The youth of Shibuya are possibly the coolest people on the planet. This is not artificial cool, like the kind you get by wearing basketball jerseys of unknown players ironically. This is the real deal: colorful, sexy, creative, and unafraid. Here, in the counter-culture fashion capital of Japan (and possibly the world), the line between cosplay and high-fashion becomes blurred. On the street, under the towering buildings and bright lights of Shibuya is where The World Ends With You takes place.
The soundtrack for this DS action RPG fits the setting perfectly. It weighs in at 35 tracks, which alone is impressive for a DS game, but what’s even more impressive is that many of the tracks are vocal numbers. The majority of the songs are technically “J-pop,” but don’t let that scare you away. These songs may have girls with cute voices singing them, but they also have fuzzy guitar riffs, strange breakdowns, and big beats. If I had to sum up the general “feel” of these songs in one track, I’d probably go with this one:
Along with the dozen or so vocal numbers on the soundtrack, there are also quite a few unique and memorable instrumental tracks. These range from atmospheric and subtle (“Forbode,” “Amnesia”) to 16-bit style synth (“Let’s Get Together”) to totally rocking big beat tracks, such as this one:
While the album gleefully dances between genres, they all fit within the hip, subculture theme and are very listenable. Except in one area: the hip hop tracks. Japan has produced a multitude of excellent (yet generally unknown in the West) musicians playing everything from ska to electronic to melodic death metal (in addition to more mainstream genres), but their hip hop has been generally awful. The rap tracks on this soundtrack are no exception; thankfully, there are only a handful of them.
When it is at its best, The World Ends With You soundtrack is catchy, cute, hip, sexy, and fun and captures the essence of Shibuya perfectly. In this era of generic Hollywood-style orchestral scores and crappy radio-friendly alternative rock, metal, and hip hop in games, this soundtrack shows that it is still possible to make memorable, innovative, enjoyable, and sincerely “cool” music for games.
