Writing the Music Before Anyone Even Asked

What amplifies the drama of Mahoseka many times over is its music.

In Part 3, we are shifting the focus to composer kyo. The two talk about how kyo started creating demos without even being asked.

Nobody Asked Me to Write Music, Not Even Gom. I Just Made a Track and Handed It In

Q: I’d like to ask how you came to handle the music for Mahoseka. I hear it had a pretty unusual start.

kyo: Yeah, exactly. At the time, Akiwashi shared a short animatic covering what would become the first verse and chorus. The second I saw it, I was instantly hooked: “Wow, this is amazing!” Nobody had said a single word about making music for it. I just started making a track on my own (laughs).

Q: Nobody even asked you to (laughs).

kyo: Our leader, Gom, was probably thinking about writing the music himself. But I went to him and said, “That animatic was so incredible that I couldn’t help making a track for it!” and played it for him. Then Gom sent it right over to Akiwashi.

Akiwashi: I didn’t even know who was writing the music, so I was surprised when the demo arrived (laughs).

From 90 Seconds to an Unheard-of “7+ Minutes”

Q: You mentioned earlier that the animatic originally just covered what would become the first verse and chorus. How did it end up turning into such a long piece?

kyo: Right. Once I put music to that short animatic and sent it back, Akiwashi replied, “Could you make this into a full version?” I was expecting to receive an animatic for the second verse… then what came back was an insanely long video (laughs). I was like, “Whoa, that’s way too long!”

Akiwashi: Sorry about that (laughs). I really never intended the full version to run over five minutes. But since it’s a music video, there is no dialogue. I tried to get the whole story across with visuals alone, and the cuts I needed to draw kept piling up. It naturally kept stretching out as I worked to make the story feel right.

kyo: These days, even three and a half to four minutes is considered long for a song, and plenty of them come in under three. A typical structure is 90 seconds for the first verse and chorus, three minutes once you add the second verse, and about three and a half with the final chorus. But this one is five and a half minutes as a track alone, and seven minutes in total with the scenes before and after. That’s more than three times those first 90 seconds.

Q: Did you make the deadline for your graduation project?

Akiwashi: There was no way I’d finish the full seven-minute version in time, so for my graduation review, I submitted a “trailer” made by stitching together the scenes I’d completed. The quality was totally different from the trailer on YouTube, and since the voice acting wasn’t in yet, I actually had kyo read Natsuki Hanae’s lines for the submission (laughs).

kyo: Yeah, I did the scratch voice-over (laughs).

Q: So then, did Akiwashi voice the girl?

Akiwashi: No (laughs). I asked Hanon, a guest vocalist for HoneyWorks, to do that part.

kyo: After graduation, the two of us kept polishing it together, and that seven-minute full version finally came together.

Q: What kind of place does this song hold for you, kyo?

kyo: I’d made plenty of demos and practice pieces, but as a composer, this is actually my very first proper full-length track released to the world.

Q: Really?!

kyo: Yes. So when so many people watched it on YouTube and we got such a great response, I was truly happy. Throughout production, the whole team was convinced, “This is definitely going to go viral, it’s a guaranteed hit.” Even so, I was relieved when it did and it became such an unforgettable milestone for me.

Continued in Part 4

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Thank you for believing in Living in a World Without Magic and for being part of this journey with us.

Mahoseka Production Team
Living in a World Without Magic