Bullet Hell shooters (aka
Danmaku, for the Japanophiles out there) are a game genre that I'm largely aware of by reputation - while I spent a fair amount of time in college hanging out and watching a pair of my friends play 19XX, I had no particular skill at the shoot-em-up genre or any real interest in the kind of obsessive pattern memorization and split-second maneuvering required even for games that don't blanket the entire screen in bullets.
As such, it came as a bit of a shock to find that the soundtracks for the
Touhou Project games (the recent installments of which have been created by a team of
one), like N.EX.T's soundtrack for the Korean version of
Guilty Gear XX# Reload before them, sent a wave of
pure joy down my auditory nerve(s). Some examples:
*
Necrofantasia from
Perfect Cherry Blossom (plus a
metal remix!)
* A
piano + synth version of the nonsensically titled 'UN Owen was her?' from
Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, plus another,
more electronic and bombastic remix (the original kind of pales in comparison).
A former girlfriend once described the kind of music I tend to like as "Gothic J-pop", which isn't inaccurate, and I'll be the first to admit that the appeal of this kind of music isn't universal (not unlike the games that it comes from). Nonetheless, there's something about the combination of melodic intricacy with pure velocity and virtuosity of technique (even if that technique is sound editing rather than live performance) displayed by this kind of music that really does it for me, and tracks like
Necrofantasia are pretty much the platonic form of the Alec-approved instrumental.
There's a larger point to be drawn here about how certain sub-genres (of music, games, books/stories - whatever) can have their discourse become
about technique and virtuosity instead of popular appeal (again, this is definitely the case with
Danmaku). It's not even necessarily unhealthy, as long as the aficionados of those sub-genres acknowledge that, yes, their appreciation for technique as technique *is* specialized, and most people won't share it (either because of a lack of sufficient background or just the vagaries of taste), and
that's okay. Something being more intricate or harder to execute doesn't mean it's inherently better than other works in its field (though it certainly
can be better!) - it just means that the hardcore/jaded segments of the audience are more likely to appreciate it. And if that's your audience? Go to.
