This Mega CD RPG from Yuzo Takada’s anime 3×3 (Sazan) Eyes had a soundtrack release in 1993. The game, “Holy Demon Legend 3×3 Eyes” (Seima Densetsu 3×3 Eyes) later had its storyline turned into a three-part OAV in 1995, so while the game is a spin-off of the anime, the game itself spawned even more anime. Imagine that!
The album’s two discs are divided like night and day. The first disc, featuring beautiful arrangements from Kaoru Wada, is a studio-recorded section with Classical/New-Age music for full orchestra, small chamber sets, and piano. It’s beautiful, but unfortunately, it’s also really short. These songs were likely used during the animated sequences in the game, and as such, there was only a half hour’s worth of stuff to write for it.
Though most of the songs on the first disc are soft, hard-driven music is found on songs like “Ancient Great Wizard Venares,” which is clearly an arrangement of a battle theme. I was moved nearly to tears by the last two tracks, particularly the song “I Will Treat You as a Human” (even without knowing the story synopsis, it’s obvious what this statement means by the context of the game’s title and the cover image).
The second disc, the “Original Soundtrack” side, is composed by two people who felt like masking their names with shortened pseudonyms: Mirobu and MACKY. All the musical credit goes to people that we don’t know anything about…great, just great.
Though the sound quality is a little…um…”funky,” the compositions in and of themselves are definitely decent. Most of the songs can be classified as some form of “jazz,” from instrumentation to chord progressions and rhythm: it’s jazzy.
Character themes dominate the latter half of the second disc, and they showcase the strongest compositions on the album. Some of them are “novelty” songs (Hahn’s got claps, Lin-Lin’s got snaps), but most of them are just plain and simple melodies with decent chord structures holding the song together. I have nothing but love for the character themes.
If you can’t wrap your ears around the second disc, the album is still a treasure because of the first disc, which lines up well with the orchestrated work Hisaishi and Tanaka did for Tengai Makyou around the same time. Of course…yeah…good luck finding this album 15 years after the fact.
