Mapping the Autumn Scores: Start by Counting Who Is Writing How Many

We wrote our summer anime score guide at the start of July. Two and a half months later, September is winding down and the autumn premiere dates are locking in one after another. So let's do what we always do: ignore the synopses and voice casts, line up nothing but the "Music:" credits, and read the shape of the season from there. This piece is built on Anime! Anime!'s autumn lineup (updated September 17), cross-checked against each show's official site or press release wherever we could.

The first thing that jumped out when we counted was how often Arisa Okehazama's name appears. She co-composes The Apothecary Diaries Season 3 (October 2, Nippon TV's "FRIDAY ANIME NIGHT") with Satoru Kosaki and Kevin Penkin, scores Shuiro no Kamen (October 10, Yomiuri TV / Nippon TV network) on her own, and is also credited on Ojisan wa Kawaii Mono ga Osuki. Fresh off delivering the Himekishi wa Banzoku no Yome soundtrack this summer, she has three autumn shows. A few years after Jujutsu Kaisen put her on the map, she is now one of the composers trusted with multiple series in a single season.

The other multi-show composer is Takashi Ohmama. He returns solo for Blue Box Season 2 (October 4, Sundays 4:30 p.m. on 28 TBS-network stations), while also joining a three-person team with Tatsuhiko Saiki and Shu Kanematsu on Satelight's PSYREN (October 5, TOKYO MX and others). Delicate piano for a sports romance and heavy low end for a psychic battle series in the same season: this autumn is a perfect chance to measure Ohmama's range.

The Apothecary Diaries Season 3 Carries Its Three-Composer Team Straight Into the Film

The season's headliner is, of course, The Apothecary Diaries Season 3. According to the official announcement from music production company MONACA (August 15), Satoru Kosaki again shares the score with Kevin Penkin and Arisa Okehazama, as he did for Seasons 1 and 2. A theatrical film follows on December 11, so the TV trio is being lifted directly to cinema scale.

Think about it and this three-person setup is remarkably lavish. Kosaki is MONACA's flagship composer, the man who carried the dialogue-driven Monogatari series for seventeen years. Penkin, an Australian-born writer known for Made in Abyss and Tower of God, leans orchestral. Okehazama, as noted above, is currently one of the busiest mid-career composers around. A court mystery, where quiet conversation, ornate ceremony and sudden tension all coexist, is divided among three writers with different strengths. Revisit the Season 1 soundtrack and you can hear the clean division of labor: Chinese-inflected pieces with erhu and flute, Western orchestral cues, and minimal electronic tracks each in their own lane. How that division evolves in Season 3, and how much "bigger" it gets in December's film, is the thing we are most looking forward to this season.

Taku Iwasaki's Junket Bank Is Delayed: The "Score Is Finished but Nobody Can Hear It" Problem

Meanwhile, one of autumn's biggest draws has vanished from the schedule. Junket Bank, the gambling anime scored by Taku Iwasaki (TV Tokyo, originally set to premiere October 5), announced a postponement on September 9. As reported by KAI-YOU, the production committee cited "scheduling issues in video production," but the manga's official account went further, stating there were "serious problems in the production committee's progress management." No new air date has been set; it will be announced once decided.

For soundtrack fans, the question is what happens to Iwasaki's score. This is the composer who just topped a South African chart with Gachiakuta this summer (see our August 13 article), and his next subject was a life-or-death gambling operation run by a bank. Iwasaki's big-band writing and breakbeats at that high-tension table was, frankly, the autumn score we most wanted to hear. Anime scores are usually recorded well ahead of broadcast. The music almost certainly exists even though the show has been pushed back, and watching the day it reaches listeners recede is simply a shame. All we can do is hope that, once the production is rebuilt, it arrives in the best possible form.

The Streaming Slate Is Hot: JoJo SBR on September 25, a Yuta Bandoh Short for Kaiju No. 8, Edgerunners 2 on October 20

The streaming titles move ahead of the terrestrial season. First, Steel Ball Run: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 2nd & 3rd STAGE, eleven episodes in all, arrives on Netflix on September 25, with Yugo Kanno continuing as composer. The March release of the 1st STAGE gave us a fair idea of how Part 7 would sound; the question now is how far Kanno's symphonic instincts come forward once the race properly kicks off.

Kaiju No. 8 has been streaming the four-episode original short anime "Narumi's Weekdays" on YouTube's TOHO animation channel and elsewhere since September 5, scored by the main series' Yuta Bandoh. Episode 3, "That Guy from the West," drops September 19, followed by Episode 4, "Bonds of the Same Class," on the 26th. Right after writing a four-classical-guitar score for Hirokazu Kore-eda's live-action Look Back (soundtrack released September 12), he is now scoring the weekdays of a kaiju-hunting captain. The range is almost absurd.

Then there is Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, streaming from October 20. TRIGGER produces, Kai Ikarashi takes over as director, and the scripts are again by Masahiko Otsuka and Bartosz Sztybor. As of this writing the official site does not name a composer; given how strongly the first season's sound lingers, who inherits it is an announcement worth waiting for.

More Autumn Titles Worth Noting From a Score Perspective

  • Ao Ashi Season 2 (October 4): Masaru Yokoyama returns. As we wrote this summer, a football anime's score lives or dies on how it designs the "sound of running."
  • Kori no Joheki Season 2 (October 1): The Kanade Sakuma and Natsumi Tabuchi duo continues on this quiet coming-of-age story of gazes that never meet.
  • Suikoden (October): Supercar's Koji Nakamura writes his first TV anime score in thirteen years. Pair it with the Suikoden orchestra concert "Voyage" in Kawaguchi on September 19.
  • Shibou Yugi de Meshi wo Kuu. 44: CLOUDY BEACH (September 25): Junichi Matsumoto continues, just two months after his 41-track soundtrack landed in July.
  • Kashita Maryoku wa Ribobarai de Kyousei Choushuu (October 3): Ko Otani. How does the veteran behind My Happy Marriage score an isekai comedy?
  • Kizudarake Seijo yori Houfuku wo Komete Season 2 (October 1): onoken, the rhythm-game-bred composer, stays on for the dark fantasy.
  • FX Senshi Kurumi-chan: Takuro Iga. His pop sensibility looks like a good match for a story about a girl losing her savings on forex.

If we had to sum up the autumn trend in a phrase, it would be "stable returns and the normalization of multi-composer teams." The three-person team on Apothecary Diaries, the trio on PSYREN, and this summer's three-composer Ghost in the Shell: the "committee score" is becoming an ordinary option rather than an exception. At the same time, as the Junket Bank delay shows, no matter how good a score is, the music cannot reach anyone unless the whole production holds together. Come October, we will be waiting for that erhu to return in the first episode of Apothecary Diaries.