Howdy, y’all. I’m ninth and I’m extremely normal about Pokemon music, so I’m using this thread to archive my thoughts on the music of the franchise. I’ve already done a post highlighting the excellent soundtrack of Scarlet and Violet (here)[https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/your-favorite-theme-in-pokemon.3537309/post-10209686], but I figured it might be better to not flood the other thread with overlong essays that crash my browser on mobile. This first entry is going to be a guide to the various composers of the main-series Pokemon games, their signatures and how to spot who made your favorite game music.
Note: unfortunately, the embeds just die a fourth of the way through the post, and despite writing this long-ass post I cannot figure out how to get them working. Apologies to anyone reading on mobile; get ready to learn picture-in-picture, buddy.
Junichi Masuda, one of the founding members of Game Freak, was the sole composer for the first generation of Pokemon. His work laid foundations for what a Pokemon theme sounds like. You can recognize a battle theme instantly with rapidly descending intros, a few bars in the same tone before jumping into a constantly-shifting, hyperactive string of melodies. Jingles like leveling up and using the Pokemon Center were also his creations. Masuda’s music is Pokemon, and anyone who’s ever put together music for the series is drawing from his blueprints.
There’s an interesting shift in some of Masuda’s later work, where more than a few of his battle themes veer into more experimental, electronic compositions. He has almost no arrangement credits starting at Black and White, with the exception of SM’s Solgaleo/Lunala and Elite Four themes, but between Kageyama and Ichinose many of his new pieces sound futuristic and push the boundaries of what we consider Pokemon music.
Masuda’s modern work has slowed as other composers entered the field, and much of it is quite obviously in his Game Boy style but with modern instruments. Poco Path, one of his few new works for the early game of Scarlet and Violet, sounds like you could just transpose it to 8-bit without any difficulty. With his departure for The Pokemon Company in 2022, and the series shifting to more dynamic music in general, it’s unlikely we will hear too many new compositions from the OG in the future. Still, those iconic few notes from the intro will live on as long as Pokemon itself does.
Go Ichinose started as a programmer for Game Freak but was brought on board for Gold and Silver’s soundtrack, and rapidly became a mainstay of the franchise. Ichinose was a key composer and arranger of the 2D era, most notably co-leading the DPP soundtrack with Hitomi Sato, before being absent from most of Gen 6. He returned immediately afterwards and remains a trusted arranger for the biggest, most important moments of the series.
Ichinose’s strength is his understanding of scale and importance — if there’s an endgame boss theme or a final area, there’s a good chance he composed or arranged it. He tackles everything from a lonely mountain with the fate of the universe on the line to a triumphant title fight with big compositions that place you in the moment. You can hear this too in his arrangement of Toby Fox’s Area Zero, where his big echoing drums and unnerving choirs lend scale to the endgame. But sometimes, to create a feeling of impending doom, all you need is piano — an instrument usually associated with peaceful, quiet areas, now a weapon in the hands of the most powerful trainer in Sinnoh.
Ichinose has a couple of calling cards. The first and most obvious is his rapid-fire slap bass, typically used to add tension and throw in another moving part for large setpieces, and also just because it’s cool. His basslines are more hyperactive than any other composer, and it’s remarkably easy to spot once you’re paying attention.
He also quite likes his opening drum fills, a sampling of which can be heard here.
One other feature he uses a lot is this repeating three-note sequence, a melancholy motif that just feels nostalgic. It’s impossible to miss once you pick up on it twice.
I couldn’t fit this in anywhere but one of my personal favorites from him is Alabaster Icelands 1, this foreboding icy theme that could nearly pass as an old Japanese pop instrumental. It’s a refreshing take on the “cold area” music tropes and weaves in the uncertainty of a journey near its end. Ichinose’s work on PLA is super versatile and I’ll be covering more of it in the future.
Morikazu Aoki composed and arranged several songs for Generations 2 and 3, including some jingles used in Diamond and Pearl, before leaving Game Freak for Mario & Luigi developers AlphaDream. Also making a lot of one-time themes and jingles, such as Pokedex evaluations and victory theme arrangements, one of Aoki’s main legacies is Hoenn’s iconic trumpets, arranging a number of tracks that use the famous soundfont. I can’t blame him — it’s a nice-sounding trumpet, and it really makes the region’s soundtrack sound important. Route 110 sticks out as a big, joyous adventure thanks to it.
It’s a little harder to characterize Aoki’s work on Gen 2 as many of his works were rearrangements of Kanto themes. He was nonetheless responsible for a number of favorite tunes, including Eusine’s theme and the Battle Tower theme that’s now associated with the Frontier and post-game gauntlets.
Several of Aoki’s jingles have since become recognizable tunes carried into future games. Obtaining Eggs, Berries, and even deleting moves are all familiar sounds composed by him.
Hitomi Sato has sporadic credits before Gen 4, including writing lyrics for a number of bonus tracks on the SMCs, but her big break came in Gen 4, when she took on composing and arranging Diamond and Pearl’s soundtrack alongside Go Ichinose. Sato’s unique style became a favorite, and she has been a regular on Pokemon soundtracks ever since, though usually working on character suites or particular areas rather than whole soundtracks like DP.
Sato brings a free-flowing, jazzy style to Pokemon, with her instruments allowed to step outside of the lines and go where they please. From the chilled-out low-light vibes of Virbank City to the adventurous Vast Poni Canyon, her compositions are distinctly groovy in a way nobody else on the team really tries to approach. Her style also naturally lends itself to infectious earworms like Driftveil City, and there’s a sense of homeliness and familiarity in much of her music.
One thing she doesn’t work on as frequently any more is route themes, which is a shame, because she makes some incredible atmospheres. Sinnoh Route 209 is a beautiful, heartfelt anthem for the region, full of hope and heartache alike. Unova’s postgame routes all use the same theme, and it feels like reflecting on the adventures past and to come, the descending strings like Route 13’s waterfalls gently crashing around you. The bittersweetness of Ancient Poni Path, a lonely stretch in the late game, feels like reflecting on a journey near its end, like watching the sun slowly creep into the horizon.
Legends: Arceus allowed Sato to tap into a new bag, these massive ambient pieces — I’m going to speak on them more in my next post covering PLA, but one of my favorites is “Disaster,” the warping, droning horrorscape that plays everywhere when the skies darken over Hisui.
Notably, Sato also composes a lot of music for connectivity features and non-core gameplay areas; see Pokestar Studios, Festival Plaza and the like. A good deal of the new music on HGSS is her work, covering things such as the Global Terminal (note the similarity to Colress’ battle theme, which she composed), the Nintendo WFC melody, and Mystery Gift themes. She also composed and arranged a bulk of music for the Battle Frontier, including the absolute banger of the Frontier Brain battle theme she co-composed with Ichinose.
Shota Kageyama joined Game Freak as a composer for the Gold and Silver remakes, arranging the majority of Masuda/Ichinoss/Aoki’s originals for the DS soundfonts. His grasp on the sound was immediately obvious, and he followed this up as one of the lead composers on Black and White, writing many of the game’s most iconic themes. After also leading much of X and Y’s soundtrack and arranging remakes for ORAS and the Delta Episode, Kageyama left Game Freak in 2014, but continues to work with them on remakes (LGPE, BDSP) and side games like Pokemon Duel (RIP) and Pokemon Sleep.
If Masuda is recognizably Gen 1 in his composition, Kageyama is similarly intertwined with the sound of the DS era. He’s able to cover a massive range, from the anthemic Castelia City to the ominous Chargestone Cave to the jaunty Accumula Town. He notably has favorite soundfonts he frequents, and it’s most obvious in HGSS where he spams that one guitar and string combo and it never gets old. Kageyama also worked on several routes for BW, most famously Route 10, a homesick theme tinged with sadness and uncertainty, so good that when it was physically axed in the sequels they added an NPC whose sole purpose was to play it anyways.
Some of his most memorable themes are quieter, more emotional ones. Gut punches like “An Unwavering Heart” arguably form the cornerstones of what constitutes an emotional theme in modern Pokemon. Kageyama also re-orchestrated “Farewell” for the Super Music Collection and it’s just heartwrenching. There’s also the beautiful “KISEKI,” with lyrics written by Masuda and Kenji Matsushima, one of the most touching ending themes to any Pokemon game. I still get chills when all of the languages kick in.
Kageyama’s transition to the expanded sound palettes of Gen 6 continued to enable his compositional skills, as he wrote many of XY’s fundamental melodies and wrote much of the new music for the Delta Episode. His violin-based work on Zinnia’s suite remains iconic to me, if you couldn’t tell by the profile picture.
I would be neglectful to not mention some of Kageyama’s side game work, most notably on Pokemon Duel, a now-discontinued gacha based on the short-lived Trading Figure Game. One fun aspect of that game’s soundtrack was the varying PVP music depending on your rank and the state of the game. At lower ranks, it would start as a relatively chill track before kicking into a synth-heavy overdrive once any piece got dangerously close to the goal. At higher ranks, the music starts at high intensity and stays there, with Kageyama composing two epics reminiscent of his work on N’s Castle. The game was a broken mess but it was a ton of fun, with plenty of really slick character designs too — I’ll treasure my Deoxys-Speed sweeps in my heart forever.
Minako Adachi wrote a couple of tracks here and there for Black and White, before composing a substantial amount of X and Y’s soundtrack, most notably the Team Flare suite. She took on about half of the arrangements for ORAS alongside Kageyama, before becoming a primary composer for many of the future games of the 3D era. Adachi was a leading voice of Scarlet and Violet in particular, composing and arranging the majority of overworld and wild battle music for both the base game and DLCs.
Adachi’s style is highly diverse, exploring a variety of genres, but there’s often an emphasis on big melodies, as well as wrangling familiar harmonies and shared motifs from other related tracks. She puts a ton of emphasis on making her lead instruments pop out and stick in your mind. Adachi’s battle themes are high-intensity and often represent tonal shifts, and she frequents these off-kilter piano chords and strained electric guitars that make me think she would be arranging for Kirby games in another life. If it doesn’t sound like a Pokemon theme, it might just be her.
Her orchestral arrangements in overworld themes are arguably the modern sound of Pokemon, and it’s where Adachi gets to flex her versatility the most. She goes from jaunty Irish “Shipping Up To Boston”-ass tunes to medieval 11/8 swing to happy-go-lucky vacation vibes without breaking a sweat. I’m going to talk about South Province later, but her arrangement of Fox’s composition is emblematic of what you might hear in a trailer for new games, an anthem for Paldea and Pokemon as a whole.
Teruo Taniguchi is, to my knowledge, not a Game Freak employee, and presently works for SuperSweep. He created a few jingles for B2W2, before contributing SFX for Pokemon Quest and Legends: Arceus several years apart, as well as soundtracking Game Freak’s 2017 release Giga Wrecker. For Scarlet and Violet, Taniguchi composed and arranged the entire Team Star suite to overwhelmingly positive reception — I’m hoping they let him compose more on further games.
Taniguchi’s style is loud and brash, combining rock elements with huge synths to fill as much space as possible. This much is evident as far back as his work on Giga Wrecker, but it really jumps out in his Team Star work, with racing drums and chaotic guitar solos combining for a smorgasbord of a musical experience. He even dips into full-on hardstyle with Penny’s battle theme, taking her Galarian origins to the logical extreme. I wish I had more to write about him, because the few tracks he’s done for Pokemon really are exceptional and unique for the series.
Toby Fox is perhaps better known as the creator and soundtracker of indie smash hit Undertale and Deltarune, with his soundtracks being widely praised for combining storytelling motifs, emotional weight, and absolute bangers. Fluent in Japanese, Fox befriended Go Ichinose over Twitter, and things escalated to a meeting with Game Freak in which he asked to make a song for them and they let him, resulting in the Battle Tower theme. Their relationship strengthened, and Fox later composed for Game Freak’s Little Town Hero alongside Hitomi Sato, before composing a small but extremely significant chunk of Scarlet and Violet’s soundtrack.
Fox operates in a few modes that will be familiar to fans of his other work. Fox’s overworld themes radiate energy, and he makes use of these massive leads that set up crucial motifs. Note Adachi’s arrangement for both South Province and Mesagoza — I think these two actually share a few similarities in their style, and her instruments really do a great job in emphasizing Fox’s melodies.
His battle and boss themes are maximalist, racing journeys through as many motifs as he can cram into the track, with changes in key and tempo not uncommon. In particular, he loves to use these double-time drums to get the heart racing even faster. Academy Ace Tournament, with its triumphant saxophone and full-force guitars, is a fun fusion of his overworld and battle styles: what I’ve linked below is timestamped from a SMC upload, but you absolutely have to listen to the high-quality SMC version because the game rips all sound super muddy.
Hiromitsu Maeba is a Capcom alumnus, presently working as a freelancer as far as I know. His work with Pokemon mainly consists of cutscene and non-repeating tracks, being trusted to set the tone during important story beats. Maeba started in this role in Legends: Arceus and continued throughout Scarlet and Violet, where he also notably composed Clavell/Clive’s suite.
One of Maeba’s key roles is to set the atmosphere, and many of his tracks play during particularly cinematic moments, such as the expulsion from Jubilife Village, space-time distortions, or a cave encounter you’re horribly underprepared for. Even his battle theme for Clavell (Fox is also credited due to the use of the Mesagoza motif) feels like a dynamic piece from a movie scene, euphoric strings and wistful trumpets bringing us on a journey.
Tomoaki Oga only worked on Gen 7 games but nonetheless played a significant role in the game’s atmosphere, setting a tropical tone with pieces like “Salon” and delving into uncertainty and threat much later in the soundtrack. He’s trusted with quite a few endgame tracks related to Lusamine and the Ultra Beasts, as well as arrangements for Archie/Maxie, Cyrus, and Lysandre in USUM.
Hideaki Kuroda took on a number of arrangements in the 3DS era, most notably co-arranging several ORAS battle themes alongside Adachi. Archie/Maxie, Steven, and the Primal Reversion Pokemon are all arranged by the pair, with the Team Leader remixes taking the original theme and pushing the hype to the max. The Primal Reversion theme is particularly interesting for how the original GBA themes phase in and out of the mix, as if the music itself is reverting to the very beginning of things. The Delta Episode’s “Per Aspera Ad Astra” is also mostly his work, a triumphant guitar solo that covers Rayquaza’s ascent to the skies.
There’s a couple of other musicians who only ended up on one or two main series games for a few contributions, but I’d be neglectful not to mention them. Takuto Kitsuta, a HAL Laboratory composer, arranged several remake tracks for HGSS, most of them Kanto tracks that were already redone once. Nowadays he mainly works on soundtracks for side games such as PokePark and Detective Pikachu.
Rei Murayama joined Game Freak in 2018 as a planner, but recently dipped into the soundtrack division for Scarlet and Violet’s second DLC, where he is credited as a composer on much of the Terapagos suite. My guess is that he wrote the two main melodies associated with the turtle.
Keita Okamoto is a programmer for Game Freak, and is credited on one track (Poke Job, arranged by Ichinose) and two jingles across Sword and Shield and its DLC, one of which is just the “found an item” jingle that tape-stops halfway through.
Jun Fukuda, mainly an SFX guru who lent sounds to several games across the franchise including Pokemon Sleep, is credited on precisely one track across SMCs, an arrangement of the Pokemon Center jingle titled “Good Night” from the Sun and Moon soundtrack. Sure, why not.
UPDATE: I can't believe I missed Satoshi Nohara, a programmer and script designer who made a few jingles for Platinum including jingles for receiving Castle Points and BP.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! My next post will cover the soundtrack of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and how Ichinose and Sato wield old motifs and nostalgia to craft some of the best Pokemon music you'll never hear.
Note: unfortunately, the embeds just die a fourth of the way through the post, and despite writing this long-ass post I cannot figure out how to get them working. Apologies to anyone reading on mobile; get ready to learn picture-in-picture, buddy.
Junichi Masuda, one of the founding members of Game Freak, was the sole composer for the first generation of Pokemon. His work laid foundations for what a Pokemon theme sounds like. You can recognize a battle theme instantly with rapidly descending intros, a few bars in the same tone before jumping into a constantly-shifting, hyperactive string of melodies. Jingles like leveling up and using the Pokemon Center were also his creations. Masuda’s music is Pokemon, and anyone who’s ever put together music for the series is drawing from his blueprints.
There’s an interesting shift in some of Masuda’s later work, where more than a few of his battle themes veer into more experimental, electronic compositions. He has almost no arrangement credits starting at Black and White, with the exception of SM’s Solgaleo/Lunala and Elite Four themes, but between Kageyama and Ichinose many of his new pieces sound futuristic and push the boundaries of what we consider Pokemon music.
Masuda’s modern work has slowed as other composers entered the field, and much of it is quite obviously in his Game Boy style but with modern instruments. Poco Path, one of his few new works for the early game of Scarlet and Violet, sounds like you could just transpose it to 8-bit without any difficulty. With his departure for The Pokemon Company in 2022, and the series shifting to more dynamic music in general, it’s unlikely we will hear too many new compositions from the OG in the future. Still, those iconic few notes from the intro will live on as long as Pokemon itself does.
Go Ichinose started as a programmer for Game Freak but was brought on board for Gold and Silver’s soundtrack, and rapidly became a mainstay of the franchise. Ichinose was a key composer and arranger of the 2D era, most notably co-leading the DPP soundtrack with Hitomi Sato, before being absent from most of Gen 6. He returned immediately afterwards and remains a trusted arranger for the biggest, most important moments of the series.
Ichinose’s strength is his understanding of scale and importance — if there’s an endgame boss theme or a final area, there’s a good chance he composed or arranged it. He tackles everything from a lonely mountain with the fate of the universe on the line to a triumphant title fight with big compositions that place you in the moment. You can hear this too in his arrangement of Toby Fox’s Area Zero, where his big echoing drums and unnerving choirs lend scale to the endgame. But sometimes, to create a feeling of impending doom, all you need is piano — an instrument usually associated with peaceful, quiet areas, now a weapon in the hands of the most powerful trainer in Sinnoh.
Ichinose has a couple of calling cards. The first and most obvious is his rapid-fire slap bass, typically used to add tension and throw in another moving part for large setpieces, and also just because it’s cool. His basslines are more hyperactive than any other composer, and it’s remarkably easy to spot once you’re paying attention.
He also quite likes his opening drum fills, a sampling of which can be heard here.
One other feature he uses a lot is this repeating three-note sequence, a melancholy motif that just feels nostalgic. It’s impossible to miss once you pick up on it twice.
I couldn’t fit this in anywhere but one of my personal favorites from him is Alabaster Icelands 1, this foreboding icy theme that could nearly pass as an old Japanese pop instrumental. It’s a refreshing take on the “cold area” music tropes and weaves in the uncertainty of a journey near its end. Ichinose’s work on PLA is super versatile and I’ll be covering more of it in the future.
Morikazu Aoki composed and arranged several songs for Generations 2 and 3, including some jingles used in Diamond and Pearl, before leaving Game Freak for Mario & Luigi developers AlphaDream. Also making a lot of one-time themes and jingles, such as Pokedex evaluations and victory theme arrangements, one of Aoki’s main legacies is Hoenn’s iconic trumpets, arranging a number of tracks that use the famous soundfont. I can’t blame him — it’s a nice-sounding trumpet, and it really makes the region’s soundtrack sound important. Route 110 sticks out as a big, joyous adventure thanks to it.
It’s a little harder to characterize Aoki’s work on Gen 2 as many of his works were rearrangements of Kanto themes. He was nonetheless responsible for a number of favorite tunes, including Eusine’s theme and the Battle Tower theme that’s now associated with the Frontier and post-game gauntlets.
Several of Aoki’s jingles have since become recognizable tunes carried into future games. Obtaining Eggs, Berries, and even deleting moves are all familiar sounds composed by him.
Hitomi Sato has sporadic credits before Gen 4, including writing lyrics for a number of bonus tracks on the SMCs, but her big break came in Gen 4, when she took on composing and arranging Diamond and Pearl’s soundtrack alongside Go Ichinose. Sato’s unique style became a favorite, and she has been a regular on Pokemon soundtracks ever since, though usually working on character suites or particular areas rather than whole soundtracks like DP.
Sato brings a free-flowing, jazzy style to Pokemon, with her instruments allowed to step outside of the lines and go where they please. From the chilled-out low-light vibes of Virbank City to the adventurous Vast Poni Canyon, her compositions are distinctly groovy in a way nobody else on the team really tries to approach. Her style also naturally lends itself to infectious earworms like Driftveil City, and there’s a sense of homeliness and familiarity in much of her music.
One thing she doesn’t work on as frequently any more is route themes, which is a shame, because she makes some incredible atmospheres. Sinnoh Route 209 is a beautiful, heartfelt anthem for the region, full of hope and heartache alike. Unova’s postgame routes all use the same theme, and it feels like reflecting on the adventures past and to come, the descending strings like Route 13’s waterfalls gently crashing around you. The bittersweetness of Ancient Poni Path, a lonely stretch in the late game, feels like reflecting on a journey near its end, like watching the sun slowly creep into the horizon.
Legends: Arceus allowed Sato to tap into a new bag, these massive ambient pieces — I’m going to speak on them more in my next post covering PLA, but one of my favorites is “Disaster,” the warping, droning horrorscape that plays everywhere when the skies darken over Hisui.
Notably, Sato also composes a lot of music for connectivity features and non-core gameplay areas; see Pokestar Studios, Festival Plaza and the like. A good deal of the new music on HGSS is her work, covering things such as the Global Terminal (note the similarity to Colress’ battle theme, which she composed), the Nintendo WFC melody, and Mystery Gift themes. She also composed and arranged a bulk of music for the Battle Frontier, including the absolute banger of the Frontier Brain battle theme she co-composed with Ichinose.
Shota Kageyama joined Game Freak as a composer for the Gold and Silver remakes, arranging the majority of Masuda/Ichinoss/Aoki’s originals for the DS soundfonts. His grasp on the sound was immediately obvious, and he followed this up as one of the lead composers on Black and White, writing many of the game’s most iconic themes. After also leading much of X and Y’s soundtrack and arranging remakes for ORAS and the Delta Episode, Kageyama left Game Freak in 2014, but continues to work with them on remakes (LGPE, BDSP) and side games like Pokemon Duel (RIP) and Pokemon Sleep.
If Masuda is recognizably Gen 1 in his composition, Kageyama is similarly intertwined with the sound of the DS era. He’s able to cover a massive range, from the anthemic Castelia City to the ominous Chargestone Cave to the jaunty Accumula Town. He notably has favorite soundfonts he frequents, and it’s most obvious in HGSS where he spams that one guitar and string combo and it never gets old. Kageyama also worked on several routes for BW, most famously Route 10, a homesick theme tinged with sadness and uncertainty, so good that when it was physically axed in the sequels they added an NPC whose sole purpose was to play it anyways.
Some of his most memorable themes are quieter, more emotional ones. Gut punches like “An Unwavering Heart” arguably form the cornerstones of what constitutes an emotional theme in modern Pokemon. Kageyama also re-orchestrated “Farewell” for the Super Music Collection and it’s just heartwrenching. There’s also the beautiful “KISEKI,” with lyrics written by Masuda and Kenji Matsushima, one of the most touching ending themes to any Pokemon game. I still get chills when all of the languages kick in.
Kageyama’s transition to the expanded sound palettes of Gen 6 continued to enable his compositional skills, as he wrote many of XY’s fundamental melodies and wrote much of the new music for the Delta Episode. His violin-based work on Zinnia’s suite remains iconic to me, if you couldn’t tell by the profile picture.
I would be neglectful to not mention some of Kageyama’s side game work, most notably on Pokemon Duel, a now-discontinued gacha based on the short-lived Trading Figure Game. One fun aspect of that game’s soundtrack was the varying PVP music depending on your rank and the state of the game. At lower ranks, it would start as a relatively chill track before kicking into a synth-heavy overdrive once any piece got dangerously close to the goal. At higher ranks, the music starts at high intensity and stays there, with Kageyama composing two epics reminiscent of his work on N’s Castle. The game was a broken mess but it was a ton of fun, with plenty of really slick character designs too — I’ll treasure my Deoxys-Speed sweeps in my heart forever.
Minako Adachi wrote a couple of tracks here and there for Black and White, before composing a substantial amount of X and Y’s soundtrack, most notably the Team Flare suite. She took on about half of the arrangements for ORAS alongside Kageyama, before becoming a primary composer for many of the future games of the 3D era. Adachi was a leading voice of Scarlet and Violet in particular, composing and arranging the majority of overworld and wild battle music for both the base game and DLCs.
Adachi’s style is highly diverse, exploring a variety of genres, but there’s often an emphasis on big melodies, as well as wrangling familiar harmonies and shared motifs from other related tracks. She puts a ton of emphasis on making her lead instruments pop out and stick in your mind. Adachi’s battle themes are high-intensity and often represent tonal shifts, and she frequents these off-kilter piano chords and strained electric guitars that make me think she would be arranging for Kirby games in another life. If it doesn’t sound like a Pokemon theme, it might just be her.
Her orchestral arrangements in overworld themes are arguably the modern sound of Pokemon, and it’s where Adachi gets to flex her versatility the most. She goes from jaunty Irish “Shipping Up To Boston”-ass tunes to medieval 11/8 swing to happy-go-lucky vacation vibes without breaking a sweat. I’m going to talk about South Province later, but her arrangement of Fox’s composition is emblematic of what you might hear in a trailer for new games, an anthem for Paldea and Pokemon as a whole.
Teruo Taniguchi is, to my knowledge, not a Game Freak employee, and presently works for SuperSweep. He created a few jingles for B2W2, before contributing SFX for Pokemon Quest and Legends: Arceus several years apart, as well as soundtracking Game Freak’s 2017 release Giga Wrecker. For Scarlet and Violet, Taniguchi composed and arranged the entire Team Star suite to overwhelmingly positive reception — I’m hoping they let him compose more on further games.
Taniguchi’s style is loud and brash, combining rock elements with huge synths to fill as much space as possible. This much is evident as far back as his work on Giga Wrecker, but it really jumps out in his Team Star work, with racing drums and chaotic guitar solos combining for a smorgasbord of a musical experience. He even dips into full-on hardstyle with Penny’s battle theme, taking her Galarian origins to the logical extreme. I wish I had more to write about him, because the few tracks he’s done for Pokemon really are exceptional and unique for the series.
Toby Fox is perhaps better known as the creator and soundtracker of indie smash hit Undertale and Deltarune, with his soundtracks being widely praised for combining storytelling motifs, emotional weight, and absolute bangers. Fluent in Japanese, Fox befriended Go Ichinose over Twitter, and things escalated to a meeting with Game Freak in which he asked to make a song for them and they let him, resulting in the Battle Tower theme. Their relationship strengthened, and Fox later composed for Game Freak’s Little Town Hero alongside Hitomi Sato, before composing a small but extremely significant chunk of Scarlet and Violet’s soundtrack.
Fox operates in a few modes that will be familiar to fans of his other work. Fox’s overworld themes radiate energy, and he makes use of these massive leads that set up crucial motifs. Note Adachi’s arrangement for both South Province and Mesagoza — I think these two actually share a few similarities in their style, and her instruments really do a great job in emphasizing Fox’s melodies.
His battle and boss themes are maximalist, racing journeys through as many motifs as he can cram into the track, with changes in key and tempo not uncommon. In particular, he loves to use these double-time drums to get the heart racing even faster. Academy Ace Tournament, with its triumphant saxophone and full-force guitars, is a fun fusion of his overworld and battle styles: what I’ve linked below is timestamped from a SMC upload, but you absolutely have to listen to the high-quality SMC version because the game rips all sound super muddy.
Hiromitsu Maeba is a Capcom alumnus, presently working as a freelancer as far as I know. His work with Pokemon mainly consists of cutscene and non-repeating tracks, being trusted to set the tone during important story beats. Maeba started in this role in Legends: Arceus and continued throughout Scarlet and Violet, where he also notably composed Clavell/Clive’s suite.
One of Maeba’s key roles is to set the atmosphere, and many of his tracks play during particularly cinematic moments, such as the expulsion from Jubilife Village, space-time distortions, or a cave encounter you’re horribly underprepared for. Even his battle theme for Clavell (Fox is also credited due to the use of the Mesagoza motif) feels like a dynamic piece from a movie scene, euphoric strings and wistful trumpets bringing us on a journey.
Tomoaki Oga only worked on Gen 7 games but nonetheless played a significant role in the game’s atmosphere, setting a tropical tone with pieces like “Salon” and delving into uncertainty and threat much later in the soundtrack. He’s trusted with quite a few endgame tracks related to Lusamine and the Ultra Beasts, as well as arrangements for Archie/Maxie, Cyrus, and Lysandre in USUM.
Hideaki Kuroda took on a number of arrangements in the 3DS era, most notably co-arranging several ORAS battle themes alongside Adachi. Archie/Maxie, Steven, and the Primal Reversion Pokemon are all arranged by the pair, with the Team Leader remixes taking the original theme and pushing the hype to the max. The Primal Reversion theme is particularly interesting for how the original GBA themes phase in and out of the mix, as if the music itself is reverting to the very beginning of things. The Delta Episode’s “Per Aspera Ad Astra” is also mostly his work, a triumphant guitar solo that covers Rayquaza’s ascent to the skies.
There’s a couple of other musicians who only ended up on one or two main series games for a few contributions, but I’d be neglectful not to mention them. Takuto Kitsuta, a HAL Laboratory composer, arranged several remake tracks for HGSS, most of them Kanto tracks that were already redone once. Nowadays he mainly works on soundtracks for side games such as PokePark and Detective Pikachu.
Rei Murayama joined Game Freak in 2018 as a planner, but recently dipped into the soundtrack division for Scarlet and Violet’s second DLC, where he is credited as a composer on much of the Terapagos suite. My guess is that he wrote the two main melodies associated with the turtle.
Keita Okamoto is a programmer for Game Freak, and is credited on one track (Poke Job, arranged by Ichinose) and two jingles across Sword and Shield and its DLC, one of which is just the “found an item” jingle that tape-stops halfway through.
Jun Fukuda, mainly an SFX guru who lent sounds to several games across the franchise including Pokemon Sleep, is credited on precisely one track across SMCs, an arrangement of the Pokemon Center jingle titled “Good Night” from the Sun and Moon soundtrack. Sure, why not.
UPDATE: I can't believe I missed Satoshi Nohara, a programmer and script designer who made a few jingles for Platinum including jingles for receiving Castle Points and BP.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! My next post will cover the soundtrack of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and how Ichinose and Sato wield old motifs and nostalgia to craft some of the best Pokemon music you'll never hear.
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