#sorry i know the youtube links will probably explode in the near future but idc it's MY essay that i'm writing into the void for MYSELF

[dankmaths]

so i just 100%ed kirby and the forgor land at the car dealership this morning and

i have some thoughts. about the ost. but i can't put them on twitter because 1) it's too long and 2) the latter part of my thoughts contain SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME. so. here i am. disorganized and spent the better part of my evening writing this instead of cleaning. oh well!

i absolutely love recurring themes in video game soundtracks and thinking about how they supplement the story, and forgotten land ABSOLUTELY smacks you over the head with them, they are nigh impossible to miss.

there are two in particular i'm thinking about. here's one. the main theme, as it plays in the title screen, "Ready to Go!":

full of adventure! i'm specifically zooming in on the three-note motif at 0:44, right when the whole orchestra kicks in. (sheet music notation for nerds)

these wide melodic leaps that soar upward give off a very heroic vibe! like you are truly about to leap headfirst into a new world.

here's the other theme i'm thinking about, "Plundering Beast Battle." you first hear it when you first meet elfilin, and rescue him + the waddle dees from the beast pack:

there's another three-note motif here i'm focusing on, which starts at 0:04. (again, sheet music notation for nerds)

this one is the complete opposite of the other motif. where "Ready to Go!" is in a major key, "Plundering Beast Battle" is in a minor key. "Ready to Go!" leaps upwards into adventure, "Plundering Beast Battle" leaps downwards like a beast about to strike (lol). very fitting as a theme for the antagonists!

well, spoilers start here...

you'd think that the "Plundering Beast Battle" motif represents... well, the Beast Pack, since they're the ones you've been beating up for the whole game. but then you get to the stage titled The Beast Pack's Final Stand and this absolute banger starts playing:

but that's the melody from "Ready to Go!" okay. maybe the composers just wanted to shove their theme in again. i'd let them cook regardless. it certainly gives off a "heroic final battle" kind of vibe, if you're looking at the music from kirby's perspective during the stage.

then you go up the creepy elevator and beat up beast king leongar and it's back to "Plundering Beast Battle" (motif starts at 0:09):

cool. but then ID-F86 posesses him, revealing that fecto forgo has been influencing the minds of the beast pack this entire time.

kirby saves the day and kills god by committing vehicular manslaughter! but leongar stays trapped in the shadow realm. when you go in to save him, fecto forgo's dream dimension (forgor dreams 💀) hits you with the "Plundering Beast Battle" one more time:

i already knew about the reoccurring themes, but this track in particular made me notice that they were opposed. mainly bc i accidentally added an hour of playtime to my file from vibing too hard. so i actually wonder if these motifs are more representative of elfilin and fecto forgo than they are of kirby vs. the beast pack. there's even a track called "Elfilin" that plays right after you beat up leongar that's a slower, stripped down piano version of "Ready to Go!"

("Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit" is one of the rawest fucking song titles i've ever heard, and it also includes "Ready to Go!" but i've been up since 6 am and it's quite a long song and i don't have the brainpower to go any deeper into it rn lol).

dunno. i might just be pulling stuff out of my ass but i thought it was pretty interesting to think about.

ps. other thing i find interesting: the Green Greens theme is surprisingly absent from this game. i'm not a kirby music loremaster or anything, but HAL loves their remixes, and green greens is the very first stage from the very first kirby game, so you'd think it'd show up more often?

but the only appearance i can recall off the top of my head is when you enter kirby's house:

if the ruined urban civilization being reclaimed by nature wasn't enough of a cue that kirby has found himself in a totally new world, the recurrence of new themes plus the scarcity of familiar ones from older games (to my knowledge) really hammers the feeling home for any returning fans.

pps. fun fact, the first initial of each area also spells out N-E-W-W-O-R-L-D. just in case you didn't get the memo from the visuals and the OST. beary neat.