Lately my social feeds have been buzzing with news that Kalafina, the vocal unit originally produced by score composer Yuki Kajiura, is coming back (or has it already?). Kalafina, if you don't know them, was a project assembled specifically to perform the theme songs for the anime The Garden of Sinners (Kara no Kyoukai), and it made waves for the unusual fact that the members debuted without ever being revealed beforehand. They brilliantly brought Kajiura's signature choral work to life and had a great run, before disbanding to widespread sadness in 2019. And now, in 2025, they're apparently picking things back up. As I mentioned, the fact that Kajiura was the producer was, I'd argue, one of Kalafina's core identities. So when Kajiura herself made an announcement over social media, it was a real shock: "They must have decided to leave my production and walk forward as a new Kalafina, somewhere beyond my knowledge. For my part, I had been looking for a way for us to weave Kalafina's music together again someday, but that future is no longer one that can come true."
That said, from Kajiura's side, this announcement seems to have simply meant that Kalafina had become artists outside of her production, and the post carried a sense of "I wish them the best going forward."
Honestly, as a Kajiura fan myself, my personal gut reaction was something like "isn't this a little unfair to her on Kalafina's part…" but of course Kalafina has their own intentions and opinions, and speculation from someone with no real involvement is nothing but idle conjecture. All I'm really saying is that, looking only at what's been made public, I personally came away thinking she's a generous person.
A Time Like This Calls for Some Classic Kajiura
So with all that in mind, today I want to dig deep into the score for the masterpiece "Fate/stay night." If you ask what defines a Yuki Kajiura score, the first thing that comes to mind has to be her "choral work sung in a mysterious, made-up language." It's used generously throughout this score, never getting in the way of Fate's unique world, and in fact beautifully capturing the tension and melancholy within the work (take, for example, "cherries are falling," the third track on Disc 1 of the soundtrack). To begin with, it's rare for a score to express a clear melodic line through vocals. And that makes sense, since scores generally don't feature much "voice" as a sound at all. Kajiura's signature scatting is, I'd say, a clear invention in the world of film and anime scoring. And there's one more hallmark of hers, which I also touched on last time when I wrote about the "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" score: she's incredibly skilled at evoking sounds that could be read as either medieval or modern. You'll hear it in her slightly nostalgic, Celtic-flavored pieces too, but she often uses the Dorian scale, which isn't something you hear much in J-pop (there were also tracks in the brighter numbers that used the Mixolydian scale, but the Dorian-scale tracks are far more numerous). That's what ties into the melodic lines that stir up that distinct sense of longing, and the pieces that conjure a solemn atmosphere.
Music has no firm boundaries, and of course you're free to compose using whatever methods and whatever sounds you like. But in practical terms, when you're actually composing, following various rules absolutely makes it easier to write and more likely to produce something pleasant to listen to. Even so, Kajiura isn't bound by genre walls like "pop" or "score"; she naturally creates music that draws the world of "Fate/stay night" out into the anime's visuals. That's exactly why her work has such a one-of-a-kind brilliance.
Fate/stay night is a work that has been beloved for a full twenty years. Why not give another listen to the score that breathes life into it? Even those who've already seen it might find themselves wanting to watch the anime all over again.
