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In a music mood, so let’s have a thread about about my favourite Joe Hisaishi score, Arion (1986). I’ll talk about the different albums, the unreleased music and some other stuff.
Hisaishi wasn’t actually the first composer to tackle Arion, in 1982 Fumio Miyashita produced an image album based on the then-ongoing Arion manga.
For those interested in the album, someone uploaded Side A + B on YouTube, no timestamps unfortunately. The album goes for more of a ambient, new wave vibe than Hisaishi’s later efforts.
Side A:
Side A:
Side B:
Damn, no English Wikipedia page? Well you can check out the rest of his discography here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/294695-Fumio-Miyashita?sort=year%2Casc&limit=500&page=1
Yasuhiko was introduced to Hisaishi by Tokuma Shoten’s business department in 1983, Tokuma set up a meeting to discuss to possibility of a second Image Album. Though Yas wasn’t interested and declined. He never heard of him again until he worked on the Nausicaa image album.
Hisasihi’s Arion Image Album was eventually released on October 25th, 1985. As a prototype for his actual score, naturally there’s a lot of differences between it and what ended up in the film. The Symphonic Suite album also shares some of the Image Album’s qualities.
Tracks from the Image Album were used in theatrical trailers such as this one:
Here’s a rough, music-only edit I did of the trailer. Tracks are “Prelude”, “Lesphina” and “Soldiers of the Sea” (in that order)
A concept Hisaishi had, but never used was this whimsical, bubbly version of Arion’s theme. Part of the track “Earth Festival“ on the Image Album and the 6th Movement of the Symphonic Suite. Probably because there wasn’t anywhere in the film that’d need such piece.
The Image Album track “Soldiers of the Sea” is one case where I’d consider the prototype better than the finished result. Aside from the NES-sounding opening it has a lot more going on in it.
For comparison:
Now we’re gonna get to the real meat of this thread... the alternate and unreleased music of Arion.
