How so? Aside from a handful of composers like Dustin Brower and Michael Giacchino, contemporary music from the West is forgettable or straight up crap. Oh sure, you can cherry pick a handful of songs from Hans Zimmer or Alan Silvestri, out of the entirety of their works and out of the entirety of the Western music industry, but they don't put out consistently great work like the aforementioned two, or Japanese composers.
To paraphrase David V Stewart:
Originally Posted by David V Stewart
Great contemporary composers (had to have composed commercial music since 2000, if they stopped before they don't count. Has to have consistently put out great work, not just one off good songs. No Alan Silvestri just because he made a violin riff). Western composers highlighted in bold.
- Hitoshi Sakimoto (FF12, Valkyria Chronicles)
- Masayoshi Soken (FFXIV)
- Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter II, Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles, FFXV)
- Kumi Tanioka (FFXI, FF Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time)
- Hayato Sonoda (Trails, Tokyo Xanadu, Zwei Illvard)
- Wataru Ishibashi (Trails)
- Yukihiro Jindo (Trails arranger)
- Morikazu Aoki (Pokemon RSE, ORAS arranger)
- Shota Kageyama (Pokemon BW, XY, ORAS arranger)
- Asuka Ohta (Animal Crossing Wild World, Mario Kart Wii)
- Yuki Hayashi (My Hero Academia)
- Nobuo Uematsu (FFII, FFIII, FFVII, FFVIII FFX, FFXI, FFXIV, Granblue Fantasy)
- Minako Adachi (Pokemon SM, SM arranger)
- Go Ichinose (Pokemon RSE, SM)
- Junichi Masuda (Pokemon Indigo League anime, Pokemon GSC, Pokemon BW, Pokemon SM)
- Howard Shore (LotR, the Hobbit)
- Manami Kiyota (Xenoblade Chronicles)
- Koji Kondo (Super Mario 64, LoZ Ocarina of Time)
- Joe Hisaishi (Ghibli films)
- Taku Iwasaki (Rurouni Kenshin Trust and Betrayal, The Irregular at Magic Highschool)
- Kohei Tanaka (Gunbuster, Sakura Wars, One Piece)
- Michael Giacchino (Up, Star Trek reboots)
- Takahiro Unisuga (Trails, Ys, Tokyo Xanadu)
- Hitomi Sato (Pokemon BW, SM)
- Saki Momiyama (Trails, Zwei Illvard)
- Tomokatsu Hagiuda (Trails)
- Naoki Satou (Sword of the Stranger)
- Jeremy Soule (Guild Wars 2, Skyrim, WoW MoP)
- Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft)
- Yoshihisa Hirano (Hunter x Hunter 2011)
- Edo Guidotti (WoW MoP)
- Akira Senju (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)
- Tsutomu Narita (FFXIV, Granblue Fantasy arranger)
- Kenji Kawai (Fate/Stay Night anime, Seirei no Moribito, Death Note, Gundam 00)
- Ryo Takeshita (Trails)
- Noriyuki Asakura (Rurouni Kenshin)
- Russell Brower (World of Warcraft) - (the amount of work he has done is understated, WoW composers do multiple tracks for a single theme. For example, the Eversong Woods is listed as one theme, but it has over 12 minutes of unique music across multiple tracks).
- Masaru Yokoyama (Unbreakable Machine Doll, Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans)
- Harry Gregson-Williams (The Chronicles of Narnia)
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenogears, Xenoblade Chronicles 2)
- Hideyuki Fukasawa (Fate UBW, Witch of the Holy Night, Touken Ranbu Katsugeki)
- Sam Cardon (WoW MoP, Legion) - (he did Preserver from Legion!)
- Neal Acree (WoW MoP)
- Derek Duke (WoW WotLK, MoP, Diablo 3)
- Brian Tyler (Lego Universe)
- Yasuharu Takanashi (Naruto, Log Horizon, Boruto, Fairy Tale)
- Yuki Kajiura (Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/Zero, SAO)
- John Powell (How to Train your Dragon)
- David Arkenstone (WoW)
- Glenn Stafford (Warcraft 2, WoW WotLK)
- Shiro Sagisu (Bleach, Magi)
- John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park)
- Makoto Miyazaki (One Punch Man)
- Motoi Sakuraba (Super Smash Bros Brawl arranger, Dark Souls 3, Tales of Berseria)
- Masashi Hamauzu (FFX, FFXIII)
- Hiroyuki Sawano (Attack on Titan, Aldnoah.Zero, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Thunderbolt Fantasy)
- Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer (Pirates of the Caribbean, Interstellar, Kung fu Panda)
- Junya Nakano (FFX)
Out of 61 composers, 16 are from the West, and I was being generous with some of them.
They did spacey ambient tracks that Mass Effect copied later. Otherwise I don't know anything else about them.
He's done hardly anything since 2000.Frank Klepacki ?
Only game of his I played was Borderlands 2 and I remember the soundtrack being meh. He got a lot of high profile jobs so apparently some people think he's good.Jesper Kyd?
Never heard of him until now.Christopher Tin
Never heard anything memorable from his games.Jeff van Dyck ?
Has one notable soundtrack (I have a few Witcher 3 tracks on my favorite's playlist).Marcin Przybyłowicz?
And somehow I am glad that I lost interest in Jojo after I watched Part 3.
"Would you please let me join your p-p-party?
Sigh...you and your Chika:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...archtext=chika
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...archtext=chika
I just started My Hero Academia and with the penchant for some of the names, is Shota Aizawa a play on words? Watching the dub, they literally pronounce it Eyes-ow-uh. Hearing right after he talked about getting serious dry eye after using his quirk it just seemed like too much of a coincidence.