Takeharu Ishimoto

After listening to "The World Ends With You" the other day, I wondered what the rest of you think of its composer, Takeharu Ishimoto.

It seems to me that, with the departure of many former Squeenix staff composers for the greener fields of freelancing (which presumably means they become more expensive), Ishimoto has become the go-to man for the Square side of things. With TWEWY, Before Crisis, Last Order, and Crisis Core under his belt, and Dissidia to come, he's put out a lot of content for the company over the last year or two, and I've heard rumors that he's to score the new KH mobile games as well.

What do you all think of this? I hesitate to start a thread just to hate on the guy, but I have to say that none of his work has connected with me. He's a tremendously gifted arranger and synth programmer/operator, but his original compositions just feel empty to me--lots of atmospheric, industrial, grunge and such sounds, but very little substance.

Anyone care to comment, or to confirm/deny those rumors?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

There was a huge thread about this at Soundtrack Central some time ago. The majority opinion seemed to be that he wasn't really connecting with anyone. I've listened to a couple of his scores and can say nothing really caught my attention.

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He's a tremendously gifted arranger and synth programmer/operator

I would argue otherwise. His Kingdom Hearts II programming was appalling -- easily outshined by Ryo Yamazaki on Kingdom Hearts and Hirosato Noda / Keiji Kawamori on Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +. I know the games have a lot of memory limitations due to the need to simultaneously load battle and field music, but that doesn't make plain bad samples forgivable. His other synthesizer operator works are limited, the main ones being Final Fantasy X, Vagrant Story, and most of the All Star Pro-Wrestling series. Compared to equivalent works by Ryo Yamazaki, Keiji Kawamori, or Yasuhiro Yamanaka, I'm thoroughly unimpressed.

As for arrangement works, I found the arrangements on Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII lacked fulfilling soundscapes. The more accomplished arrangements there were mostly by Kazuhiko Toyama who did "Mission Start", "The World's Enemy", and "Fulfilled Desire". His Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection arrangement was pretty interesting, but he seems to prefer the mainstream rather than abstract path these days. I'm not expecting another Super Smash Bros. Brawl from Dissidia Final Fantasy. The soundtrack is going to be plain and uninspired, in my opinion.

Anyway, Takeharu Ishimoto's reception as a composer has been very mixed around hardcore game music fans such as those at SoundtrackCentral and other big forums. However, if you read most reviews of the games Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII or The World Ends With You, you'll see his soundtracks are quite popular with the gamers. It's rare to see such enthusiastic fan reactions to such soundtracks and I don't think many if any Square Enix composers have done that in recent years.

Square Enix's music team is very small these days and they're putting a lot of weight on Takeharu Ishimoto. Maybe that's one reason for, say, his instrumental tracks on The World Ends With You being completely underdeveloped or his reliance on endless main theme arrangements in Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII. However, I'm inclined to agree with the consensus among the 'elitists'. He lacks a firm grasp of musicality and just churns out pure junk. The World Ends With You was fun and different, but also plain awful.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I think he is a very good composer and I can't see why his music is supposedly lacking substance. At least, I can't understand why he is blamed for that whereas other VGM composers are not. Anyway, I think his work on The World Ends with You is brilliant, it must also be said that it fits exactly the game--actually, I have read many good opinions about this soundtrack throughout video game websites and boards. Crisis Core has a lot of brilliant rock tunes, I especially enjoy the soft rock ballads. Here again, I've read a lot of good reviews.

I was only disappointed with Last Order, which was pretty weak and uninspired, except for the great guitar solo "Dear Friend".

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With Ishimoto, is up and down for me. For one thing his programming butchered the KH2 soundtrack. On the other hand, I cannot stop looping "Price of Freedom" from Crisis Core over and over again. So he's kinda a mix bag right now, but from some of the original tracks in Crisis Core, I think he has potential.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Zanasea

At least, I can't understand why he is blamed for that whereas other VGM composers are not.

My thing is because he's new and he just happened to have churned out the single worst game-related soundtrack I've ever heard (Wonderful World) and Crisis Core wasn't much at all. And like Mr. X said, the first I heard of him was the synth guy on Kingdom Hearts II and that was almost universally blasted for being worse than KH1's. Even the worst VGM composer* I can think of doesn't have three massive strikes against them to start their composing careers off.

*Oh wait...Mizuta. Nevermind.

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Crisis Core has a lot of brilliant rock tunes,

That comment just killed my entire weekend!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

So you keep bashing him because of his programming for KHII, if my understanding is correct?

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Originally Posted by Zanasea

So you keep bashing him because of his programming for KHII, if my understanding is correct?

That being the least of all evils anyway. But I didn't particularly like the actual music for KHII, so I'm just saying objectively, the synth seemed to take a pretty big hit from KH1.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

For some reason, I thought that Ishimoto had programmed KH1 as well, hence my comment about him being a good synth programmer/operator. And I did enjoy some of his arrangements in Crisis Core, which were easily the finest part of the album. Most of all, I wanted to find something positive to say about the guy, since my impression has been overwhelmingly negative.

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