If you have not already listened to the podcast of this category, this is the final results, so this will spoil the course of the discussion on that podcast! Be warned!
How lucky am I to have two tracks from one of my favorite games this year make the cut? Pretty damn lucky. We covered plenty of great songs, and our new technique for covering them on-air worked out rather well! As ever, some of the cuts were hard to weather, but that’s how these process-of-elimination deliberations go.
The Winner
GO! GO! BURIKI-DAIOH! (Live A Live)
How do you elevate an already-stellar musical tribute to classic robot anime? You break out the orchestra, add guitars – and oh yeah, you get motherfucking Hironobu Kageyama to do the vocals. In both Japanese and English. Because Mr. Kageyama is just that good.
At its core, Live A Live is a love letter to fiction, dipping its toes into Westerns, space horror, martial arts tales and more. In the Near Future segment, a psychic teen protecting his orphanage finds his way into the Buriki-Daioh by way of a toilet stall: this is a story that melds the bravado of the heroic mech pilot with an appropriately goofy sense of humor. But the theme song is exactly what you’d expect from the very media it’s referencing – with bold trumpets and a melody that demands to be hummed out loud, it signals that our tin knight in shining armor is coming, and if we all cheer him on, his victory against evil is all but assured.
It’s as simple as it gets. But time and time again, Live A Live demonstrates that you can still root, cheer, fall in love with simple. Sometimes, simple is all you need!
The Runners-Up
Megalomania (Live A Live)
For one of the most iconic songs in video games, Megalomania is not deployed sparingly in Live A Live. Every chapter’s final boss triggers the track, usually after they do something so reprehensible that our hero gets fired up. But its frequent deployment does not detract from its power: if anything, each appearance only strengthens it! Megalomania always arrives at top speed, its overpowering electric horns, funky synthesizers and madcap organ pushing you onwards.
It is a herald, a message bridging the past, present and future, letting you know that it is time. It’s time to defeat the evil in front of you. It is time to set things right. And even if it gets up again, you’ll be waiting, Megalomania blaring in your ears, ready to knock it back down as many times as it takes. It is the will to fight incarnate. It is everything.
Like a Weed, Naturally, as a Matter of Course (Guilty Gear Strive)
Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting game, but the soundtrack feels like it came straight out of a rock opera. Its lead designer, original creator and composer, Daisuke Ishiwatari (he’s very hands-on with the series), uses each track to tell a story: from the musical genre to the lyrics themselves, characters’ interior lives and accomplishments are mapped out through song. And with Strive, these characters are finally getting a hold of their own identities – Ishiwatari opens the game with “I KNOW WHO I AM!”, setting the tone for what’s in store.
Testament, a fan favorite who made a triumphant return in 2022, certainly went through a change of their own. Their new look leaned even further into androgyny than their previous incarnations, and the way they carried themselves looked more at-ease than before. But it’s their unique song that tells you everything you need to know. It starts out like many of Ishiwatari’s other metal ballads, laying down the kind of breakneck guitar and hard rock vocals you’d expect from an over-the-top 2D fighter.
Then suddenly, “She doesn’t need a name to distinguish him.” Everything falls silent for a moment, before it all changes: the melody soars as “she flies through the proud darkness.” This shift takes what was otherwise a standard rock number and imbues it with a loving spirit, crafting the story of a nonbinary outcast struggling with whether “he” or “she” fits them better, then finding their true equilibrium by accepting both, ascending to a state of inner peace that is equally heroic and beautiful.
Personally speaking, the song didn’t work for Six and I as well as it did for Kyrie: I found myself wanting a little more from the bits surrounding the chorus. But man, that chorus. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s filled with so much love for this character embracing their queerness that it’s difficult not to appreciate what Ishiwatari and his cohorts have done here. Listening to it again, Kyrie was totally right to fight for this one.
We’ll have even more awards coming your way this Friday, so stay tuned!
Our art for the Gimmick Awards 2022 is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.
