6.21.2007

Dhsu Presents: Doujin Spolight

Hey guys, it's your friendly neighborhood Dhsu here: ReMixer extraordinaire and Asian debonaire. My job is to familiarize all you gaijin with video game arrangements made by our friends in the Land of the Rising Sun. These arrangements are commonly referred to under the umbrella term "doujin" (i.e. amateur or fan) music, and are closely linked to Japan's large "DTM" (or "DeskTop Music") community. The recently-posted "Dignity Ark" by Ryo Lion is but one example of what the majority of Western ReMix-lovers are missing out on.

There are a number of factors that contribute to the relative inaccessibility of doujin arrangements: in addition to the obvious language barrier, the doujin community doesn't have (at least to my knowledge) the equivalent of dedicated, centralized submission sites like OCR or VGMix. The closest thing would probably be sites such as CREATOR BACKER that keep track of the myriad personal sites run by the artists. Also, like their American counterparts, Japanese arrangements aren't all good, so it's a task in itself to sort through all "bleh" stuff. What's worse, the arrangements that actually turn out to be amazing are often available only as part of albums sold on the artists' websites.

But hey, that's what I'm here for! I'll be your tour guide of sorts to the wonderful world of doujin music, sharing sites and various other finds that I've come across during my own travels. I did a Doujin Spotlight feature at ThaSauce too a while ago, so the 2 whole people who ever went there will know the drill. ;)

As I close this post, I do have a small confession to make: namely that I typically only check arrangements for games or sources that I'm familiar with. Since I'm a bit of a Squaresofgt, that means mostly Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Although that's pretty much the only thing Japanese people remix anyway, aside from Touhou and hentai games. :P Oh yeah, and the Ys series, but nobody's ever played those.

No comments: