Naoki Sato -- Resolution

 

"Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast" by poet William Congreve, 1697

I guess KKP icon Kayo Grace Kyoku did do a number on Japanese pop culture icon Godzilla, even getting the big guy to flash a peace sign. If only it had been as easy in the movie I saw earlier this afternoon.

Yup, my friends and I caught "Godzilla Minus One". It's been getting rave reviews and we've been hearing that there was a very emotional core in this latest of the long-running kaiju franchise which surprised the heck out of me. All these decades, I've been accustomed to the Big G trampling the heck out of Tokyo with a mixture of clumsiness and goofiness while battling some odd monster in B-movie trappings.

No such thing in this movie at all. And for that matter, there's no fantastical super-weapon or a couple of tiny princesses giving advice. In fact, I actually had to reach for my Kleenex near the end of the movie. Good golly...there is a beating heart under all that sci-fi. 

On the music (since this is a music blog, after all), my friends and I agreed that it was a thrill to hear the original Akira Ifukube（伊福部昭）theme from "Godzilla" (1954) during the final battle. But then there was another overarching song in the score by composer Naoki Sato（佐藤直紀）called "Resolution". When I heard it in the movie, those squealing strings which reminded me of the iconic score from "Psycho", I had thought it was meant as a warning that Godzilla was on the way. Now I realize that it was more of an exhortation for the protagonist to get out of his funk and get rid of the lizard and seeing it come to full orchestral epicness in the final part of the battle, it was glorious.

Sato actually already has representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". He's worked in the anime realm including the "Precure" franchise, providing the scores for the first five series. He also arranged the first opening theme song "DANZEN! Futari wa Precure" （DANZEN！ ふたりはプリキュア）for the first series "Futari wa Pretty Cure" (ふたりはプリキュア), and he came up with my favourite theme song for a henshin sequence for any of the characters in the nearly 20-year history of the franchise, Shiny Luminous. From a cute little magical girl with mammoth pigtails to a gigantic green dinosaur with atomic breath...yeah, that's entertainment!