Review by Matias

This is probably the best jazz/big band style anime soundtrack cd, or at least as good as Cowboy Bebop. The tracks are some of the most energetic and grooviest spy action music I've heard. I even played this to a person who's never listened to any anime music and he immediately fell in love with this. There are also slower tempo tracks, but they are just as good as the others. If you like CB, you'll certainly like this.

This album simply features movie themes from many Ghibli movies in piano versions, no other instruments are used. It's very much like the Final Fantasy Piano Collections, but the themes are from Ghibli movies. The arrangements could have been more interesting and experimental, but since the original themes are very good already, it doesn't matter that much in the end. The tracks are surprisingly relaxing too. The piano is played by Tomohisa Okudo and he does the job nicely.

This is Mitsuda at his best. The style is very similar to Chrono Cross, sort of celtic. Violins, acoustic guitar, choir and other instruments common to Mitsuda are used beautifully together. The album is only about 36 minutes long, but every minute is pure excellence.

This third album in the series of Initial D 4th Stage D Selection albums is much like the previous albums. It has energetic and addictive eurobeat songs that are just as cheesy as always. So Fragile by Pamsy is probably my favorite track, but the others are very good as well. They also included the classic Back on the Rocks, which is still a great track. So you actually get 11 new tracks because of the totally unnecessary remix at the end. Still it's a decent album and is sure to please the fans of the series.

Onimusha 2 Orchestra Album is easily among the best orchestral game music albums. I have not heard the original soundtrack nor played the game but it really doesn't matter as the music stands on its own. The music is a nice mix of flutes, drums, violins, guitars and probably a whole lot of other instruments. They're all mixed very beautifully together creating a nice Japanese feeling to the album. Some tracks are very epic and powerful while some are more calm with pianos and stuff. The album has a good balance between calm and more energetic tracks and something that all tracks have in common is that they're are very enjoyable.

Shin Contra achieves musically the Contra spirit probably as good as it's possible. Akira Yamaoka and Sota Fujimori have created music just like the game, fast and hard with heavy guitars growling and energetic techno pounding. There are quite many techno-style tracks, but they're just as good as the heavy tracks. Some tracks I especially like are the addictive BATTLE TRAIN, which is otherwise excellent but could have been a little longer. Another one I like is A TRUE LAST BOSS, which has horn like sounds that make the track somehow frightening and make it really sound like it's the last boss you're fighting. SKY TO THE OCEAN and DEAREST are probably my favourites of the heavy guitar tracks. There are only two or three tracks I don't like that much, but overall the album is very good with nice variation.