / just, structurally put together in a way that peaks this haunting dark emotion in me in a way that's very difficult to attain too. it's pretty perfect. the intimidating bendy choir, the dark synth arpeggios, all the background tense atmospheric sounds that almost feel like 999 somehow (this actually reminds me a lot of your vlr nom haha, which is the last thing I'd expect to say about pmd)

a recurring topic between dire and i is how much we like animal-centric fictional worlds that feel "serious" and especially musically. i think that's a big factor of my fondness for pokemon mystery dungeon both as a game series and ost. it has the right balance of:
1) playfulness (in this case most of the violin stuff) [[so that it can still exist in the environment of a kinda cartoony thing featuriung cute animal characters]] and
2) seriousness (basically everything else) [[so that it doesn't just get reduced to "animals = for children" and all the reduction of care and minimization of seriousness or complexity or whatever that comes with that typically]]

this whole ost could've had been really shallow and not taken itself seriously, but it decided to take itself seriously and i adore it for that

the irony is i've actually only beaten pmd2; and i have more spoilers for 1/gti/psmd than i'd like, including about the context of this track but i am TRYING to not look at the comments haha (please no spoilers). i'll get to finishing those games eventually but my backlog of games to play is giant anyw-*explosion of time and space %^$YW*TFJGB)Sby6}}|_)__*

*wakes up on a rocky beach, with a very large head ache and is very dizzy* huh? where am i? i dont remember anything...i think i was...talking about...video game music? what's a video game? uhhhh. hmm.

*tries to stand up but then falls over * waaaah! what's going on? *tries to stand up again, trips and falls face first into the ocean. after a moment, opens eyes and is startled by wavy reflection in the water*

gaaah!!! what?! i'm a ...ZIGZAGOON??? but...zigzagoons aren't real? what's happening...this must be a dream...this can't be real *Tries to bonk self awake by hitting head against the rocks but then BREAKS them and realizes the instinctual awareness of how to use the move "headbutt"*

whoa...i can do that? that's pretty cool. uhh...i guess i really am a pokemon. i'm hungry, i guess i better get looking for food *realizes pretty quickly how much more natural it is to move about when running on four legs and in zigzag patterns*

*notices a strange LARGE CUBE with indents scratched in, and a bunch of buttons arranged like keys on a musical keyboard* what's THAT!? this reminds me of Myst...wait...what is Myst? is that like...a video game? what's a video game? well never mind that i wanna figure out what this thing does!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/6/AAefu7AAC3bA.png

*presses every button at the same time and a loud ugly burst of sound gets played out* ....ow. ok maybe i should just press one button at a time.

this seems to be a puzzle? *pokes around with the buttons a bit more*

hmmm. I think I've figured it out. these buttons control which notes get played. and there seems to be a representation of a song up there. I think I've finally figured out every note of the song too. Here we go!

((Pokemon Myst Dungeon 8))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuAq_PkyZ0

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/7/AAefu7AAC3bB.png

I did it! i wonder where this leads?!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/8/AAefu7AAC3bC.png

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/9/9/AAefu7AAC3bD.jpg

((one thing i really wanted to illustrate with that video above, is how one of my favorite things i consistently notice in songs both ermine and i like, are when every pitch class ('pitch class', meaning, all 12 letter names, c, c#, d, etc) gets represented rapidly, but in like a very smooth way. You can see at :42-:55, a glowing blue key means a pitch class has been played already. every note in this short section of a warning to all pokemon (just between that bass/melody layer, not even counting the AMAZING harp part in the background), uses every note (except for E) at least once.

this sorta thing often evokes spooky stuff very well, but also just things like playfulness or even like Fancy 1800s Architecture. and it's all just enough emotional thrust out of convention to be memorable and have an impact. I think we mutually find things a lot more boring if they're just using one scale the whole time with only like 5-8 notes, most of the stuff you get excited about goes outside of that, but it has to do it in the right way for you. stuff like this i think is also why you (and i) get really excited about stuff even as simple as going into minor when the early part of the song is major, it's just that tiny bit of deviation from pure plain diatonic major scale that can make all the difference and open up a world of varied emotional options. this song is a pretty great representation of that feeling, all while being sandwhiched between some pretty oppressively dark sounds of other types i really love too

sorry i've taken so long, but i feel the need to do justice to how underranked this (and ermine's other noms) wound up being. I hope you can enjoy the video and stuff! I had fun making this goofy thing up, and hope others can find it fun and hopefully find it worth the wait too!))