It's been awhile since I made my last blog post, so I thought why not make a new blog post that consist of me ripping on the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil version of Remilia's theme, Septette for the Dead Princess.

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil version of Septette for the Dead Princess.

Immaterial and Missing Power version of Septette for the Dead Princess.

All right, let's see what I can do.

Septette is a song that takes much too long to get where it's going, and when it arrives there, it does so in a underwhelming fashion. I understand that you don't need super-hyped openings like in History of the Moon, Nuclear Fusion and Wonderful Heaven for fights of Stage 6 magnitudes, because Bamboo Cutter and True Administrator both demonstrate how to start softly and build up incredibly well. The problem with Septette is that it starts soft and stays soft for far too long. I just don't feel the energy. This is it! The final showdown with the crimson vampire, the source of Gensokyo's mist problem! Where's the tension, the excitement? It just isn't there. Lunar Dial gets me far more pumped. Hell, even Meiji 17 gets me more pumped, and when the atmosphere of your Stage 6 head-of-household fight is getting upstaged by the atmosphere of your Stage 3 joke-character-door-guard fight, then something's wrong.

Septette does eventually reach a point of something tense and exciting, but it's all over in about 10 seconds, and then it slowly segues into some piano fun that, while nice, feels like it's just kinda there. It could have been a good musical "cooldown" period from having a whole bunch of tension built up, but there was never any tension built up in the first place. Look at the IaMP remix of Septette . That song kicks you in the face until you tap out, which reflects the crazy battle you're having with Remilia zipping all over the place. (It even starts quiet and builds properly! Incredible how NKZ could get it right when ZUN couldn't.) There's plenty of tension in that song, especially during the aforementioned piano fun that's been transcribed over to rock guitar. I listen to the IaMP remix and I see Remilia wailing away on a Gungnir guitar as hard as she can for a whole bunch of screaming fans. I listen to the original song and I don't really hear much of anything, just a melody that's decent to listen to but nothing special. It doesn't even feel like it tells much of a story, as opposed to Border of Life or Immortal Smoke, which are basically musical summaries of the lives of their respective characters.

Basically, Septette is a song with a respectable core idea that simply doesn't execute. It's merely passable as a stand-alone song and a rather large flop as an atmosphere-setter in comparison to every other final boss song we've ever had.