Earlier today, Anime News Network reported that Hyadain would perform the third ending to Gundam Build Fighters. The song, “Han Pan Spirit,” will be released in standard and limited editions on February 12, 2014. Hyadain, who also works under the Kenichi Maeyamada, performed theme songs for a number of anime, including Baka And Test, Nichijou: My Ordinary Life, and Toriko.
While Hyadain has established himself in the anime industry, I can’t help but associate the name with a completely different body of work. Hyadain got his start on NicoNico Douga, where he earned a degree of renown and infamy for his numerous remixes of popular video game tunes. Hyadain’s remixes, which spanned everything from Super Mario Bros. to Final Fantasy, were often performed with a tongue-in-cheek tone and conveyed some form of story. For example, in 2009, he released Ultros Boogie: an adapation of Final Fantasy VI’s Johnny C Bad. He uses the song to tell a tale of the purple-tastic octopus boss, who’s driven into a lonely life of debt by his vanity and lecherous demeanor.
Among his more notable releases of the time was the Super Mario Western Show, a goofy re-arrangement of the Super Mario World stage music. The song played out like a soap opera, with Mario and Bowser arguing over who should get the girl, while Princess Peach chides them and eventually argues that she gets enough of a thrill from Toad. It’s silly, it’s goofy, and it’s just creepy enough to stick in the memory of the average viewer for a while.
It was around this time that Hyadain also created his own versions of popular stage themes from Mega Man II. These were wonderfully bizarre songs that would give personalities and motivations to the various robot masters. Typically, these involved giving the masters their own reasons for wanting to encounter Mega Man. For example, Quickman’s theme told the tale of a speed freak, whose life comes to an agonizing standstill as he counts the seconds before the Blue Bomber enters his life again.
Some of these were goofy, like the tale of ultra-playboy Metal Man, while others were soul-crushing ballads, like Bubble Man’s tale of loneliness and isolation. However, of the Mega Man set, one song stands out as particularly, well… unusual. The song Crash, Let’s Do It is a bouncy, poppy tune of Crash Man’s burning desire for Mega Man, and how he’ll do anything to fulfill his needs. In plain English, it’s a happy, chirpy song about Crash Man raping Mega Man, with its chorus being accompanied by a goofy animation of a pelvic-thrusting Crash Man. There really are few words to describe this song, whose perky melodies mask a truly disturbing subject matter.
While Hyadain has made the leap to bigger and better things, his remixes and reduxes will always linger in the background. To some, he’ll always be known as the quirky composer that crafted goofy songs about frustrated Final Fantasy villains and Mega Man bosses with a penchant for surprise sex. It’s a strange, somewhat humorous chapter in the musician’s life, and one that’s absolutely worth a peek.
