Board 8 > VGMC] Day 15! RftM v GSC / BEIRRD v NaviCust / Sight of Silence v Terminal March

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Video Game Music Contest 15, an annual celebration of the best of the best video game music according to the voters!

Important Links:
Bracket: https://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=474630
Contest info sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
Contest discussion thread: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79443554
Main bracket playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3m7iohpL0xt7lOF1eB-H4NpAaF1yAnU
Compatibility sheet (courtesy of Haste!!): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGYWo_ifr_p2uYpD_I6TwBQS2tm7zJtPCxYZfRJcG8I
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss
VGMC total stats sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o
Discord: https://discord.gg/WDvMS4a

Rules:
- Listen to both songs in a given match, at least through the loop time provided (to make sure you don't skip before you've heard the whole thing!)
- Please consider the loop point listed when judging the song; if a video loops one minute 5 times, don't treat it as if it's a repetitive 5 minute song
- If it's a match between your favorite song ever and a song you despise, still LISTEN TO BOTH! Votes can and will be disqualified if there is suspicion songs are not being listened to, and you may be discounted for the rest of the contest for repeat offenses.
- No alt accounts, no rallying or begging, etc., etc.... You only get one vote! Swapping votes is alright, just make clear that you've already made a vote and are swapping.
- Make clear what your voting options are! Please keep votes separate from any comments, and use the titles given in the topic post.
- Voting in all matches is not mandatory, feel free to skip matches you do not wish to vote in.
- Vote based on the links provided, and not other sources of audio. Links are specifically chosen for best quality and the like.
- Don't discuss vote tallies in this thr

Gentle Slope Cave
humor is the only part you need
Sight of Silence of Negative Ions

I really wish I knew why post-Explorers Mystery Dungeon music doesn't connect with me. I genuinely wish it did. It just doesn't :(

Sounds like it's from Caligula

I'm coming to realize I really like customization systems like this and the quartz system in Trails (particularly Sky), where you can spend hours testing things out and fine-tuning to squeeze the absolute most min-maxed performance you can get. There's a bit less optimization allowed in this system compared to orbments, but you're also allowed to break it, and there's even a Style revolving around glitching the system, so there's still a ton of options presented by that. What other games have mechanics like that?

gurmin bass

this song is really FUN! the reaction this song was composed to elicit i have to imagine was "this song is really FUN!" whee


---

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Gentle Slope Cave
Blue Bird Water
Sight of Silence

wtf who let this match happen round 1
OH WAH OH
Terminal March has some cool parts, but not enough to stop Sight of Silence from winning here

---

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Guess bracket B is going to be where I have at least one match a day that's a personal coinflip?

Touhou 8 - Now THERE'S the Touhou sound I'm starting to learn. Amazing how a change in instrumentation makes all the difference, as I find this MUCH better than 14.5's version. Even discounting that and having it stand on its own merits, I like it a bit, except for the trumpeting bit after 2:10, and it uses its speed variations sparingly but well. It's rather close with...
Super PMD - Not the instrumentation I was expecting throughout, nor is it particularly "Gentle," but it is quite good! The tempo began picking up and it sounded like some odd amalgamation of Kingdom Hearts, Kirby, and an indie soundtrack, despite being very clearly none of those. This one's a toughie for me.

Bird up - Guilty BWGLAEUTAER BEJIRRRDOCK. It's good! (Interlacing letters like that hurts my feeble brain.)
Battle Network - I like a lot of Mega Man/X music. BN, not so much - it hasn't exactly been a favorite of mine, and the GBA instrumentation isn't doing it a whole lot of favors. Not my taste, alas.

Gurumin - The bass playing is technically sound but I kind of wish it was an octave higher to match the high piano. The song relies heavily on its piano melody for me, and everything else is just complementary, but unremarkable otherwise.
Bastion - I'll give it points for weird, funky instrumentation, but I was, unfortunately, never that big a fan of this track. The acoustic strumming taking occasional center stage serves more to grate on me than anything.

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

It's RftM. What else is there to say? GSC (heh) feels like something from SNES Goof Troop. It's not terrible, I guess.

BB is fuckin' great. Lots of good positivity to it, but the kind of positivity you feel in a hopeless situation. I love it. BB and RftM are my two favorite bracket B songs so far, haha.

HEY, LISTEN! No.

Sight of Silence not really my thing. I was thinking "Terminal March sure sounds like a Darren Korb song" and hey, whaddya know, it is. As always, his instrumental tracks are way better than his vocal tracks.

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke > BWLAUTE BEIRRD > Terminal March > Sight of Silence > Gentle Slope Cave > Navi Customizer
---

Reach for the Moon
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

The much better RftM has finally arrived.

BWLAUTE BEIRRD [9]
T8 Reach for the Moon [7.5]
Terminal March [7]
Sight of Silence [6]
Gentle Slope Cave [5.5]
Navi Customizer [5]

Touhou 8: Imperishable Night - Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2 - BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Sight of Silence

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence
---

Touhou 8: Imperishable Night - Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2 - BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Sight of Silence
---

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

Strong day.

---

Gentle Slope Cave
Blue Bird in Water
Terminal March

Who get liberty I wanna be
Just hoping won't change anything.
If change can happen, then I'll make it so
Cuz just have to Never I will give it up
So,whatcha gonna do?
Iam gonna get you.
Shes just wailing all
Whoever knows her real?
Dont have much time
No dodge battles Here we go!
Such a beautiful world
(Nobodys find or even see me in the real)
I'm gonna change it
Get grief in your mind over more
You're so focused on what's right
I just wanna cry, laugh -- I wanna live
So,as not be sad anymore
Like a free flying bird
I wanna change the line
So,why Ijust standing here
Gonna through
Gonna take all

"The world's right the way it is"
Every time you say it, I want to scream
Dammit, your thoughtless "common sense"
Keeps drawing blood
Her smile faded if
By commons no senses
I just do break them all
Whatever its fair or foul
We need nothing else
To grip the barrel
Here we go!
Such a beautiful world
(You know were standinon
the vice-ridden Eden)
I'm gonna change it
Get no payback for dark desire
So put an end to it, here and now
All we want's one thing -- We wanna live
So,as not to be sad anymore
Like a tale of blue birds
I wanna change the line
So,why Im just holding here
Gonna through
Gonna take all

I can hear, now, that voice

We're all born the same
We all live in the same world
We just wanna cry, laugh -- We wanna live
So,as not to be sad anymore
Like a free flying bird
I wanna change the line
So,why Im just standing here

All we're gonna do's one thing -- We're gonna survive
I wanna change lines
So, Were just standing here
Gonna through
Gonna take all

(engrish is my favorite language)
---

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

---

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

pokemon gsc is too "kirby but louder" to me instrumentally for me to get 100% into it so it's a good thing it does as much as it can to make up for that. i went on the record prior as saying 14.5 rftm was by far my favourite version and while that's still arguably true as far as "gaming experiences" go being a song that i've gone out of my way to listen to in the sound test a fair bit and also i just love playing ulil a lot, as a song i still have a lot of respect for the original no matter how much it needs to be removed from these contests so it's actually pretty close (i have it 2 spots below 14.5 right now and 3 below pokemon gsc and 6 below pokemon gsc national park they're all pretty close)

animne. pretty ok but i've been listening to better today so i'm not going to pretend i'm super into it and some parts (any part with "oh woah", i don't really feel the need to be reminded of ARMS music which is probably better than this) are not my thing at all really. anyway god i love gba soundfonts and this is a good gba song

garmin. i am for some reason reminded of gran turismo 4 music maybe because i made a car-related "joke(?)" just now. i don't really like gurumin as a videogame like i do gran turismo 4 which i have put X000 hours into. the music though is undeniably pretty good even compared to gt4 i like the high pitch synth and also the piano and mostly all of this is good. good song. now for song 2 draven kong back again with the bastion this time, i like this song with its not really didgeridoo idk what it actually is and also wacky stock orchestra hits (not really orchestra hits) it reminds me of that one time i nominated a joke song just almost exclusively comprised of these "dramatic" stock orchestral sounds over a super goofy pop swing beat from the videogame war of the human tanks for mycro's ranking (i think it still hasn't come up yet somehow) which really cracked me up but i had managed to forget that it's also apparently a legitimate thing seen elsewhere in videogame music like in this song terminal march and also one other song in this vgmc iirc that i have now forgotten and now it feels less silly which is a shame. in my favourites bracket i took terminal march here probably because of that but honestly it's close and i am daring to FLIP now

34.mmbn3nc
37.gromit
39.pokemon gsc
42.rftm og
47.batstion (this may not seem very close to sight of silence but it's still probably within like half a point of it if i scored it right now)
77.pokemon bw bird

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke (7.0 - 49th place) / Gentle Slope Cave (9.8 - 2nd place)
BWLAUTE BEIRRD (4.3 - 63rd place) / Navi Customizer (8.0 - 24th place)
Sight of Silence (8.9 - 15th place) / Terminal March (7.8^ - 28th place)

Really good third match... both tunes are making my head bounce to the music. Gurumin has a great soundtrack, doesn't it? (I still haven't explored it, shame on me). Oh, and yeah, of course I think PSMD has a great soundtrack, too!

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Suspenseful third day of voting for all top options!

As long as I'm only forced to hear RFTM up to 4 times a year, I don't think I'll ever get tired of it! Favourite Touhou song, favourite Touhou song title, favourite use of ZUNpets (though I've heard maybe 15 Touhou songs)...it brings such a wonderfully joyful energy to the bracket that I always look forward to hearing! The melody is really easy to get into from the start and the song continues to build on itself by introducing new instrumental lines, slowing down and speeding up the percussion, and finally bringing them all together for the frantic finale!

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke (51st) vs Gentle Slope Cave (161st)
BWLAUTE BEIRRD (112th) vs Navi Customizer (149th)
Sight of Silence (84th) vs Terminal March (224th)

reach for the sight, blue bird. second match actually hurts me a lot lol bwlaute beirrd has been growing on me ever since i first heard it when the game first came out thanks to 2ch minna de kimeru ranks but it's a lot slower at growing on me than other anime songs that have reached top tier status (desire blue sky and tonitrus especially OOPS SPOILERS?? oops) and navi customizer uses one of my favorite motifs in the ENTIRE WORLD and actually if this were final transmission it would probably be like my 5th favorite song in the contest. kinda worthless comparing the two cause navi customizer and final transmission are two totally different songs but oh well i will anyway SORRY MMBN3 I LOVE YOU STILL

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

---

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Terminal March

Cave
Customizer
Terminal
---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer
Terminal March

---

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Terminal March

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

---

Pokmon Super Mystery Dungeon - Gentle Slope Cave
Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2 - BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Bastion - Terminal March

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

---

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March


---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Oooh, RftM vs GSC again, but this time with a version of Reach for the Moon that I like more, and a Pokmon song that I like less. Still actually kinda close here. Everyone is hearing "Kirby" in Gentle Slope Cave, but I'm more hearing "Wind Waker".

---

I actually discovered BWLAUTE BEIRRD through this "2ch ranks eroge music" project (done in a very similar format to their regular VGM ranking projects, but this one was all eroge music). Actually the list comprised mostly stuff I've never heard before, nor have seen mentioned on B8 anywhere. This one stood out and I figured it'd be a good one to share with B8 (did have this planned for use in a GG but I never got around to it, then VGMC happened and figured why not). Maybe not my absolute favorite of my initial noms, but it is the one I most wanted to see make it in!

Navi Customizer has that very distinct crisp GBA electronic music sound. This actually kinda reminds me of some of the GBA Yu-Gi-Oh! game music I'm familiar with. I think I actually did play through the MMBN games many years back, but I do not remember much at all about them.

---

Hello darkness my old friend (wrong song nvm). SoS is another one of those "jazzy" noms that packs a bunch of different ideas in, but of particular note (my favorite part!) is that echoey piano 2 minutes in (Nitroid World 5 vibes!!!! aaaa I wanna nominate that again still a favorite song of mine). Super neat production on this song.

Terminal March might be the first Bastion song I can say I like. Another one of those "use as many world instruments as possible but in novel ways" type songs. Actually this match is closer than I was expecting.

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Terminal March

-(famous song)-

-[i "like odd time" but that has little to do with my interest in this track. I'm here for the big string chords. everything from 1:16-2:08 is one of my favorite portions of music to any song in this series. it is like the most Hirokazu Ando(keisuke ito) on so many drugs it sounds like modern kirby wtf but actually it sounds more like pmd which is one of my favorite series music-wise for a reason!!!! <insert obligatory "reminds me of pat metheny group" and "i start floating in the air further every time there is a chord change" comment on any song i like the chord changes in here> the sudden thing at 1:35 what the ******(lucario HOW )((sneasel)) how did you make a song that good. HOW . WHY IS POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD. there is not anything more valuable in the world than "poemon mystery dungeon" and half of the reason for that is because the music is superior to all other achievements of anyone on this planet NO ONE Has done anything as cool as "compose the song 'gentle slope cave'" not even bill gates or tony hawk Everyone should worship a pokemon that is a steve reich fan they put inside of their head. i wish i was in a state of mind to actually pick this apart in more technical terms but i am too lazy and that is too much effort for something no one will care about except for haste 2 because this song is just a gold mine of things i look for in music "parallel harmony transposing sus2 chord planing" ok that's some of them at least! Listening to this song makes me feel good because it does so many things that i like! i like when music makes me feel like i am floating in the air and this song makes me feel like that (ironic that this is happening in a cave and not in the dungeon right before it that is in a sky)! this song is so exciting adventure!!!]-

-{My favorite pokemon is Sneasel!}-

-----

-(ive never really entirely understood why i am so against this sort of "Whoooa whoooa ohh" stadium chanting MILLENNIAL WHOOP thing, it seems like something that i would (especially lately) enjoy. I like things that feel "folky", and that in theory feels like that, like what separates this from We All Lift Together (which i like)?? ironically though a big part of that is that this feels "modern" and i HATE the year 2007-2021! it's all the fault of the CASUAL REVOLUTION OF 2007. but i think a lot of it has to do with this imagery, that as a "group" i am supposed to be into some thing i'm not. makes me picture an awkward social situation where i am expected to do some group activity (such as singing along to some memetic "popular" thing i did not know was popular) with a bunch of NORMAL PEOPLE i don't get along with such as people who have never heard of games like "Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2" and i am alienated by the sorts of people who have never heard of games like "Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2" and do not want to be near them because they would probably hate me because i like to talk about "quartals" and "yoshino aoki" and "coded soul ost". I couldn't think of anything positive to say about the song the whole way through it's runtime so i will say this: i like the rock organ part, and the angry guitars that feel like they could be in an 'anime' or something 'edgy'. i like those elements. i would probably like this song a lot more if it did not have the whoa voices)-

-[what a COMPUTERY song. this is the game i'm currently playing (though i took a long break in the middle of it, this song makes me want to get back to it), been going through the mmbn series because i realized that it was weird i'd barely played them despite me commonly expressing that they are my favorite RPGs gameplay-wise. when i was younger, my personal aesthetic was very much INSIDE A COMPUTER to the point i named myself "mycroprocessor" because i was obsessed with circuit boards and stuff. my current identity is almost the antithesis of that now, and its part of why i abandoned the name mycro and dislike being called that; but traits of when that was my world still remain threaded throughout the point my taste in music has developed to. the composition of Inside A Computer music is in my mind, best represented by this series (transposing chords as the basis of progressions, lots of runs centered around fourths/fifths), and a lot of those compositional traits are still retained when it comes to my interest in music with other instrumentation, meant to evoke the total opposite settings. PSO2 is a good example actually, vol7-8 (ep5) is like all natural instruments, but it still retains pso2's (very similar to mmbn) composition style. Maybe my ideal world is actually COMPUTER SIMULATION OF FOREST CASTLE RUINS or something, like ancient forest puzzle fortress but the sky is a wireframe grid. or something. idk it's pretty consistently the vibe of the songs i like most (see: dungeon~geofront4 from saofb actually)
~~~~~
anyways. about this song in particular, one thing i like is the very start. transposing these half-voiced arpeggiated 7th chord sequences of 3 notes. it's really ambiguous what it means at first and just feels like 'random computer notes' but it slowly starts to coalesce into something comprehensible, every time another layer is added to clarify what is even going on it starts to make more sense. and that's beautiful to me. those chord samples change the meaning of what would otherwise make no sense, and the transition to the more melodic section is pretty amazingly smooth. It's insane how short that more soaring melodic section is even relative to this track's short runtime, it feels much longer than it is. This song has a lot of cool melody/non-melody interactions. some lines choosing to highlight unusual notes of a chord in the more computery early section, and the more organic melodic section you hear that with that low whistle ascending as the melody goes. There's just so much packed into these 49 seconds, and although it is repetitive, there's somehow so many possible things my ears can latch onto at any given moment. impressive that this high density of information is presented in a song that's literally under tight channel limitations (gba limitations are amorphous, and dont really have a hard polyphony cap like most other chip formats do, but this particular track never goes above a presumably self-imposed limitation of 6 notes allowed playing at once), the chord samples have a lot to do with that. certainly one of my favorite consistent traits of mmbn is the chord samples, another thing that always naturally feels "computery" to me and enjoy for that reason.
~~~~~
this song is a good example of where i'm far more attached to some random menu theme than the actual climactic songs i'm "supposed" to focus on and feel upset that i'm expected to curb my interest in stuff like this: fuck that. this is so much more engaging to me than any battle theme and i'll defend random shit like this invading these contests until the end and i dont give a shit if they go out in round 1. except that's me speaking defensively toward those who are dismissive of things i like in that cateogry---/i/ don't see this song as "boring random menu theme" it's somehow exciting while still fitting the scenario of "fake programming" perfectly. and it does that wonderfully in a way that other "random menu themes" don't. i'm glad i'm not the only one who thinks so, so that this could get in, even if i certainly didn't expect this song to perform well contest-wise]-

-{beep!}-

[continued...]
---

[...continued]

-----

-(although i trust the Falcom Composer Guessing people on most things, this track always felt more like ishibashi to me than murayama for a number of reasons (parallels in instrumentation and harmonic sense to confirmed ishibashi music, basically). though i do understand the reasoning behind their suspicion. this song gets a lot more exciting than it initially sells itself as, as it goes, which is neat. it starts off as unassuming ""background music""(which i like) but it increases intensity as it goes. cute jazz that eventually turns into cool dramatic breakbeat stuff. i LOVE delay echo piano because i listened to too much "Dream Trance" at the turn of the millennium such as Robert Miles and i think that's one element of my taste that has never left after multiple decades somehow, as unrecognizable as my current music interests are relative to what they were in 2000. the dissonances around 3:15 to symbolize that we just got over the climax is pretty fun transition it makes me think of LastPandemic for some reason as nonsensical as that comparison might seem)-

-[i still have really strong memories of the way bastion's ost was sold to me through liquid wind's description of it way back in bost1. remains maybe unnaturally elevated for me because of that, as i know exactly what to focus on to appreciate it relative to my own tastes, but i certainly appreciate those things. bastion music is all about the aesthetic for me, cool heavy industrial drums or crazy electronic sounds seamlessly layering themselves over something "folky". that merging of natural and artificial, alongside some of the compositional weirdness is what makes this NEARLY one of those "hits every corner of my taste at once" songs, but it doesn't quite hit that mark, unfortunately, it just barely misses being a [save song to playlist] song for me, on every parameter i judge by. probably because despite the aesthetic being perfect for me, the composition is just not really engaging enough, but i can't deny that i at least love what it's trying to do. it goes for exactly what i'm most looking for music to sound like, technically]-

-{i want to go sight of silence just because i think it's a "interesting and cool choice" for a falcom nom but i would be dishonest if i said i actually liked that more. from memory, i actually thought i would be voting sight of silence, but in the end i like terminal march more. i can imagine switching but it'll take a lot of forcing it and convincing myself compared to usual at the moment. i'll be secretly rooting for sight of silence anyways!!}-

-----

Gentle Slope Cave (1st/88)
Navi Customizer (19th/88)
Terminal March (37th/88)
Sight of Silence (48th/88)
Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke (73rd/88)
BWLAUTE BEIRRD (86th/88)
---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer
Terminal March

is this the year

---

FL81 posted...

I actually discovered BWLAUTE BEIRRD through this "2ch ranks eroge music" project (done in a very similar format to their regular VGM ranking projects, but this one was all eroge music). Actually the list comprised mostly stuff I've never heard before, nor have seen mentioned on B8 anywhere. This one stood out and I figured it'd be a good one to share with B8 (did have this planned for use in a GG but I never got around to it, then VGMC happened and figured why not). Maybe not my absolute favorite of my initial noms, but it is the one I most wanted to see make it in!

(i kinda beat you to it lol)
---

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Easy day.

---

rftm still gets in these things, huh

---

Toxtricity posted...

everything from 1:16-2:08 is one of my favorite portions of music to any song in this series.

Yup, I agree it's the second half of GSC where the music really takes off, even though I do love the rhythms of the first half! Love the way it calms down even though the music doesn't slow down tempo-wise...I've never heard anything quite like that section in music! 1:36's chords are probably would bne "top ten vgm harmonic moments of all time" if I ever made such a list. And then you got those tam-tam (gong) hits in the final section that give me the chills--the way they increase the energy is just INSANE.

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence
---

Reach for the Moon
BWLAUTE
Sight of Silence

It's Reach for the Moon -- it's always been my favorite 2hu theme, and that's yet to change, 10+ games later. The percussion in the background sounding like the ticks of a clock after the intro sequence always gets me. Am I biased because Mokou is one of my favorite bosses of all time? Yeah, probably. It would've beaten all but the finest contenders, which Slope Cave is not. Don't care for the instrumentation, and while I wouldn't be irritated hearing it in game, I also wouldn't ever think to nominate it for this tournament.

More anime vocals, but I can get behind these! There's more soul to this song than its anime song predecessors, and I love this singer's timbre. The guitar and percussion drive it forward and accompany the song wonderfully. The song is formulaic, but you know what, there's nothing wrong with a good formula when it's executed well! Its challenger: Decent track with unfortunate soundfont. EZPZ.

Not a fan of Sight of Silence's intro, but once we get past that, this is a nice, groovy little track. I dig it! It doesn't wow me or anything, but it's pleasant and unique enough that I understand why it's here. Terminal March... oh man, Terminal March. I supported this during noms mostly to get another Supergiant track in (which VGMC really like to kick in the ribs for some reason), but this is among the weakest from its own game. It's not In Case of Trouble, Bynn the Breaker, Spike in a Rail, or even Mine Windbag Mine, let alone one of the excellent vocal tracks. It's with a heavy heart I vote against it, but my conscience is clear.

---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Navi Customizer

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

Gentle Slope Cave
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Sight of Silence

Gentle Slope Cave
Navi Customizer
Sight of Silence

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not blown away by either of the first tracks. Just never clicked with Touhou's sound and Gentle Slope Cave is a bit on the generic side for the first half, but toward the end it does some nice stuff that reminds me of Kirby which is good by me. So I'll go for the latter.

Navi Customizer isn't much to write home about either IMO, but I enjoy it a lot more than I do BWLAUTE BEIRRD which was admittedly a slog to get through. These modern anime OP rock songs are just not doing it for me at all.

This last matchup is a lot stronger, but Sight of Silence wins out pretty handily. Terminal March is quite good, but Sight of Silence is more the sort of thing I'm gonna go back to and listen to on my own time. I really really dig it. That synth around the 1:20 part is especially sexy.

---

Touhou 8: Imperishable Night - Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
Nukige Mitai na Shima ni Sunderu Watashi wa Dou Surya Ii Desu ka? 2 - BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Sight of Silence
---

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
BWLAUTE BEIRRD
Terminal March

Toxtricity posted...

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke (73rd/88)

yikes. not gonna lie, i thought you liked RFTM a lot more than this! (though of course it's still early in the contest, so this ranking might make your opinion on it seem more negative than it actually is.)


---