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For Sawano's birthday, I guess it's time for a top 5 Sawano tracks that nobody will actually care about. But hey, I love the guy, and I love celebrating his career.
Like, it's absolutely bonkers how short of a time compared to some of the other big names in anime music Sawano has been working, but he just keeps cranking em out. There are some drawbacks to that as his recent output has been kind of samey, but when he wants to, he kick ass.
Even though I had known Sawano's music from anime before I played Xenoblade X, X was the first time I really connected him with his style and fell in love. THEMEX is still one of his best works, and VGM could use more shit like this.
Gundam Unicorn is probably his most seminal work besides maybe Attack on Titan. But I like Unicorn a whole lot more. While the title track might be the most famous, goddamn, I love me some MOBILE SUIT.
When somebody asks what my favorite Sawano score is, I have a hard time. There are like three that I go back and forth on all the time, but one of those is Ao no Exorcist. It's a masterpiece in every way with my favorite being My☆
One of the other favorites that I bounce back and forth on is Thunderbolt Fantasy. It's my favorite piece of media ever, and Sawano's score is just incredible. I'm going to share two here because I love it so much.
And this track from season 2 that he sadly only contributed a few tracks to, but it's still some of his best shit.
And to only prove that I'm a real Sawano fan, we gotta dig into his live action work before he became an anisong hack. But foreals, his live action work is some of his best shit.
I've already went over five tracks, but there's so much good shit. Here's the last one from another live action work - Maou. It's one of his most underappreciated scores. Like, nobody talks about it, and it's incredible!
I'll just end this by posting a few of his vocal works. They seem to be hit or miss for a lot of people, but I adore the shit he's done since forming nZk.
And I gotta shout out my boy David Whitaker. His collabs with Sawano are so great, and I love Battle Scars so, so much!
I legit don't really like Kill la Kill's score or vocal tracks that much lol, but Light your Heart Up is so fucking good.
I'll foreal end this on my favorite Sawano vocal track from his first major vocal album with Aimer - UnChild - a collaboration based on Gundam Unicorn with a vocal track based on Mobile Suit called Destiny.
I lied. One more! Due to the pandemic, Sawano did a few of these from home recordings, and he got mizuki to do a paired down version of A/Z. It's beautiful.
