Koichi Sugiyama has passed away

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The Other Jason
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Koichi Sugiyama has passed away

Post: # 444Post The Other Jason »

Hi all,

The Gatchaman family has lost another of its creators. The talented composer, Koichi Sugiyama died on September 30.

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Mr. Koichi Sugiyama, photographed 7/13/2018 by Tomomi Tanida (Japan Daily News)

Mr. Sugiyama was born on April 11, 1931 in the Taito area of Tokyo. He claimed his early interest in music came from his parents, and the lullabies his grandmother used to sing to him. As a youngster, he bought classical records to try to work out how the various instruments were incorporated into the pieces.

He was unable to attend a dedicated school of music due to costs. However, he maintained an interest in music all through his higher education at Tokyo University. When he graduated, he worked first in radio, and then later for Fuji TV. At Fuji, he developed and directed television programs. He also composed a number of theme songs for them. Slowly, he began to concentrate more on composing, and less on other facets of his position.

After leaving Fuji in 1968, he was able to make a living solely off his work in the field of music. He composed commercial jingles, wrote and produced songs for pop artists and continued to compose for television. By the early 70s, he had created themes for several live-action super hero series like The Return of Ultraman (1971), which led directly to his work in scoring the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman feature film in 1978. He also composed the themes and some of the score for the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman II television sequel in 1978.

Mr. Sugiyama was probably most famous for the music he created for Enix's Dragon Quest video game series, starting in 1986. He used his studies of various types of classical music to create a game score unlike any other. He continued to create music for subsequent entries in the series, all the way up to Dragon Quest XI in 2017. He was awarded a Guinness record, as the world's oldest video game composer that same year. He was scheduled earlier this year to compose the music for Dragon Quest XII before his passing. Sugiyama was 90 years old.
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MoonlightDezu
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Re: Koichi Sugiyama has passed away

Post: # 454Post MoonlightDezu »

RIP

he's Quite legendary in the Old-school Anime industry. My favorite work of him is the OST of the Space Runaway Ideon
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