Ohji Hiroi, founder of RED and creator of awesome franchises like Sakura Taisen, has traditionally counted on composer Kouhei Tanaka to do his bidding. I’m a huge Tanaka fan, so when I stumbled upon “Mars Story,” I was pumped. But then it turned out that Tanaka only wrote the theme song “Wing,” and the rest was handled by Hiroki Ootomo. That was the proverbial rain on my parade.
But even after listening to the OST, which I didn’t have much of an opinion on, I went ahead and bought this song collection album. Big mistake.
First of all, you’re really only getting four songs: the theme song “Wing” (in three versions), and three character-specific vocal tracks. This album hardly even classifies as “album.” If you drop the karaoke tracks, you’re down to under 20 minutes of music. And the music’s not very good, either.
The best song is, without question, the Tanaka track “Wings.” The instrumental bonus version at the beginning is essentially a Karaoke version with an instrument covering the vocal melody; there’s also some minor additional arrangement taking place, but not enough to get excited about it. The vocal version is tolerable, except for when the vocalist sings the phrase “Wings of your heart” in pure Engrish style. Ouch.
The other tracks all have decent instrumentation, but the vocal performances are the definition of annoying. It’s not even cute-annoying. It’s just annoying. This is especially true of track 4, where a male vocalist performs as character “Pochi.” No. Thank. You.
I think I’ve made my point clear. This isn’t a good album. I don’t see why anyone would want to own it.
