Review by Alan Rufus Itacz

If I could give it something less than a 5 it would be a 4.5. And the reason is for the very first track, Change Your World (originally sung by V6 at a nice (135?) bebopping speed) is now just a little to slow and pompous for my taste. A few others tracks are, again, at a slower tempo, which makes some tracks a little sluggish compared to their original pop counterparts. I still really love this orchestrated soundtrack, probably my favorite Inuyasha CD I own out of the four I have! The instrumentation, couldn't be any better, just some of the tempos, a little less... quick. I would like to note the smile I had with the 'John Williams' like touch to the end of "Change Your World"... like right out of Star Wars! This is the best Inuyasha sountrack for every diehard fan of the series.

Oh my. I fell in love with the Inuyasha series nearly because of the opening song from season 1, thus V6 singing "Change Your World", so when I bought this CD, I must admit I really didn't know what to expect, guess my expectations where a little high, because I came up a bit disappointed. I found out V6 is simply the Backstreet Boys of Japan. Yeesh. About everything they sing is nearly always in UNISON, ear grating for any real musician in my book. If you're going to have 6 available singers, at least have some voices interchanging, overlapping, or contradicting the lead(s) voices, any slight chance of harmony would be nice! Think of the chords they could do with 6 people and how it would help give a deeper sound to their music! Do something with what you have. This just isn't done here, thus falling flat in my opinion. While it might work for a younger or certain audience overseas, just doesn't work for me. The musical energy is there, but any sort of musicianship just doesn't show enough for me to really enjoy. I'll go back to their version of Change your World any day over this. Sorry.

Like the time I listened to my first "rock" arranged soundtrack in 1996-97 that came with an imported game, this soundtrack will have you feeling like you're flying among the gods! Each and every track is done with great care to fill out a true rock band instrumentation (and then some, lots of synthesizers). The bass parts are wonderfully written also. You'll never go back to the original soundtrack after hearing this group handle the FF series battle tunes like you've NEVER heard them before! The lead parts don't seem as strong as they should be, but trust me it's ALL there. It's not 'head banging' music neither. There's plenty of dynamics and precise musicianship here that's highly appreciative to even this old musician's ears, so no particular instrument overbears another (which is good!). It's a recorded CD, not live, which makes the quality even better! These arrangements are some of the best video game music I think I've ever heard. I just wish we had more of this style for all video game remixes. So if you like Final Fantasy music and like rock music, you're in for a real treat. I hope they do a third! Keep, them coming Black Mages!