If the phrase "death-game soundtrack" makes you brace yourself, this is exactly the album you should hear. On July 11, the original soundtrack for the TV anime Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu. ("Kill the Fun") was released by Nippon Columbia (COCX-42658–9 / ¥4,180 incl. tax). The music is by composer Junichi Matsumoto. The day before, on July 10, the theatrical episode Kill the Fun 44: CLOUDY BEACH began screening, and this soundtrack arrives as a "complete" album bundling the score from both the TV series and the film into a single disc — 41 tracks in all, capturing the entire sonic world of a story in which girls stake their lives in lethal games.

The Man Behind "Like Father, Like Son" Now Scores a Killing Game

Film buffs may recognize the name Junichi Matsumoto. He won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Music for Hirokazu Kore-eda's Like Father, Like Son, and earned a finalist prize in the composition category of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition — a writer rooted in contemporary classical music. He studied composition at Kunitachi College of Music and also enrolled in a graduate program at the Iceland University of the Arts. In anime, he is known for the hushed, prayer-like score of The Ancient Magus' Bride and the fiery music of the Super Sentai series Mashin Sentai Kiramager. That a concert-hall composer takes on a genre as extreme as the death game, head-on, is the very heart of what makes this album fascinating.

Kill the Fun is based on the light novel by Yushi Ukai, which won the Excellence Prize at the 18th MF Bunko J Light Novel Newcomer Award and took first place among new works in This Light Novel Is Amazing! 2024. It follows girls — the "Yuuki" — as they face outrageous games in a story steeped in tension and pain. Placing a writer with a strict classical vocabulary at the center of this taut world is a casting masterstroke by the production team, and it shows in the music.

41 Tracks — Bundling the TV Series and the Film Together

The contents are substantial. Built around Matsumoto's score for both the TV series and the film, it also includes the fully instrumental OP theme "¬Ersterbend" (composed and arranged by LIN of MADKID), the TV-size version of the ED theme "Inori" sung by Chiai Fujikawa (composed and arranged by Sema Kondo of Elements Garden), and the insert songs "Breathe" and "ReBreathe" (both sung by Machico and LIN of MADKID) that aired on-air — 41 tracks total. Animation production is by Studio Deen, with music production by Nippon Columbia.

  • Covers both TV and film scores: the TV episodes and the 44: CLOUDY BEACH score sit side by side on one disc.
  • Theme and insert songs included: from the OP and ED to the insert songs, in instrumental and TV-size forms, letting you survey the work's entire sound world.

Running a "Classical Backbone" Through a Death Game

The usual playbook for a death-game score leans on pulsing electronic beats and uneasy ambient textures. But given Matsumoto's background, one expects the music here to be more constructed — the kind that works through the shadows of harmony. The touch he showed in Like Father, Like Son, quietly placing emotion in the silences; the transparent resonance he wove in The Ancient Magus' Bride, where pain and salvation coexist. What sounds when that "classical backbone" is run through the extreme drama of lives whittled away against one another? By bundling the score onto a single disc, this soundtrack becomes the perfect place to examine exactly that.

The trend of tapping composers with film and contemporary-classical roots for anime scoring has only grown thicker in recent years. Matsumoto's Kill the Fun is an example where the "gap between genres" is especially wide. The more brutal the story, the more music backed by solid craft tells — and these 41 tracks should quietly prove that paradox.