Yuna was an important character. ─ ─ Yuki Kajiura talks about the music of "Sword Art Online the Movie - Ordinal Scale

Sword Art Online the Movie -Ordinal Scale-" opened in theaters nationwide on Saturday, February 18, 2017. Its original soundtrack album was released at the same time. The music was composed by Yuki Kajiura, a composer who is an integral part of the "Sword Art Online" series. How was the music for the movie version created?

I started with Yuna's vocal music.

─ How did you go about creating the music for this film version?

Kajiura: The first meeting I had with the animation production team was about Yuna's vocal music. There are five songs in total, and I was chosen to be in charge of three of them, which are more related to the storyline.

─ ─ In the movie version, a new game called "Ordinal Scale" appears. Yuna is an AR idol that exists in the game. She is a new character that holds the key to the story.

Kajiura: We were sent scenario, storyboard, and other materials as the animation production progressed, but it wasn't until the storyboard stage that I realized how much Yuna's song would play a role in the film. My impression of the character of Yuna changed drastically.

─ ─ From there, you began to create the songs in concrete terms, didn't you?

Kajiura: That's right. When I started writing the song, it had not yet been decided that Sayaka Kanda would play Yuna. I am the type of person who writes songs according to the singer, so at first I was quite worried about what to do. Later, when I heard that Kanda-san had been chosen, I listened to her various songs. I made modifications to the songs I had written before and completed them.

─ What was your impression of Sayaka Kanda as a vocalist?

Kajiura: The first thing that struck me was the beauty of her voice. She has experience in musicals, and her intuition for singing is wonderful. During the recording session, she was very responsive and immediately understood our intentions. It was a very smooth and enjoyable recording session.

─ Which of Yuna's vocal songs did you compose?

Kajiura: "longing," "delete," and "smile for you.

─ Could you please explain each of them?

Kajiura: "longing" and "delete" are completely battle songs. When the battle is about to start, Yuna appears in front of the players and starts singing. That's what these songs are for. The song "longing" expresses the excitement of the first contact with the game, and as the battle gets harder and harder, the impression of the song changes in the middle.

─ ─ "delete" was a song with a heavy impression.

Kajiura: This song is played during serious scenes. Although it is Yuna's song, the theme of the song is the darker side of "Sword Art Online".

─ ─ What do you mean by that?

Kajiura: When I was watching the TV series, I thought about the emptiness and sense of regret of the people who disappeared in the game, and it was very painful to imagine. In the games we usually play, I think we are often engaged in "battles while playing". We are eating something or chatting with someone. Even so, if the enemy is weak, you can defeat it with a series of button presses, and if you fight a strong enemy and die, you can easily start over. But in "Sword Art Online," game over is "death. I thought to myself, "Am I going to die because of this? I would have thought to myself, "Why am I going to die just because of that? I wanted to express the vindictiveness of those who died in the game, or those who lost someone close to them because of the game, in the song.

─ On the other hand, "smile for you" is a song that makes me feel warmth.

Kajiura: This song and "delete" are in stark contrast. Actually, "smile for you" has the same melody and lyrics as "delete," but this one goes in a brighter direction. It is a conscious effort to create a counterpoint to "delete.

─ These three songs have a very different atmosphere from YoonA's idol songs ("Ubiquitous dB" and "Break Beat Bark!").

Kajiura That's because they are vocal songs, but they work as background music. In the scene where Yuna sings the song I wrote, she is only shown in the beginning of the song, and the focus shifts to the battle. Therefore, I made the song sound like a soundtrack, with the interlude being the background music of the battle and the chorus of coined words. In fact, the mix of the vocals in the CD is different from that used in the theater.

───How did you change it?

Kajiura: Originally, the 5.1 surround mix was used for the theater version, but for Yuna's song, we re-mixed the stereo mix for the CD. The vocal balance in the theatrical version was smaller so that it would not conflict with the dialogue, but in the stereo mix, it is at the volume of a normal song. I wanted the audience to hear the cool singing that Mr. Kanda did.