No Slaughter without Laughter? Music and genre in Japanese popular media
Julie Mireault
Department of Music Research
McGill University, Montréal
February 2013
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements
of the degree of Master of Arts in Musicology
© Julie Mireault, 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
ABSTRACT 5
RÉSUMÉ 6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 7
INTRODUCTION 9
CHAPTER ONE: MUSIC IN THE VISUAL NOVEL HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI
18
HIGURASHI AS A (VIDEO) GAME: DEFINITIONS 18
HIGURASHI, A MUTE SOUND NOVEL? 25
SOUND AND MUSIC IN THE SOUND NOVEL HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI 28
CONCLUSION 36
CHAPTER TWO: MUSICAL GENRES IN THE GAME AND THE ANIME
HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI 39
THE ENDLESS REPETITION OF HIGURASHI 41
VIDEO GAME MUSIC VS ANIME MUSIC: HIGURASHI’S FIRST STORY ARC 42
CONCLUSION 53
CONCLUSION 55
BIBLIOGRAPHY 61
ANNEX 1: TRANSCRIPTIONS – VISUAL NOVEL 65
3 ANNEX 2: TRANSCRIPTIONS – ANIME 69
4 ABSTRACT
In an increasingly connected world, fans of Japanese popular culture take full advantage of a system that already emphasizes links between works and media. In order to reflect this highly intertwined field, the present thesis compares two works from the same franchise, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, a story mixing school-life drama with mystery and horror.
The first chapter deals with the earliest instalment of Higurashi, a video game belonging to the visual novel genre. As visual novels are still not very common outside Japan, the chapter introduces their characteristics, as well as Higurashi’s stand within the genre. The discussion concentrates on how visual novels seem to have maintained as part of their generic code some characteristics which Western histories of video games and video game music associate with early video games.
A particular focus will be put on the idea of repetition, both in the game’s narrative structure and music.
The second chapter presents the results of a side-by-side analysis of the music in the video game and its anime adaptation in order to better understand what exactly are the similarities and the differences between the two installments’ use of music, and how it affects the experience of the player or viewer. The discussion focuses on the question of rhythm and its far-reaching influence on the installments’ generic diversity.
5 RÉSUMÉ
Dans un monde de plus en plus interconnecté, les amateurs de culture populaire japonaise profitent d’un système qui lui-même met l’emphase sur les liens entre différents produits et média. Pour bien refléter cette toile médiatique, la présente recherche porte sur un jeu vidéo et une série animée provenant de la même franchise, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, une histoire qui mêle vie étudiante, mystère et horreur.
Le premier chapitre traite du jeu vidéo original, qui fait partie d’un genre appelé « visual novel ». Comme il s’agit encore d’un genre encore peu connu hors du Japon, le chapitre commence par une introduction du genre, pour en arriver à mieux comprendre les spécificités de Higurashi en tant que visual novel. Il sera notamment question de la place des visual novel dans le tracé habituel de l’histoire de la musique dans les jeux vidéos, avec une emphase particulière sur le thème de la répétition .
Le deuxième chapitre présente les résultats d’une analyse côte-à-côte de la trame sonore du jeu vidéo et de l’animé. Elle a pour objectif de mieux comprendre les approches musicales respectives dans les deux média, et leurs effets sur le joueur ou le spectateur. La discussion s’articulera autour de la question du rythme, qui aura un impact important sur la diversité générique de chaque version de l’histoire.
6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. David Brackett for his infallible support and his enthusiasm towards my project. I am also grateful to the Music Research department staff at McGill’s Schulich School of
Music, especially to Lloyd Whitesell and Steven Huebner, for their support and encouragement. From the East Asian Studies department, I would like to thank
Prof. Thomas LaMarre for his generosity. Thanks to McGill’s Provost’s Graduate fellowship and E.J. Low-Beer Music fellowship, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their financial support.
As graduate school is made of human encounters, I want to thank all of my colleagues from the Music Research department, especially Mimi Haddon, Alix
Haywood and Harry Thorrington for their friendship. Special thanks to Melvin
Backstrom and Dana Gorzelany-Mostak for their guidance in teaching. Many thanks to the graduate students of the East Asian studies department for their welcoming me warmly, in particular Daigo Shima, Matthew Young and Fu Meng.
Je remercie mes amis musicologues de l’Université de Montréal pour avoir gardé le contact. Un merci bien particulier à Marie-Hélène Benoit-Otis pour son amitié et sa confiance. Merci à Yves Lavoie et Gabrielle Gauvin pour leur intérêt envers mon travail et pour leur compréhension lors des jours difficiles. Je suis reconnaissante envers ma famille qui m’a apporté tout le soutien possible et imaginable. Enfin, je remercie Jérémie pour son appui indéfectible, sa curiosité intellectuelle contagieuse et ses encouragements constants. 8 INTRODUCTION
Crystalyn Hodgkins, a writer for the website Anime News Network, reported on a special panel presented at the 2010 Sakura Con, an anime convention in
Seattle:
The “Anime that Scarred Me for Life” panel, which has been run for many years at Sakura-Con ... was a huge hit with attendees. The premise is simple. Attendees can line up, and when it is their turn they just talk about the anime that scarred them for life. ... The most talked-about anime at the panel? Higurashi: When They Cry. It will apparently screw you up, so don’t watch it.1
Higurashi: When They Cry is the English title for the anime Higurashi no Naku
Koro ni (Kon 2006), an adaption from the video game of the same name developed by a small, independent Japanese company called 07th Expansion
(2002).2 While it does include scenes of extreme violence, those are not the only reasons for Higurashi’s shock-value. For many fans and commentators, it is rather the mix of different genres that constitutes Higurashi’s particular experience:
What makes Higurashi no Naku Koro ni so disturbing is that it contrasts a light-hearted childhood comedy with visually gruesome and deep psychological horror. ... The result is a very contrasting,
1 Hodgkins, Crystalyn. Day 2 - Sakura Con 2010 - Anime News Network 2010. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2010/sakura-con/day-2, accessed February 20, 2013.
2 The original Higurashi game belongs to a video game genre called “visual novel”. Visual novels are still not very well-known to the North American or European gaming community, thus Chapter 1 will provide a presentation of the genre and its characteristics. For the moment, and for 2 The original Higurashi game belongs to a video game genre called “visual novel”. Visual novels the sake of clarity, let it be noted that the denomination “Higurashi video game” or “Higurashi are still not very well-known to the North American or European gaming community, thus Chapter 1 will provide a presentation of the genre and its characteristics. For the moment, and for the sake of clarity, let it be noted that the denomination “Higurashi video game” or “Higurashi visual novel” will refer throughout the thesis to the original visual novel for PC, and not to the games developed for PlayStation2 (2007) and Nintendo DS (2008-2010) that were subsequently released.
9 surreal anime, most notably during the murderous conclusions of the arc which then starts again very bright and sunny.3
The present research’s aim is to understand the consequences of this genre mix in musical terms not only in the anime series, but also in relation to the original installment of the story, a video game.
The reason for this transmediatic study lies in the deep relationship running between different medias in the anime industry. Thomas LaMarre underlines the multiplicity of “circuits of production, distribution, and reception” (LaMarre 2009: xviii) of different media that intersect with Japanese animation: manga, film,
OAV4, toys, accessories, fan art and fan fiction, to name just a few. The anime industry’s practice of connecting some of those circuits together is referred to as
“media mix”. Marc Steinberg defines media mix as
a popular and industry term that refers to the practice of releasing interconnected products for a wide range of media “platforms” (animation, comics, video games, theatrical films, soundtracks) and commodity types (cell phone straps, T-shirts, bags, figurines, and so on) (2009: 4).
The phenomenon is better known as “media convergence” in North America.
Most often, these media forms are linked together through a character or a narrative world (Steinberg 2009: 4). Steinberg posits that anime was from the
3 ONOE. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Review – When the Cicadas Cry Review – ChetshireCatStudios.com. http://www.cheshirecatstudios.com/reviews/higurashi-no-naku-koro-ni- when-cicadas-cry/, accessed February 20, 2013. Higurashi’s plot line is divided in arcs loosely related to one another. More details on this peculiar structure will be provided later in this introduction.
4 Stands for “Original Animation Video”, an animated feature released directly on DVD, rather than being shown on TV or in theatres.
10 very start a medium that allowed the migration of texts between different media; he demonstrates this through the study of one of the earliest TV anime series,
Astro Boy, and its derived merchandise, especially candies and stickers. One of the aspects of the work created by mixed media is the explosion of its unity:
... the experience of “a” work stretched across media types and (167) media genres, including narrative media (film, books), non-narrative media (stickers, music albums, advertisements), and information or gossip media (Steinberg 2009: 167-168).
Higurashi originates in an independent context much different than the industry-driven process Steinberg discusses; indeed, the visual novel was conceived by an amateur programmer under the pen name of Ryukishi07.5 He created his own company, 07thExpansion, which is based at his home and employs himself as well as members of his family. And yet, the visual novel spawned a string of adaptations to different media: video games for many consoles have been developed, as well as animation features of different lengths, live-action movies, light novels, drama CDs, soundtrack albums, etc. Furthermore, the success of the series with international anime fans resulted in some of the
Higurashi material being translated to other languages by both official and unofficial outlets, which takes further the multiplication of forms under which the gamer/viewer/reader can approach the saga. In this context, it appears crucial to take into account the many ways in which one story can be experienced. Although there is much more material available than can possibly be discussed within the
5 The works created outside the industry by amateur artists are referred to as doujin in Japanese. They reflect the creative engagement of Japanese popular culture fans.
11 limits of this thesis, a parallel study of the music in Higurashi’s video game and anime constitutes the first step of a more comprehensive study.
Considering the transmediatic focus of this research, resources from many different fields need to come together to form an appropriate framework. Film music studies are the most developed field when it comes to studying music and the moving image. Starting with early film music scholars’ call for more attention to this important component of the cinematic experience up until now, research on film music has grown exponentially. Film music is not the only component of cinema’s aural experience to be more and more scrutinized; sound and sound effects are also given growing attention. However, in other areas like video game music or music in animated films, scholars have but scratched the surface of the great potential for original research that exists on the topic.
Although video game studies are still underdeveloped, video games are receiving growing attention from the academic community. Among the wide array of topics treated in video game studies, this research deals more specifically with the player’s power within the gaming space, termed the player’s “agency” by
Janet Murray (1997). Many video game researchers put a strong emphasis on interactivity and the influence the player’s actions have on the out folding of the game. This focus is also present in the work of many writers on music in video games, and it informs the way researchers think about the topic as well. As we will see in Chapter 1 of this thesis, this emphasis put on interactivity has significant consequences for how video games are defined and categorized. As of today, the only work proposing a history of video game music is Karen Collins’ Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video
Game Music and Sound Design (2008). Taking into account the limitations of her study arising from the materials she focuses on, her study will serve as the main basis to discuss music in the Higurashi visual novel.
Japanese animation, or anime, keeps expanding its audience as its distribution is facilitated by overseas distributors and by the Internet’s accessibility, and this growing popularity with a wide variety of audiences is reflected by the academic research on the subject. From Susan Napier’s psychoanalytical approach (Napier
2007, 2000) to the medium-grounded theory6 developed by Thomas LaMarre
(LaMarre 2009), anime, its means of production and its audiences are tackled through a wide variety of theoretical approaches. Despite this welcomed expansion of the media studies field, in the same way textual approaches to cinema developed earlier than sound studies, the liveliness of research on anime has yet to spread to its aural component. Indeed, only a few papers have been published in English about sound and music in anime, and there was not been a comprehensive history of anime music written yet.
The various aspects of anime production and consumption have two major factors working against them as subjects for academic research: on the one hand, the prejudice against animated works as productions aimed at a very young
6 Lamarre adopts an analytical stance that stems from the specificities of anime’s images rather than applying to anime theories developed in other fields for other objects, like Napier’s use of pschyoanalysis.
13 audience. This has been changing however: specialized channels like Adult Swim in the United States air animation shows aimed at an adult audience, and popular series such as The Simpsons or South Park feature caustic criticism of society that would fly high over a child’s head. In a similar way, Japanese animation produces animation series and movies for a wide array of audiences, and explores many genres as well. The series under scrutiny in this research are definitely aimed at a late teenage/adult audience, and feature tropes of many genres, but with a specific focus on horror. Another factor that plays an important role in the degree of exposure animation gets in scholarly work is, of course, the language and cultural barrier. Be it Japanese scholars needing to find a way to make their work known to the English-speaking academia, or English speakers having to take different steps towards achieving cultural literacy about anime (not only exposure to the medium, but also mastering the language and the cultural references in anime), the obstacles can be considerable.
Some of the scarce scholarly writings on music in anime are assembled in the book Drawn to Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity (Coyle 2010).
Three chapters in this book take different analytical frameworks to give insight on many aspects of music in the anime context. Koizumi Kyoko’s piece about the music composed by Joe Hisaishi for Miyazaki Hayao’s anime movies is mainly based on textual analysis (2010), whereas Yamasaki Aki’s article “Cowboy
Bebop: Corporate Strategies for Animation Music Products in Japan” explores the marketing aspects of anime music. Finally, Imada Kentaro discusses the Lupin
III series and suggests that music in Japanese animation presents characteristics
14 from both Japanese and Western approaches regarding treatment of sound in TV and theatrical releases. One of the most interesting aspects of Imada’s paper is its report on the process of scoring anime in the context of professional studios’ productions. It discusses the displacement of authority regarding the music in the final product from the composer to the musical producer, a feature he brings into opposition with the “classic autheurist perceptions of western art-music composers” (2010: 184). The role of composers in visual media will be further discussed in Chapter 1 of the present research. The articles cited above focus on different aspects of music in the anime text, the process of composing for animation studios, and the anime soundtrack market. They are valuable contributions to a field that is still developing. However, as they focus only on anime, they fail to take into account the multimedia system in which anime is produced and consumed. The present study will explore the possibilities opened by a transmediatic study.
Although it does not belong to this research to present an exhaustive synopsis of Higurashi’s plot, a short summary of the main plot elements and structure is crucial to grasp many elements of the discussion to follow. Higurashi takes place during the summer of 1983. A teenager boy, Maebara Keiichi, has just moved to a small village in Japan’s countryside. While still adapting to his new life, he makes friends with a group of four girls. The plot structure in both the video game and the anime follows eight clearly defined arcs. Each of the arcs starts with presenting the characters’ uneventful lives as they commute to school, play board games or go out for a picnic. This peaceful life is turned up side down on the
15 night of the village’s summer festival celebrating the local god, which is inexplicably connected to a series of murders that have been committed for the past four years. In the days following the festival, a string of bizarre incidents leads one of the characters to a murderous paranoia. For example, in the first arc, titled “Onikakushi”, Keiichi’s suspicions about his friends Rena and Mion escalate to the point that he beats them dead with a baseball club. In the following arc, Rena and Mion are well and alive, and everything is back to normal until the night of the festival. In the end we understand that all those arcs were parallel universes related to one another by one of Keiichi’s friends, Rika. The player or viewer thus sits through multiple iterations of a story featuring the same characters in the same setting at the same period of time, but each time there are variations in focus and perspective, as well as in the characters’ personalities, relationships and behaviour. This circular narrative style is central to this research.
This thesis concentrates on the music in Higurashi’s original video game, and in its anime adaptation. The first chapter of this study deals with the Higurashi visual novel. It introduces the visual novel genre as it is still not very common in the West, and highlights, on one side, how visual novels are set apart from other genres, and on the other side, how Higurashi stands within this genre. More specifically, the discussion concentrates on how visual novels seem to have maintained as part of their generic code some characteristics that Western histories of video games and video game music associate instead with early video games. A particular focus will be put on the idea of repetition, both in the game’s narrative structure and music.
16 The second chapter presents the results of an analysis of the music in the first arc of the story. The chapter compares two moments of Higurashi’s story in the visual novel and the anime in order to better understand what exactly are the similarities and the differences between the two installments’ use of music, and how it affects the experience of the player or viewer. The discussion focuses on the question of rhythm and its far-reaching influence on the installments’ generic diversity.
Inspired by the close links that exist between videogames and animation in
Japanese popular culture, the transmediatic stance of this research allows us to have a better grasp of the actual experience of Higurashi’s fans as they hop from one media to the other. This way, maybe we can understand the strong reactions to the series as described at the very beginning of this section.
17 CHAPTER ONE: MUSIC IN THE VISUAL NOVEL HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI
The video game Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (07th Expansion 2002) presents an interesting challenge to previous Western research on video games and, of particular interest to the present project, video game music. More specifically, the way in which the soundtrack was assembled, as well as the particular sound aesthetics enforced by technological demands and generic conventions at play in
Higurashi, show great potential for expanding the scope of critical tools used in the area of research on video game music. Since a discussion of the music in the game would be difficult without a basic understanding of the gameplay experience, the first section of the chapter will describe briefly the particularities of playing Higurashi in relation to other video games and visual novels. This will be followed by a discussion of its soundtrack, and how it redefines some of the conceptions in research on music and visual media.
HIGURASHI AS A (VIDEO) GAME: DEFINITIONS
Higurashi was first released as a series of PC visual novels. The visual novel is a video game genre; the games are usually created for the PC platform, but some are played on consoles as well.7 They feature low levels of animation and
7 As mentioned in the introduction, original chapter arcs have been released as part of the Higurashi franchise on Play Station 2 (Alchemist 2007) and Nintendo DS (Alchemist 2008-2010).
18 mechanics$: the player clicks through text appearing on screen, or selects the automatic mode that makes the text appear by itself. Characters are usually represented on screen with a static image; in most cases, each character of the game has a stock of images portraying different facial expressions, and those images appear on the screen according to the situations described in the text, with the animation often limited to the replacement of one image with the other. 9
Figure 1 shows two screenshots from Higurashi, at the beginning of the first arc when Keiichi meets up with Rena and Mion to walk to school.
Figure 1: Two screenshots from Higurashi. The background pictures are all real-life photographs modified with an artistic filter. The story is told from Keiichi’s perspective. Still drawings of the characters appear on the screen when the latter are in a conversation with him. The pictures show two different expression patterns from Mion (the character with green hair).
$ In the context of video game studies, the term “mechanics” refers to the structure of rules that govern the gameplay. It also designates all the actions the player has to perform to succeed in the game.
9 Higurashi’s author calls those facial expressions “expression patterns”. A list is provided on Higurashi’s official website (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 07th Expansion. http://www.07th- expansion.net/hi Main.htm, accessed February 20, 2013). Rena and Mion being the characters with whom the player interacts the most, a larger stack of facial expressions is associated with them.
19 Usually, a visual novel’s narrative includes multiple ending possibilities, which may be realized according to the choices made by the player at different moments in the game. The completion of certain stages in a storyline often rewards the player with a picture, and thus unlocking all of the images becomes an important part of the gaming experience, leading the player to play through the entire game multiple times. These images work as extensions of the game’s world; they are especially common in games with erotic or pornographic content, which constitute a significant sub-genre of visual novels. In Higurashi, rather than collecting images upon completion of a section of the story, the player obtains supplementary scenes dubbed “clues”, which may or may not provide useful information to help solve the mystery. The possibility of multiple endings in visual novels is important to keep in mind, since Higurashi actually diverges from this framework.
To grasp the importance of this divergence, it is crucial to understand where
Higurashi stands within the visual novel genre. In order to do this, we first need to consider different approaches to understanding the very category of “video game”.
Games with low mechanics such as visual novels pose no challenge to most academic definitions of video games.10 Indeed, often in an attempt to establish a
io The popular conception of video games, however, is much different: the Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definition of the word “video game,” “a game played by electronically manipulating images displayed on a television screen,” (Oxford English Dictionary Online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/223262?redirectedFrom=video game#eid15555246, accessed February 24, 2013) which would exclude a large number of visual novels and other types of video games played on computers, as well as exclude games in which the player’s actions have an influence not on the image displayed, but on the text (as is the case in many visual novels). As
20 clear distinction between the medium and other entertainment forms, especially cinema, video game scholars tend to emphasize the interactive aspect of video games, including the player’s power to influence the unfolding of the events through making choices, a principle Janet H. Murray refers to as “agency” (1997).
For example, Jesper Juul’s definition of a game, when interpreted in a non restrictive manner, applies to visual novels:
A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable (Juul 2005: 36).
Two elements of this definition are particularly important when it comes to visual novels: the question of the variable and qualitative outcome, and that of the player’s efforts. Indeed, the endpoint of a visual novel’s multiple scenarios is decided by the choices made by the player at branching points of the narrative, and this result is given qualitative value either through the narrative of the game
(take the right path to solve a murder story) or as decided by the player himself or herself (e.g., in dating games, making the right decisions to get intimate with the coveted character). Here, the efforts required pertain to choosing the right option based on the player’s knowledge of a system of conventions and archetypes, rather than physically mastering the controls of the game (Gagnon 2009). In a similar fashion, approaches like that of Mark J.P. Wolf in his article “Assessing
for the definition given by the Merriam-Webster, it is restrictive in terms of content: “an electronic game played by means of images on a video screen and often emphasizing fast action.” (Merriam- Webster Online, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/video-game, accessed February 24, 2013). Needless to say, with their strong emphasis on text and limited mechanics, visual novels diverge from the usual stereotype of action-packed games.
21 Interactivity in Video Game Design” (2006) stress the player’s choices as a central component of video games that can be carried on many different levels, and in different amounts. Within such a framework, visual novels, whose narrative is driven by the player’s choices, do not challenge their appellation as video games despite featuring only limited mechanics.
In the case of Higurashi, however, the situation is different, as it does not provide players with any choices. Indeed, the narrative unfolds in a strictly linear fashion; the only free action available to the player is whether to consult or not the clues obtained with the completion of each section of the game. As John Wheeler notes, the unique aspect of the gameplay in Higurashi is “the lack of freedom it affords the player within the game-space” (2011: 27). Figure 2 below provides a good visualization of the difference. Karen Collins, in her book Game Sound, terms “branching narrative” the non-linear development of a video games’ narrative where the player is presented with choices bearing direct influence over the sequence of events in the story line. This corresponds to the development of the narrative in a regular visual novel, on the left of Figure 2 (the starting point is at the top of the chart; the story unfolds depending on the option the player chooses at each branching point). In the case of Higurashi, instead, we see a straight line with the optional path to the clues that accumulate after completing each section of the game: Start
Narrative events
Clues
Narrative events
Clues
Narrative events
Clues
etc.
End
Figure 2: On the left schematisation of a non linear narrative structure in video games (Collins 2008: 142). The player starts at the top of the diagram and makes his way down by making choices at key points. On the right Higurashi’s linear narrative structure.
We have to make clear that we are talking here about the narrative structure as experienced by the player, not the narrative content itself. In terms of the latter,
Higurashi’s story line is anything but linear: indeed, the characters constantly live through the same weeks of June 1983. Most visual novels have branching narratives like the one represented on the left of Figure 2. The player driven by the prospect of collecting the pictures available in the game will usually start again from the top until he or she gets them all. This repetition of the story occurs outside of the game, and the player controls it. In the case of Higurashi, the repetition of the story is embedded in the unfolding of the game. Thus even though Higurashi features a different structure than other visual novels, it still
23 retains characteristics that are particular to the genre, particularly with respect to the idea of repetition.
To go back to the player’s agency over the development of the narrative, in this context, the focus on interactive approaches as promoted by Juul, Wolf and most of the scholarly literature on video games cannot be useful in dealing with
Higurashi. The principal problem here is that the efforts expected from the player are only thought of as in-game, meaning the actions he or she is taking while impersonating the protagonist. In the case of Higurashi, the player is presented with a convoluted murder story that has to be resolved outside the space of the game; indeed, the goal of Higurashi’s “ideal” player is to think about different hypotheses while going through the game, and discuss them either on fan sites dedicated to the game, or even directly with the author, either in person in the dealing room of the conventions where the game is sold or via internet.11 Thus, if we return to Juul’s definition, the outcome of the narrative in the game cannot be changed by the player’s actions, but the outcome of the players’ activities outside the game can, and this is where the pleasure of playing Higurashi resides.
11 The distribution and sale of Higurashi at its beginning shows the consequences of the displacement that make for the unique quality of its gameplay: since the most crucial part of the player’s experience is situated outside the virtual space of the game, the circulation of Higurashi takes pathways that facilitate a direct contact with the author, either through the internet or in game conventions like the biannual Comiket, an event promoting amateur productions (doujin). This mode of distribution comes as an alternative to the model followed by the gaming industry, where the consumption of the game is more of a self-contained activity that does not necessarily trigger as many exchanges between the production and reception ends. With the amazing success of Higurashi, however, Ryukishi07 could not possibly keep up with evaluating every player’s theories; with about 20 000 websites dedicated to speculating about the series in 2005, the validation of hypotheses has become regulated by the fans themselves. (YouTube: Old Ryukishi07 Interview (English subtitled), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jP1dij0SPI, accessed August 9, 2012. Excerpt from the documentary Akihabara: A Story at the End of the Year. (NHK 2005)
24 HIGURASHI, A MUTE SOUND NOVEL?
For Ryukishi07, the creator of Higurashi, the presence of sound, especially music, in visual novels seems both to constitute a defining feature of the genre, and to play an important role in the gaming experience, as indicated by his explanation of his preference for visual novels as a medium through counterexamples:
In a novel, you can explain a world in depth with lots of prose, but there isn’t any music, and there aren’t many illustrations or anything like that to enhance the experience. Manga falls far short of novels in terms of the amount of prose, but the visual side is much stronger. But there’s not musical enhancement. Anime is the best for both music and artwork, but it’s at an overwhelming disadvantage in prose, as well as cost and time production. Visual novels have as much prose as novels, are visual like manga, and musical like anime ... (Ryukishi07, in Thompson 2008: 12A).
With such an insistence on the artistic possibilities opened by the presence of sound in visual novels, one would expect that special care has been taken when it comes to the audio environment of Higurashi. Actually, Ryukishi07 goes to the extent of describing his game as a “sound novel”, rather than a visual novel.12
Since the term removes the emphasis on the visuals of the work to displace it to its sound qualities, choosing such a denomination may have been motivated by a desire to draw the line between the pornographic imagery often associated with the visual novel genre, and Higurashi’s focus on solving murder stories, although
12 Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 07th Expansion. http://www.07th-expansion.net/hi Main.htm, accessed February 20, 2013. He uses the term in interviews, but the official promotional material for Higurashi makes no mention of it being a sound novel, since the company Chunsoft owns the rights to the denomination (YouTube: Old Ryukishi07 Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jP1dij0SPI, accessed August 9, 2012. Excerpt from the documentary Akihabara: A Story at the End of the Year. (NHK 2005)).
25 some situations represented in the game are not devoid of a certain level of eroticism.13
It is interesting that the author chose the term “sound novel” given that one of the components of audio in video games, dialogues, is not featured in Higurashi.
Actually, visual novels rarely feature full-length dialogues. Rather, they generally use short interjections, a set of which is attached to each character at certain points in the text. This approach to voicing the characters works on a similar mode as the set of facial expressions mentioned earlier. One might conclude from the status of
Higurashi as an amateur production that it may have been difficult for the creator to secure the services of a voice actor; however, even the output of established companies features visual novels without dialogues. For example, iconic PC visual novels Kanon (1999) and To Heart (1997) don’t feature any voices. In the case of the games The Night of the Sickle Weasels (1994) and St-John’s Wort
(1992), published by the company Chunsoft, it was not possible to add voices because of the technological restraints of the console the games were made for.
However, Ryukishi07 cites both works when talking about his interest towards visual novels belonging to the mystery or horror genres, rather than the dating simulation games that consist of a large proportion of the visual novel offerings.14
13 With Keichii being the only boy in his group of friends, Higurashi sometimes plays on tropes from harem stories, where the main protagonist interacts with a cast of potential love interests from the opposite sex. Instances of mild eroticism in Higurashi include, for example, the female cast having to dress in revealing costumes as punishment for losing a board game.
14 “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” Seisaku Staff – 07th Expansion Interview “Higurashi no Nakase Kata”,
26 Thus the sound design of those two games might have had an influence on
Higurashi. In addition to the influence of Chunsoft’s sound novels, the reason for the absence of dialogues in Higurashi may also pertain to the adult content of most visual novels: one can think of the characters’ interjections as an embodiment device emphasizing the physical pleasures of playing a visual novel.
Voices add physicality to the characters. Thus, it makes sense that the creator of
Higurashi would have found character voices unnecessary to the player’s enjoyment of the game, when taking into account the dominance of the cognitive stimulation offered by the game rather than the sensual one.
The purpose of this brief survey of the issues surrounding the academic discussion of visual novels, such as their particular narrative structure and mechanics, was to situate Higurashi in relation to common conceptions about video games in academia, as well as among the visual novel genre to which it belongs. The next section of the chapter also approaches the music in Higurashi as a series of challenges, this time addressing the dominant discourses and aesthetics of music design in the mainstream video game industry. It will deal with the role of music in Higurashi, and how it relates to conventions about the relationship between music and media. But first, it will open with a discussion of sound aesthetics in visual novels and the place of visual novel music in the narrative of the history of video game music as commonly portrayed in research on the subject.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050212104511/http://www.toranoana.jp/higurasi/higurashi book00. html, accessed August 9, 2012.
27 SOUND AND MUSIC IN THE SOUND NOVEL HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI
Sound aesthetics in visual novels vary widely but generally rely on a repertoire of sound effects and relatively short musical excerpts. Both are either used in a punctuating fashion, or programmed to repeat themselves for a set amount of time, independently of the player’s actions in the game. The effects and the music are thus programmed to start or stop in certain points of the game.
However, in the case of looping portions, with the exception of the starting point which is determined by the creator, the subsequent relationship between music and images is generated in a completely arbitrary fashion, as a given excerpt will repeat as many times as needed for the player to complete the segment, and it will end abruptly when the next signpost is reached. Thus, changes between music, sound and silence are often abrupt, with minimal to no efforts made to hide them with techniques such as fade-out or mixing.
Such music aesthetics in visual novels comes in opposition to the aesthetics of video game music mapped by many scholars, often under the influence of a certain technological determinism. Simon Wood, for example, talks about three kinds of musical cues composing the video game score: “ambient pieces”, “event- triggered pieces”, and “underscoring for non interactive movies.” He describes the first type as low-key music created to generate an emotional response. This type presents specific challenges to the composer because the music cannot be annoying or boring, as it might be featured for extended periods of time in the game. One way to achieve this is by hiding the loops in the music: “The loops are constructed in a way that allows them, under software control, to play simultaneously or to fade seamlessly into one another” (Wood 2009: 132-133).
This stance on the masking of musical looping is more historically positioned in Karen Collins’s book Game Sound (2008). Up until now, her study remains the only large-scale, historical account of video game music. It focuses mainly on products for the North American market. The first games, in the 1980s, featured repetitive loops with hard breaks, similar to the music found in visual novels today (Collins 2008: 19, 23). Other aspects of looping music in visual novels also correspond to Collins’ description of early games, namely the tension between aesthetics and technology, and the structural influence of genre on looping music.15 With the technological progress that allowed for more memory space for stocking information and a better rendition of sound, video game music gradually evolved into the organically integrated soundtrack featured in most of recent games, where the music often reacts directly to the player’s position or actions in the game and the transitions, smoothed out.
Overall, Collins’ discussion is nuanced enough to avoid falling into the trap of historical inevitability, and she does mention that an earlier video game music aesthetic is still present in some recent games. However, her account is punctuated by comments that situate looping as an outdated compositional technique: when comparing the presence of looping music in early video games and early film in terms of the technological and financial constraints of each
15 Those elements will be discussed shortly.
29 medium, she maintains that “both films and games turned to looping quite early on, and would later abandon the idea” (Collins 2008: 34). Later in the book, she describes the sound technology in the Play Station 2 as “a step backward in terms of the way music was presented in games,” forcing a return to “rapid fades and hard cuts between tracks, which typically looped continuously in game levels”
(Collins 2008: 69).
As is the case with many academic writings on video game music, Collins’ discussion gives much more room to games that take advantage of the interactive possibilities opened up by later technological developments. This approach bears an obvious relationship to the academic discourse on the player’s agency in games, as discussed earlier in this chapter: parallel to the marking of video games’ uniqueness through focusing on the idea of the choices available to the player, video game music scholarship researches the musical consequences of those choices by widely focusing on objects that show a fusion of the music and sound effects with the gameplay.16
As demonstrated in the first part of this chapter, Higurashi is a unique type of visual novel since it gives the player no opportunity at all to affect the outcome of the game through narrative choices. In the light of the preceding discussion, it is possible to transpose this constraint to the level of the soundtrack; the lack of
16 For example, Zach Whalen: “Overall, gameplay accompanied by music exemplifies the best potential for games to innovate in terms of interactivity and demonstrates the best opportunity to examine what I think are unique contributions to the practice of music and media” (Whalen 2007: 72).
30 narrative or playing freedom featured in Higurashi undermines the active, performative role taken by the player in shaping the audio of a game that allows choice-making (Collins 2008: 106). The player still exerts some power over the temporal aspect of the soundtrack, that is, how long it is to play, but not on its development. Thus there are two ways in which Higurashi presents a challenge to the common narrative of video game history: first, it breaks the association of certain compositional techniques with certain historical moments in the development of video games. Visual novels are a contemporary medium, and yet their sound aesthetic often relies on looping music with hard breaks and minimal mixing, characteristics that video game music scholars seem to rather associate with 1980s games. What is more, the peculiar narrative structure in Higurashi undermines a popular topic for research on both video games and video game music, that is, interactivity of the player with the story and the music.
The player-composer is not the only contemporary game convention visual novels depart from. As addressed before, characteristics of early games and their looping music are still relevant to the dominant aesthetics in visual novel music.
One is the close connection between a game’s genre and the length of its musical loops:
[In early games,] [l]oop lengths were genre-specific, with the genres that had the longest gameplay (role-playing games and platform adventures) having the longest loops. These loops were made longer because players would spend more time on these levels than the levels of other games, as the games were designed to last for many hours. Shorter or more action-oriented genres (such as sports games or flight simulators) typically had very short loops or no music at all (Collins 2008: 27).
31
Other approaches to organizing a game’s music loops were driven by the narrative,
with “exploratory” music featuring longer loops and topical music for fighting or
other punctuating activities being shorter. Visual novels fall most certainly into
the “long gameplay” category, as going through only one of Higurashi’s eight
chapters may require about 15 to 20 hours. However, the loops used throughout
the game are not consistently long. The next chart demonstrates this very well: it
maps the music and sound heard at the beginning of Day 8 in the first arc of the
visual novel. At this point, Keiichi has become more deeply involved in the
murder stories surrounding the village’s festival. The day before, the police
officer Ôshii told him about the gruesome death of two people Keiichi happens to
have met right before they disappeared. As he ponders this, he overhears his
friends talking about the murders.
Silence M12 M2 M3 M1 Cicadas Played 16 mm Completed 1 loop of 188s (at 4:23). Loop Played 15 mm. Played 24 mm (AA’BB’), Completed 2 loops of 27s. (at 1:18 and (AAAA). Cuts composed of 4 mm, repeated 8 times. Cuts after beat cuts short on beat 1 of m 25. 1:45). short on beat 1 Cuts at the end of m 1. 2 of 16. of m 3. ∗1:52 ∗5:01 ∗5:06 ∗5:14 Descending plucked strings, no -5:06 Punch Punch repetition Bells sound sound sound Day 8: Morning, in Keiichi is thinking; he cannot K. overhears his friends; they are The teacher Satoko Class is the classroom. forget the gruesome stories the talking about the murders and they arrives, plays a over, time Everyone chats. police officer told him. mention the malediction. class starts. trick on for club Keiichi. activities
0:51 2:15 4:31 5:06 5:48 5:54 5:56 Figure 3: Chart mapping music and sound effects in the visual novel Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. (Day 8, 0:00-5:56) The timings are only approximative as playing time may differ depending on the player’s reading speed. M1, M2, M3 and M12 refer to different musical cues, simple transcriptions of which are included in Annex 1 for the visual novel, and in Annex 2 for the anime.
Within this short timespan, the changes in music are frequent and are closely
attached to the narrative. The length of the musical cues is extremely variable,
going from a single gesture (the plucked strings at 1:52), to loops composed of a
32 single short motif repeated (M12), to longer segments that do not repeat in the example’s time window (M1 is played only for a little bit more than 24 measures out of the 52 that make up the whole cue). The approach to scoring in Higurashi seems to tie together the two tendencies observed by Collins: the shorter loops are associated with unsettling moments of the narrative that correspond to the game’s signature horror episodes, whereas the longer cues (usually) play during the
“unthreatening̦” episodes.
It is also important to mention technological factors in a discussion of music in visual novels, and especially Higurashi. Although the formidable progress in technologies led game developers to seek more fluid animation enhanced by better textures and more realistic sound, the vast majority of visual novels seems to have adopted a different set of conventions, with limited animation and soundtrack. Many reasons may explain this situation, but in the context of this study, the fact that Higurashi was created outside the mainstream industry hints at the force of amateur productions in the genre. Indeed, making one’s own visual novel is both relatively easy, even with a very basic knowledge of programming, as well as time- and cost-effective. The conventions of the genre are of course complicit with this, as their particular aesthetics allowed the genre to remain a space that could be invested by amateur creators.
As a result of this amateur-friendly environment, some considerations of authorship have to be discussed when talking about Higurashi. One of the striking features of Higurashi’s soundtrack is the disappearance of the composer. Collins, in her book Game Sounds, points out rightly that the process of music making for
33 a video game (from composing to programming to editing) is the result of such teamwork that the notion of authorship becomes diluted, and does not belong solely to a single composer. Furthermore, in certain video game genres such as rhythm-action games, the player actively participates in the creation of the sound environment of the game, further dissolving the division between author and reader (Collins 2008: 106). A similar nuance has been put forward by Imada
Kentaro in his article on the music for the multimedia anime franchise Lupin III:
Ultimately, ... in terms of dubbing and overall sound design of the film, it is the senkyokuka17 and the director who, by supervising the overall project, wield considerable authority over the music, well beyond that of the composer. The practices described above contrast to classic auteurist perceptions of western art-music composers (2010: 184).
These comments by Collins and Imada move away from a certain auteurism common in film music studies, a consequence of a strong presence of composer and fan discourses in the field (Gorbman 2000: 42).18 In the case of Higurashi, the figure of the unique composer cannot possibly exist; its creators gathered the music for the game around the Internet, a collection of pieces from different amateur composers. This postmodernist approach to scoring turned out to be a
17 Literally, “music selector,” but also someone who works as a sound and/or musical director/producer (Imada 2010: 184).
18 Gorbman refers to the tendency of musicological research on film music to adopt, towards its object of study, the standpoint of the composer, which prevented “post-structuralism’s dethronement of the individual artist” in that discipline (2000: 42). However, given the division of labour that occurred between composers and arrangers in Hollywood studio practices for example, it is possible to say that in reality, film music features, to a varying degree, the same blurred concept of “composer” than video games and anime.
34 real problem at the level of the localisation19 of the game for foreign audiences.
The French and English localization of Higurashi were two very different processes that had a deep impact on the sound design of the translated game.
Indeed, the French version was translated by a fan who not only tackled all the translation and programming work by himself, but also went through the immense labor of contacting each individual composer featured in the original soundtrack to ask for the rights to feature their music in the translated version of Higurashi
(2010). On the other hand, Netherlands-based publisher MangaGamer, responsible for the English version of the game, made the choice to replace most of the soundtrack with different music, securing only the rights to the musical pieces strongly associated with the game (2009-2010). This means that the sound environment for Higurashi is very different from one translated version to the other, providing French speakers with an experience much closer to the original
Japanese game. Thus, as a consequence of Higurashi’s fragmented score, a multiplication of gaming experiences also occurred. Of course, it can be argued that the processes of translation and localization create new works altogether; but the changes brought about in the soundtracks of the French and the English games take even further the dispersion of the “original” work.
19 The process of localisation in the video game industry refers to the adaptation of a video game for a foreign market. Localized video games can undergo minor to important modifications affecting the visuals (character design, environment, cover art) and the audio (translation of dialogues, changes in music). For more details on those processes, and especially how they address nationality and cultural characteristics, see the works of Carlson and Coliss (2011), Picard (2009) and Gagnon (2011).
35 At the same time, one has to pay attention to the context of production when thinking about the problem of authorship in Higurashi. Such context varies widely from the institutionalised practices to which Gorbman, Imada and Collins are referring. Indeed, on the level of the individual pieces, the postmodern collage approach can indeed be observed on an abstract level, as the pieces all have different composers; however, when it comes down to the concrete material at hand, the selection of the musical excerpts and their integration into the story can be traced back to the work of one person, Ryukishi07. In other words, the authorship of the music in Higurashi can be understood as multiple or single, depending on whether one focuses on the process of composing the music
(outside the game space) or on the crafting of the soundtrack which has a direct effect on the player (inside the game space). As seen in the first part of the chapter, this outside/inside dynamic is also central to the analysis of the player’s agency the game; indeed, it differs according to whether the level of analysis is situated inside (the actual gaming experience) or outside the game (on an abstract level).
CONCLUSION
The first chapter of this study took a necessary step in introducing the characteristics of the visual novel genre, and explaining how it has a different regime of images and storytelling than other video game genres. Besides visual novels’ low game mechanics and limited animations, it is particularly important to consider the non-linear structure of many visual novels, which often requires the repetition of the game until all the possible paths have been played through.
Within the genre, Higurashi stands in a particular place because of the lack of
36 freedom given to the player within the game. Rather than following the common non-linear structure of most visual novels, where the player makes choices that will influence the outcome of the game, Higurashi’s story follows a straight, linear path. It has to be resolved outside the game space, by thinking up hypotheses about the truth behind the events pictured in the story, and by testing those either with a community of players or directly with the author of the game.
Because an important part of Higurashi’s gaming process is actually situated outside the game space, it cannot fit into analytical frameworks that emphasize interactivity or, in other words, the influence of the player over the unfolding of a game. And yet, many video game researchers tend to put interactivity at the core of the definition of video games, especially by considering it a specificity that is crucial to set the medium apart from other story-telling media like cinema or literature. This tendency is combined with a technological perspective on video game history, in which low degrees of interactivity are seen as a result of the limited capacities of early game machines. These issues have important consequences on how many scholars think of music in video games as well.
Indeed, music that adapts to the player’s situation in the game is often seen as more advanced and more interesting than music that is independent from the action on screen. However, visual novels seem to have maintained as part of their generic code some characteristics that Western histories of video games and video game music rather associate with early video games, like low-level mechanics and looping music with minimal editing. The chapter has attempted to think of the music in Higurashi outside of this framework.
37 The second part of the chapter discussed how visual novels’ visual and sounds aesthetics are influenced by a production context that makes a lot of room for the participation of amateur creators; for example, visual novels’ limited animation makes them easy to program even with basic computer knowledge. As an amateur production itself, Higurashi is a perfect example of this particular context. The amateur context of Higurashi also has important consequences on the authorship of the soundtrack. The music in the game is a collection of pieces available for free use on the internet, but the choice of the pieces and the way they are integrated in the game can be attributed to the game’s creator, Ryukishi07. In a similar way to the question of the player’s agency in the game, the authorship of its music can be seen from an inside or an outside perspective; the in-game experience is shaped by only one person, but the process of assembling the soundtrack dilutes the notion of single authorship.
The ambiguous question of authorship becomes more complicated when we turn to the translations of the game: the French translator has secured the rights to the music in the original Japanese game, whereas the English version features a completely different soundtrack, except for a few numbers. Those variations make for a dispersion of the original game into many different gaming experiences.
The preceding discussion has established a solid basis for a closer musical analysis. The next chapter will delve into a parallel study of the music in both the
Higurashi video game and animated series.
38 CHAPTER TWO: MUSICAL GENRES IN THE GAME AND THE ANIME HIGURASHI NO NAKU KORO NI
If one were to compare the soundtracks of Higurashi the visual novel and the anime, he or she would find very similar material: both the visual novel and the anime feature an alternation or superposition of silence, sound effects (particularly the cicadas mentioned in the English title of the anime20) and music. In both cases, the music’s compositional techniques often rely on iteration and repetition rather than development (in the form of ostinatos, loops, etc.), and the cues cover an array of styles allowing the soundtrack to adapt to any situation on the screen.
Because of Higurashi’s school-life drama/horror genre mix, its music explores a spectrum ranging from the calming to the humorous to the threatening.
Characteristics of “safe” music include identifiable melody and harmony, regular rhythm, synthesised acoustic instruments like piano and guitar, and unchanging dynamics. “Threatening” music borrows from typical horror soundtrack conventions: extreme instrumental ranges and dynamics, dissonant harmony, chromaticism, irregular rhythm, “unnatural” timbres (a result of playing techniques like sul ponticello on string instruments, or electronic sounds), textures with unidentifiable pitches, and ostinatos. “Threatening” cues may be accompanied with punctuating sound effects in extreme situations, thus
20 The cries of the cicadas are present in many of the scenes in both the video game and the anime. Their indolent, continuous chant resonates throughout the story and reminds us that this June of 1983 never ends. Cicadas are used to achieve a similar effect in the famous anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (Anno 1995), where they serve as a reminder that the climate has been irreversibly changed to an eternal summer.
39 heightening the level of tension. Many musical numbers occupy an intermediary position between those two extremes to portray the series’ comedic or suspense aspects. The visual novel and the anime do not only share similar musical styles and techniques; even the production stages of the two media bear strong similarities. In his article on the music in the anime franchise Lupin III, Imada
Kentarô maintains that composers for anime TV series and films, “rather than creating one-of-a-kind melodies to fit particular image sequences, ... develop a stockpile of material that can be used as necessary.” A music producer is then responsible for choosing and editing the music to each scene (Imada 2010: 184).
Visual novels also rely on a stock of musical cues, although in the case of
Higurashi, as discussed in the preceding chapter, the pieces were gathered around the Internet rather than composed by one individual.
If the musical material in itself does not differ widely between the two media, its relationship to the images does, and in a significant way. Indeed, in the case of the visual novel, loops and breaks are at the basis of its musical code. There is a dialectical relationship between continuity and break in the soundtrack’s adjoining of continuous, circular motion created by loops, and of jarring stops created by the minimal editing of the music. This phenomenon is not as accentuated in the anime, because it does not feature music in a continuous way. Indeed, compared to the fairly continuous background of sound in the visual novel, the anime makes use of musical cues in a more punctuating fashion. This chapter will compare two moments of Higurashi’s narrative in the visual novel and the anime in order to better understand what exactly are the similarities and the differences between the
40 two installments’ use of music, and how it affects the experience of the player or viewer. The discussion will focus on the question of rhythm and its far-reaching influence on the installments’ generic diversity. But first, it is worth insisting again on Higurashi’s peculiar narrative structure, given that it plays a great role in the rhythm to which the story is experienced.
THE ENDLESS REPETITION OF HIGURASHI
Each one of Higurashi’s story arcs portrays similar events from the perspective of different characters. As the story unfolds in the answer arcs, we understand that the fragmented and repetitive way in which the story is told mirrors the events in the narrative; indeed, one of Keiichi’s friends, Rika, has to live through the month of June 1983 again and again; she does not know the reason why she keeps reincarnating, but she is unable to avoid getting murdered each time. For most of the game, we are presented with a series of parallel worlds independent of each other, the common thread of which are Rika’s reincarnations.
It is only towards the end of the game/anime that a linear relationship emerges between two arcs allowing the audience to clearly situate them in relation to each other in time. Thanks to her friends’ help, at that point Rika discovers the identity of the person who keeps attacking her. When she comes close to escaping death in the penultimate arc, she decides to try and remember the events that occurred in this world when she reincarnates in the next one. When the new arc begins, Rika does not remember her past life at first, so the beginning of the chapter is similar to others. When she finally does remember, however, the temporal relationship between the two arcs is crystallized. Thus the narration in Higurashi is unique in
41 its succession of enclosed stories, and this type of storytelling makes the audience actually experience Rika’s endless cycle of reincarnation. As discussed in
Chapter 1, in the case of the video game, the player is led though a linear path given that he or she does not have any influence on the development of the plot.
Playing Higurashi thus means experiencing a juxtaposition of non-linear narrative with a linear gaming experience, whereas most narrative-oriented video games feature a non-linear experience, as repetition is embedded in the player’s experience of the game.21 In other words, in the visual novel, each click contributes to a continuous narrative flow that excludes the regime of repetition usually associated with video games, in which the punishment for failure is starting anew. Repetition is rather found at the level of the narrative itself, in the form of an endless month of June, or at the level of the aesthetic conventions of visual novels, for example the use of sets of character expressions.
VIDEO GAME MUSIC VS ANIME MUSIC: HIGURASHI’S FIRST STORY ARC
Scoring techniques for the visual novel mirror this ambivalence between continuity and repetition, with the loop and the break being at the basis of the visual novel’s musical code. As mentioned earlier, the musical experience of the visual novel stands in balance between continuity and breaks. While the anime
21 Without proper mastering the game’s mechanics for example, the player will have to repeat sections of the game until he is successful.
42 retains the narrative structure of the videogame quite accurately,22 this balance between musical flow and fracture is not as accentuated because it does not feature music in a continuous way. Indeed, compared to the fairly continuous background of sound in the visual novel, the anime makes use of musical cues in a more punctuating fashion. A side-by-side comparison of the second and the eighth day of Higurashi’s first story arc, as presented in the visual novel and the anime will make that difference clear, and show the influence it has on the musical score.
During the second day in the first story arc, Mion and Rena take Keiichi on a tour around Hinamizawa; since he has just moved to the village, he has had no time to explore except for the area around the school and his house. They have a picnic on the grounds of the local shrine, and Rika and Satoko arrive just in time for the meal. Although the sun starts setting, Keiichi does not feel like going home; he accompanies Rena in one of her favorite activities, looking for treasures hidden in the village’s garbage dump. While waiting for her, he meets photographer Tomitake, who mentions a tragic incident. The following table shows a breakdown of the events of that day in the visual novel and the anime, as well as their respective soundtracks.23
22 The differences pertain to occasional omission of scenes and transfer of material between arcs.
23 For the visual novel, the data comes from the original Japanese version. For the anime, it is from the North American release of the show (07th Expansion 2009-2010).
43 Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Higurashi When They Cry (visual novel) (anime series) First arc (“Onikakushi-hen”), Day 2 First arc (“Onikakushi-hen”), Day 2
Story Music Sound Story Music Sound
In the M1 In the Cicadas morning, morning, (3/4, 52 Keiichi meets measures, Keiichi meets up with Mion medium tempo, up with Mion and Rena synthesised and Rena accordion with piano accompaniment)
They start M2 walking and (4/4, 13 meet some measures, villagers medium tempo, synthesized organ with off- beat guitar accompaniment)
For lunchtime, No music Cicadas Rena suggests to eat at the shrine
Once at the M2 They go to the “Sansaku” Stingers for shrine, Satoko shrine, Rena each close- (4/4, medium and Rika spreads the tempo, oboe up on the appear; food on a table melody with food. everyone eats cloth on the drums, piano and the food Rena ground; Rika shaker made and Satoko accompaniment) arrive.
Towards the M1 As they eat, End of the end of the Rika music meal compliments Rena on her cooking
A competition M3 starts to get to (4/4, 8 eat dessert measures, fast (apple cut in tempo, bells the shape of melody with rabbits), Rena off-beat high- is the judge hat and melodic 1-5 bass line)
44 Keiichi first No music Cicadas wins by saying a cheesy line
Rena gives M3 him apples
Rena notices No music Cicadas that Rika is not eating
Rika wants the M5 rabbits to be (12/8, 7 saved measures, slow tempo, glockenspiel melody with tube organ and finger snaps accompaniment)
Rena has a M3 nose-bleed because she can’t resist Rika’s cute act; Rika gets the apples
At the end of No music Higurashi At the end of Cicadas, the day, the day, water Keiichi Keiichi sounds from doesn’t feel doesn’t feel the like going like going watermill home right home right away away
He follows M4 Higurashi, He follows Higurashi, Rena across to birds, Rena to the (4/4, 22 mickey- the garbage running garbage dump. measures, slow mousing dump. She tempo, piano water disappears melody with underscoring among the acoustic guitar funny garbage. accompaniment) moments like Keiichi falling over in the dump (cymbal hits, rattle)
Tomitake M4 continued Tomitake Higurashi arrives and arrives and startles Keiichi startles Keiichi
45 Keiichi jokes: No music Higurashi Keiichi jokes: “Onigaen” “Rena is “Rena is (no time looking for the looking for the signature, body she body she pulsating ghostly dismembered” dismembered” voices, low bass sounds)
Tomitake No music Higurashi Tomitake Crash Higurashi answers answers followed with “Yeah, they’re “Yeah, they’re descending of still missing an still missing an dissonant arm, right?” arm, right?” electronic sounds
Rena returns No music Higurashi Rena returns No music Higurashi and Tomitake and Tomitake leaves walks away
Rena and M4 Keiichi and “Riyuu” Keiichi are Rena discuss (4/4, medium leaving the her finding, a tempo, glock and garbage dump. life-sized synth melody statue of with xylphone Colonel accompaniement) Sanders
Keiichi asks M4 continued Keiichi asks Riyuu whether there whether there continued was an was an accident accident during the during the construction of construction of dam last year. dam last year.
Rena:“I don’t No music Higurashi Rena: “I don’t Sudden Higurashi know, I was know.” interruption of living the music. somewhere else.”
End of the day. End of the day Table 1: “Onikakushi-hen”, Day 2. On the left, the visual novel Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Ryukishi07 2002) and on the right, the anime Higurashi When They Cry (Kon 2006). Transcriptions of the music for the visual novel can be found in Annex 1, and the music for the anime in Annex 2, in numerical and alphabetical order, respectively. “Onigaen” has not transcription, as the sounds are unpitched. The cells filled with grey indicate scenes from the videogame that have been left out of the anime. Bold font (M3 and “Onigaen”) indicates a musical number tending towards the menacing. Blue filling indicates scenes with background music in the game, but not in the anime. The two scenes highlighted in grey have been left out of the anime. Even notwithstanding those scenes, it is clear from the chart that the soundscape for the visual novel makes much more use of music then the anime does. The deleted
46 scenes’ main function in the game is to provide context and character development; the first one fleshes out the life in the village, with Mion, Rena and
Keiichi touring Hinamizawa and meeting the locals, whereas the second pictures the characters’ personalities and interaction as they compete for food. This focus might be behind their exclusion from the television adaptation; since the anime does not have as much latitude in terms of time as the visual novel does, scenes providing context tend to be edited out to leave the anime with the ones that contribute the most in advancing the plot. The musical scores in the two installments show this acceleration in rhythm: as highlighted by the red square in
Table 1, the conversation between Keiichi and Tomitake about the dismembered corpse is put in relief by using different strategies. In the video game, the looping piece named “M4”, a moderate piano number with guitar accompaniment, terminates upon Tomitake’s comment on the missing arm, leaving the soundtrack silent. This passage from unthreatening music to silence in the visual novel is less startling than the passage from silence to threatening music in the anime. In the latter, after Keiichi’s joke about the dismembered corpse, Tomitake’s serious gaze is underscored with the track “Onigaen” featuring slow, pulsing ghostly voices over low ambient sounds. His comment about the dead man’s missing arm is then accentuated with a startling crash followed with descending dissonant sounds.
Again, this is related to the amount of time available for telling the story in each medium.
The result of using unsettling music to flag the conversation between Keiichi and Tomitake as a potential threat is to rapidly situate the story as a murder
47 mystery or a thriller, which is a necessary feature for the anime. In the video game things are made more ambiguous, as the soundtrack does not send clear signals of danger. This is not to say that moments of silence are automatically less threatening than underscored ones; depending on the context, one might be as powerful as the other. But in this particular case, it is not built as a direct threat, especially compared to the anime version. The very beginning of the series presents a similar point of discrepancy between the setting of the video game and the anime; both openings refer to a later point in the arc when Keiichi, in a fit of paranoia, kills Mion and Rena. The difference between the two lies in that the anime shows him beating his friends to death with a baseball club before cutting to the credits, whereas the visual novel shows text over a black screen punctuated only by the sound of the club hitting something. In this case, the player does not quite know what is going on, and realizes that Keiichi was actually dreaming while travelling to Tokyo. The descriptive approach in the anime matches the need to establish the direction of the story as soon as possible; it presents at the outset the dominance of horror themes in the following story. On the contrary, the vague, suggestive opening of the video game leaves the player with an uneasy feeling, but avoids any clear confirmation of its generic affiliation.
The combination of the removal of scenes providing contextualization and character development, and a more straight-forward approach to showing and scoring central elements of the plot results in a certain diminishing of the generic variety in the anime version of Higurashi, in terms of both narrative and music.
Scenes like the rabbit apple competition play a central role in creating the generic
48 clash sought after by Ryukishi07, because they create a feeling of normality, giving the player a glimpse of the everyday life of an average group of teenage friends. The analysis of Table 1 above shows the difference in proportions between threatening and unthreatening moments in the visual novel and the anime, and the impact of those different proportions on the soundtrack. A similar table showing a later point in the story will help further illustrating this argument.
Day 8 of the first arc has already been touched upon in Chapter 1. At that moment in the story line, Keiichi’s involvement with the fatal incidents occurring in Hinamizawa grows deeper. He has been interrogated by police officer Ôshii about the death of two people during the night of the festival, and Ôshii hinted at a possible implication of Keiichi’s friends and their families in the incident. Keiichi goes to school the next morning nonetheless, but keeps his thoughts to himself.
While lying on his desk, he overhears snatches of Mion and Rena’s conversation about the murders. After class, Keiichi and Rena tidy up the classroom together.
Keiichi finds a card with someone’s name on it and questions Rena about it, but she stays evasive in her answers. As they walk home together, he stops and asks whether the girls are hiding anything from him. Rena’s appearance changes and she becomes aggressive, calling him a liar.24 She tells him he was being monitored while meeting with Ôshii. Then she turns back to her normal self. At night,
Keiichi talks on the phone with Ôshii. He learns more details about the deaths
24 Rena’s “USO DA!!” (“It’s a lie!!”) became iconic among Higurashi fans, maybe because it epitomizes the generic clash at work in the series. It’s the first time Rena does not appear as a cute and shy middle school student, but as an open threat to Keiichi.
49 related to the dam and the festival: according to a local legend, Hinamizawa once was a village of demons who feasted on humans. He is also told that in the double murders that happen each year during the festival, one person actually always disappeared without a trace. Keiichi cuts short the conversation abruptly when his father knocks on his door with tea and snacks for two. Apparently, Rena came to see him, but she is not in the room. Keiichi realizes that she probably eavesdropped on his conversation and left.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Higurashi: When They Cry (visual novel) (anime series) First arc: “Onikakushi-hen”, Day 8 First arc: “Onikakushi-hen”, Day 8
Story Music Sound Story Music Sound
In the classroom. M1 In the classroom.
Keiichi is not No music Cicadas Keiichi is not able to forget his able to forget his conversation conversation with Ôshii with Ôshii
Keiichi overhears M12 Keiichi overhears “Onigaen” his friends his friends (4/4, 4 talking about the measures, talking about the murders. They slow tempo, murders. They mention homorhythmic mention Oyashirosama’s string Oyashirosama’s curse. orchestra and curse. metallophone moving on beat 1 and 3)
The teacher M2 arrives.
Satoko tries to M3 trick Keiichi.
Class starts. Cicadas Class starts End of the music
After class, the M2 The club has not group starts their activities because
50 club activities. Mion has to leave.
Mion has to M1 leave. The club’s meeting is adjourned.
Keiichi notices No music Keiichi notices Satoshi’s name Satoshi’s name on the playing on the playing cards. cards.
Keiichi questions Rena about Satoshi.
Rena says she Clash and does not know held bass much about his transfer.
Rena appears Cicadas
Keiichi thinks Silence about the murders.
Rena and Keiichi Cicadas Rena and Keiichi walk home walk home
Keiichi asks Silence, Keiichi asks whether the girls then whether the girls are hiding cicadas are hiding something from something from him him
Rena’s eyes M16 Rena’s eyes “Urugawa” change: “And change: “And (no time (no time you, are you signature, you, are you signature, hiding electronic hiding howling sound, something?” pulsating something?” high cries, sounds, string orchestra shimmering playing bells) tremolo)
Keiichi says Keiichi says No sound “no”. Rena “no”. Rena effect added, screams “Liar”. screams “Liar”. end of music.
Keiichi is Silence petrified.
Rena turns back Cicadas
51 to normal.
Keiichi is at Cicadas Keiichi is at home, in his home, in his bedroom. Ôshii bedroom. calls.
Hinamizawa was M18 Hinamizawa was a village of a village of (no time demons eating signature, demons eating humans. short phrase humans. with atonal piano)
The 6th victim of Silence, then They go over “Giwaku” the dam murders M16 each murder: one (4/4, piano was actually person has melody in spirited away. always been quarter notes spirited away. with held strings and voices playing 1/2 tones)
The kid who Silence, then disappeared last M12 year was Satoshi.
Keiichi No music Cicadas remembers Rena’s strange behaviour earlier.
Someone knocks Silence, Someone knocks End of music. at Keiichi’s door. then at Keiichi’s door. cicadas
Keiichi hangs up Keiichi hangs up
At the door, his M2 At the door, his dad has brought dad has brought tea and snacks tea and snacks for two people. for two people.
Keiichi’s dad M18, then Keiichi’s dad “Jiken” tells him Rena M16 tells him Rena (4/4, slow came and came. tempo, string climbed the stairs orchestra, toward his room. falling lines) She eavesdropped on his conversation with Ôshii and left.
52 Rena is standing outside Keiichi’s house and she is staring at his window.
End of Day 8 End of Day 8
Table 2: “Onikakushi-hen”, Day 8. On the left, the visual novel Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Ryukishi07 2002) and on the right, the anime Higurashi When They Cry (Kon 2006). (Kon 2006). Transcriptions of the music for the visual novel can be found in Annex 1, and the music for the anime in Annex 2, in numerical and alphabetical order, respectively. “Onigaen” has not transcription, as the sounds are unpitched.This time, grey areas highlights “unthreatening music.” This sequence is a turning point in the arc, with Rena appearing as a menace for the first time. Highlighted in grey in the table are the moments scored with unthreatening music; as shown by the comparison between the video game and the anime, those scenes were either left out or drastically shortened in the anime.
Most importantly, the musical cues for the anime are strictly composed of unsettling music. Thus even as the characters become closely involved in the murder stories, the video game retains a fair number of lighter moments that relieve the escalating tension. The anime, on the other hand, fully embraces the darker sides of the plot line; no frivolous interludes disrupt the drama into which
Keiichi gets involved.
CONCLUSION
Higurashi’s original storyline emphasizes generic clash; its slice-of-life story with hints of comedy and romance turns into a murder mystery tinged with gore.
The above discussion showed how both the visual novel and the anime bear marks of this clash, but a discrepancy exists in the way different genres are manipulated in each installment. Indeed, in the anime, the thriller elements are highlighted by shortening scenes portraying the characters’ “normal” life and by accelerating the
53 slow-paced progression towards tension found in the game. For example, the visual novel’s ambiguous opening sequence purposely leaves the player without a clear idea of what to expect, whereas the same moment in the anime puts up front the horror elements of the story. A side-by-side comparison of two scenes from the first arc “Onikakushi-hen” showed that segments focusing extensively on providing context or portraying the relationship between the characters were edited out in the anime, which concentrates rather on the sequence of events driving the plotline. This change of focus has an impact on the installments’ soundtracks: the proportion of unthreatening music is much higher in the visual novel than in the anime, even as the tension starts rising. Not only that, but the different underscoring of Keiichi and Tomitake’s conversation on Day Two
(Table 1) showed how the same scene, on the one hand, gave off a merely uneasy feeling in the game, while, on the other hand, it clearly marked the anime’s focus on horror.
54 CONCLUSION
The first chapter of this study introduced the characteristics of the visual novel genre, and made clear that a different regime of images is at work in visual novels than in other video game genres. Indeed, the standard low mechanics of the visual novel makes the experience of playing it more akin to watching a picture slide show than to the common conception of narrative video games, where the player becomes a protagonist of the story. Within this genre, Higurashi stands in a particular place, as it does not provide the player with the possibility of making choices that would influence the outcome of the game. Rather, Higurashi has to be resolved outside the game space, by thinking up hypotheses about the truth behind the events pictured in the story, and by testing those with a community of players or directly with the author of the game. The problem posed by this playing mode in a research perspective is that it cannot fit into frameworks that emphasize interactivity. And yet, many video game researchers tend to put interactivity at the core of the definition of video games, as well as to consider it a crucial feature that differentiates video games from other story-telling media like cinema or literature. When translated into video game music research, this focus on interactivity means that music that adapts to the player’s situation in the game is often seen as more advanced and more interesting than music that is independent from the action on screen. More specifically, visual novels seem to have maintained as part of their generic code some characteristics that Western histories of video games and video game music associate with early video games,
55 like low-level mechanics and looping music with minimal editing. The chapter had endeavoured to think of the music in Higurashi outside this framework.
The second chapter presented the results of a close analysis of the music in the first arc of the story in both the video game and in the anime. The chapter compares two moments of Higurashi’s story in the visual novel and the anime in order to better understand what exactly are the similarities and the differences between the two installments’ use of music, and how it affects the experience of the player or viewer. The discussion focused on the question of rhythm: indeed, the anime cuts through the story to present the most important plot elements, leaving behind much of the character development and the contextualization present in the visual novel. This accelerated rhythm has a far-reaching influence on the installments’ generic diversity, as the clash between genres is much more important in the visual novel than in the anime. It is worth expanding on the results shown by this analysis.
By delving more into the details of Higurashi’s story line, Chapter 2 analyzed how the music works in relationship to the images in both the video game and the anime. Commentators on animation and music have often stressed the unifying quality of the latter, in that it creates continuity and thus fills gaps in the image left by the animation of successive frames made of still images. Philip Brophy has made one of the seminal propositions in that vein in his article “The Animation of
Life”: he described animation in terms of a combination of “continuous music”
56 and “separate images“ (1991: 74),25 where music fleshes out the illusion of movement created by the succession of drawn cells. This association of continuous sound and fragmented, still images applies to Higurashi’s visual novel in an extreme way: as we saw in this chapter, music is much more present in
Higurashi’s video game than in its anime version. Again, this is partly a question of rhythm, since the two media work with different time frames; indeed, with the anime requiring less time to convey all the plot elements, some scenes are dramatically shortened and providing a different musical cue for each, as is the norm in the visual novel, would result in an awkward soundtrack. Thus in many instances, the anime leaves silent many scenes that are accompanied by music in the visual novel.
The prominence of the soundtrack in the video game also stems from its particular regime of images. Indeed, there is a big gap between the visual experiences offered by these versions of Higurashi in two media. On one hand, the anime image constitutes a site of tension between stillness and movement because of anime’s tendency to favour an economy of means to convey a sense of movement. This can be done either by using a limited number of frames per second, or by moving the drawings around (the drawn cells are dragged across the
25 More recently, comments on the issue were provided by Mervin Cooke in the chapter of his History of Film Music dedicated to animation where he suggests that cartoons exploit “music's ability to create continuity and momentum” (Cooke 2008: 287); and Rebecca Coyle wrote in the introduction of an anthology on music and animation that one of music’s functions in animation was to provide continuity and flow (Coyle 2010: 8).
57 frame of the camera) rather than fully drawing the movements.26 On the other hand, in the case of the visual novel this tension is greatly reduced since the visuals show a succession of still pictures. Therefore, on the one hand we have still visuals set to a flow of continuous music, while, on the other hand, we have a combination of drawn stills and movement underscored with punctuating musical cues. Thus music’s unifying function seems to be carried out better in the visual novel; however, because of the musical aesthetics particular to the medium, there is a tension at work between unification and fracture.
There are two ways in which music plays a role for continuity in the media analyzed. “Continuous music” means a steady, uninterrupted presence of underscoring music, whereas “music providing continuity” refers to the structure created by music in terms of coherence, in which case recurrence and repetition play a great role. Music in Higurashi, the visual novel, tends towards continuity in both senses. Indeed, it features music most of the time, and the cues present stylistic qualities that facilitate the player’s recognition of the situations in the game. However, it has to be emphasized that the game’s continuous soundtrack has recourse to the loop, a scoring technique that itself occupies a middle ground between continuity and break. Repetition is at the heart of the mode of function of the loop, and this repetition simultaneously creates a continuous texture and hard breaks, either when the loop repeats or when it changes to silence or another
26 For a detailed account of anime’s particular regime of images, see Thomas LaMarre’s book The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (2009).
58 music. As we saw with the scene charted in Table 1, interruptions in the flow of music can sometimes work as a powerful tool for conveying narrative information.
This is an instance where the continuous motion of the soundtrack accentuates moments of fracture, as when the music is suddenly interrupted.
The anime soundtrack also makes great use of looping, and it is often used to the same effect as in the visual novel, although the possibilities opened by a closer editing to the images overall reduces the startling effect of moments of fracture.27
Despite this similarity in scoring techniques, the use of music in the two media is significantly different and has implications in terms of rhythm and generic classification. The visual novel provides a much more constant soundtrack, whereas the music in the anime is more intermittent, and illustrates the action more closely. This relative scarcity of music in the anime leads to a tendency that is contrary to that described previously for the visual novel; rather than having constant sound working both at unifying and fracturing the audience’s experience, the anime’s punctuating music leads to unification, and particularly to generic unification. With the amount of music greatly reduced, it ends up accompanying the turning points in the narrative, which are mostly the unsettling ones. Thus the tension builds up much faster than in the visual novel, even when we leave aside the fact that their respective time frames are very different. As a result, the anime
27 In Table 1 for example, the scene where Keiichi asks Rena whether there has been an incident during the construction of the dam is scored in a similar way in the visual novel and the anime: a relatively calm cue plays and is suddenly interrupted upon Rena’s answer “I don’t know.” (This scene follows the red square). But even here, the fracture is more startling in the anime because a sudden interruption of the music is not part of the musical code of the medium, whereas it is embedded in the music’s mode of functioning in the visual novel.
59 embraces the text’s horror themes much faster and in a more explicit way, than the visual novel does.
Thus it can be said that music in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni works to heighten the genre clash in the visual novel, since it participates in creating a sense of normality for a long time before the horror creeps in. In the anime on the other hand, music dilutes the original text’s generic oppositions by scoring ambiguous scenes with unsettling sounds. The direct approach taken in the anime might have deeply marked the viewers who participated in the Sakura Con panel mentioned at the very beginning of this research. A possible avenue for pursuing this research further would be to conduct a reception study among the players of the video game, and the viewers of the anime series. Those two groups are not necessarily exclusive, and it would also be of great interest to know how fans who have experienced both might compare them.
Despite a growing scholarly interest in music and media, videogame and animation studies, the numbers of researchers who paid attention to games or series at the crossroads of those fields are rare. This research attempted to reflect the dispersed way in which Japanese popular culture fans consume their favourite series, often by going back and forth between mediatic platforms. Hopefully, it will contribute to a growing body of work taking into account the variety of connections between various media.
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64 ANNEX 1: TRANSCRIPTIONS – VISUAL NOVEL
M1
(partial cue – 12 out of 52 mesures)
œ œ.œ œ œ . œœj œ œ œ. œ jœœ œœœœ. œ œ 5 œ œ . œœ jœœ œ . œ . œ . œ Jœ . œœ j œ & 8 œœ.. œœ..œ œœJ J œœ.. œ œ J œœ .. œ œ J Piano œ . œ J œœœ J œ. œœœ œ œ œ œ. œJœœ
Organ ?5 œ œ. œ . œ œ . œ . œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ Bass 8 œ. œ. œ. . œ . . œ . . œ Bass drum
5 . . . . Hi-Hat Cymbal ã 8 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J JJ J J JJ J J JJ J J JJ J
Accordion j ‰ 5 œ . œ œœ: œ œ. œ œ œ œ..œœœœœœœœœ ..œ œ œ . œ œ. œœ 6.œœœjœ &œœ.œœœ..œœœ œœœ œœ œœ œ œ . œœ œ œ œ .. œœ œœ.œœ œœœœ..œ J J œœ..œ œ J J 8 œœ. œ J J œ .œœ J œ J œ . œ œœœ œ . œ œ 8 . œ œœœ œœ. J ‰ J J J Pn cont. ? œ. œ œ. œ 6 œ . œ . œ . œ 8 œ . œ . œ œ ‰ œ . œ . œ œ. œ. œ œ. œ . œ J J 6 ã œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ ‰ J J J J J J J J J J J J 8 J J J J
9 œ . œ œ œ œ œ j j œ. œœ œ & J œ œ œ J
? j œ . j . j œ. œ œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ
ã œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ œ . œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J
65 M2
(partial cue – 4 out of 13 measures)
q = 60 3 ˙ œ œ œ œ œ Electric organ 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & 4 œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ Rhythm guitar ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Bass ? 44 œ œ œ . œ . œ . œ œ œ œ œ 3
3 œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ . & œ . œ œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œ œ . œœ œ . œ œ . œ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰
r œ œ œœ ?œ. ! ‰ œ. œœ !‰ œ œœ Œ R 3
M3
(complete cue)
J = 170 œ ## 4 Ó Œ œ Ó Œ Tubular bells & 4 w
Keyboard+Snare ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ? ## 4 œ œ œ œ Bass 4 œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ
## w œ ˙ .. & Ó Œ œ œ œ ˙
‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ?## œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ . œ œ œ Œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙
66 M4al
(partial cue – 9 out of 15 measures)
J = 72 ### 4 - - - Ó. ‰ Piano & 4 œJ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œœœ œ œœ ? ### 4 œ œ œœ œ˙.œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ ˙œ. Acoustic guitar 4 ˙ . œ ˙ . œ
### œ œ œ œ & œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œœ. œjœ. œœœw œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ~ œ ~ œ œ ˙~ .œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ?### ˙ . œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
r ### & œ . œ œ œ œœ ˙˙ (Guitar) ? ### œ œ œ ˙
M5
(partial cue – 4 out of 8 measures)
e = 138 Glockenspiel œ 12Œ. œœ œ . œœ œ . œ œ ‰œœœ œ œ Music box & 8 ‰ œŒ ‰ œŒ ‰œœŒ. ! ?12 œ œœ œ œœœœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ Pipe organ 8œœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœ œ
3 œ.œ œœ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ !œ œ .œœ œ .œœ œœœ œœ ˙ œ œ . œ œ & Œ ‰œ Œ ‰ Œ .. ‰ Œ ‰
? œ œœ œ œ œ
67 M12
(complete cue)
q = 70
Violins 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ .. & 4 #˙ ˙ ##˙˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w Glock ˙ ˙ #w
Double bass ? 4 . 4 #w . w w w
M16 (complete˙ ˙ cue)b Fuzzy synthesizers w ˙ bw ˙ b œ œ & œ b œœ b œœ œ n œ b œn œ b œœ œ n œ b œn œ b œœ n œ b œn œ b œœ œ n œ b œn œ b œœ œ n œ b œn œ b œœ œ n œ b œn œ b œœ œ n œnb œ œ b w w w w w w œœ
M18al
(complete cue) j = 130 rit. rit. œ ˙. œ 1 œ ~.. œ ‰ 13 œ œ Piano #: œ #œ œ œ & 4 #œœ#œœ#œœ#œ#œœ #œœ œ œœ jnœJœ.JœJœ‰ J #œ
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ANNEX 2: TRANSCRIPTIONS – ANIME
“Giwaku”Anim
(complete cue)
q = 60 œ #œ œ Œœœ#œœ#œ œ Œœ#œ#œœœœ #œ#œœ œ Piano &44 # œ Œ #œ Œ
Synthesizer 4 ~ #˙ ~ #˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ #˙ ? 4 w w
“Jiken”
(complete cue)
J = 66
4 ‰ #œœbœ Œ ! ‰ #œœbœ Œ ! Violin & 4 œ#œ œNœ ww w ? 4 w w Synthesizer 4 ww w w ww
pizz. Double bass ? 44 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œœ
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“Sansaku”Anime
(partial cue – 4 out of 25 measures)
q = 106 œ # œ œ œ œ Jœ 4 œ œ œ . œ œ œœ J œœ œ œ œ 4 ‰œœ œœ J Oboe & J J J J J
~ ~ ~ ? # j j j Keyboard ~ ~ œ œ œ œ œœjœœ œ œ œœ œ œ ~ ~j~ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ~ œœ œœ ~ ~
“Riyuu”
(partial cue – 4 out of 18 mesures) œ .= 7., _ œ _._ ### œ _ _ œ œœ œ ˙ 4œœœœœœœ.œœ œ œ œ œ . Glockenspiel &4‰œœ œ. œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ ˙. Synthesizer I/ _ œ I/ œ
? ### 4 œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ Xylophone 4 œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ
“Urugawa”
(complete cue)
œ j œ j ˙ j ˙ œ œ œ œ. ˙ Low wind ? œ w œ œ œ w ˙ instrument Œ ˙ @ @ @ Violin @ @ @.
? w w w ˙. Double bass w w w ˙.
70